In 2020, my friend Nikhil Khandelwal and I decided to start an interview series to explore the diversity of career paths.
This blog post highlights an interview from that series - a conversation with Salik Shah, editor of the indie science fiction magazine Mithila Review. Before the interview, a bit of context.
Why an interview series?
In 2020, my friend Nikhil Khandelwal and I decided to start an interview series to explore the diversity of career paths, we came at it from a place of realising that we were products of our choices of conventional higher education and run-of-the-mill careers. We sought to step outside our immediate reality and connect with individuals who had pursued paths that were unfamiliar and seemed exciting from the outside.
Our solution materialized as an interview series where we conversed with people from ‘eclectic’ careers, learning about their journeys. The outcome of this exercise, we hoped, was to come out of the entire experience feeling at least a smidge better about our own conventional career choices, feeling like we had put some effort, albeit tardily, into exploration.
What started as a playful idea evolved into a serious project. Through cold emails and candid conversations, we gradually built an archive of stories from individuals who generously shared their time with us. With no skills, no prior experince in the field, and no other credentials to show for, we got our first few interviews through begging, pleading, and some smart favour-asking on our end.
Through these we booked our first few interviews - notable ones included Janet Hansen, a well-regarder book cover designer at Penguin, and Erin McKean, a lexicographer who previously led the editing efforts for the Oxford Dictionary.
Salik Shah
Salik Shah is a creative polymath — a filmmaker, poet, editor, writer, and now a marketing professional. Best known for founding Mithila Review, a free-to-read magazine showcasing diverse, original, and impactful science fiction and fantasy, Salik’s career spans multiple disciplines.
Interview with Salik Shah
Interviewers: Ayush Yembarwar, Nikhil Khandelwal
Date: September 20, 2021
For me, this particular interview with Salik tied deeply into my lifelong love for science fiction. Beginning with my sister gifting me a copy of Isaac Asimov’s Foundation while in school, I was immediately hooked. Reading and writing SF, joining book clubs, and consuming stories from diverse voices like those featured in Mithila Review was important to my life, then.
To secure this interview, in the email we sent to Salik Shah — I expressed my admiration for Mithila Review and my liking for science fiction. His perspective offered a real lens into art, storytelling, and global publishing.
Q: We already know about Mithila Review and your other successful endeavors. What are some that failed? What are the few things you wish you had learned earlier on in your life, and some mistakes you made in your 20s that you wouldn’t want others to make?
Salik: Why do you consider Mithila Review a success? There is always a tremendous scope to do more than what we have been able to accomplish so far. The sense of failure is always there, and it’s crippling no matter how successful you are. You have to learn to manage failures in order to achieve your long-term goals.
I was quite naive or too optimistic during my 20s about our capacity to bring about a positive change or help find effective solutions to hard or wicked problems that we face as a species—whether inequality, discrimination, injustice, or environmental destruction. These days I try to be a realist; accept the world as it is. Do what you can without beating yourself up.
Q: Following an education in film at FTII, you gained some working experience in that field. You have also been a writer, editor, and poet. Now you seem to be working in sales/marketing. What was your thinking behind these switches? Do you think it would have been better to have stuck to one discipline and continued with it throughout?
Salik: I am a creative entrepreneur. I am in the business of communication. Storytelling. And it’s a fundamentally human skill which can be useful in any industry or profession.
I never thought about making money from arts—Mithila Review is free to read online. When I went to the film school, I didn’t see films as a commercial platform. I was too naive like I said. I am only beginning to see how these dots of my life connect.
We live in a profit-driven economy, and there is no place for idealism unless you can make a career out of it. Working in business has transformed me; it’s still changing me for good, I believe. As a businessperson, I would suggest you stick to one profession. It makes life so much easier.
As a creative person, I can’t reduce my life to a job. I want to learn as much as possible about the world, its many peoples, and their diverse systems of knowledge and cultures.
Q: Why did you start a world-focused magazine and not an “Indian” SF magazine? Do you think Indian SF is mature or ready for an India-focused SF magazine featuring only Indian writers and poets? How has Indian SF evolved in the past five years? What’s one thing that Indian SF is doing wrong right now?
Salik: I grew up in Kathmandu with a portal to the world—reading, writing, coding, and publishing on the Internet when it was still a new thing. My world was never limited to my city; I can’t think of myself as a single nation. I embrace my humanity; I embrace the world. I am what I am because of the work of those who came before me, and they came from all over the world.
Five years ago, we didn’t have a market for an India-focused SF magazine. We still don’t, financially speaking. There is always a scope for fanzines. Look, I didn’t start Mithila Review to serve a genre. I started Mithila Review because I wanted to serve a cause.
The best advice for those who want to make a career in literature is the same: don’t quit your day job.
Q: As is with any craft, I can imagine that as one gains more experience in writing, the thing one focuses on the most changes. Nowadays, what do you focus the most on when writing a new story? For a novice writer like me, I find myself spending the most amount of time on finding the “perfect” premise for a story. Is it so for a seasoned writer like you, as well? What do you spend the most time/effort on?
Salik: I am a perfectionist, and it’s extremely difficult for me to begin or complete anything because of it. Stop worrying, start writing and completing projects. That’s what I tell myself these days.
Take a culture, book, or film, and reimagine it like Asimov did with the Foundation series or Herbert with Dune. Start doing and delivering—it doesn’t have to be a masterpiece. You can fail. Write, edit, publish. Repeat.
Final thoughts
The interview went in a direction that I had not expected it to. Refreshing and real. I should put up some of the other interviews from this series.
Also, the advice probably sticks better if it comes from a higher place, so maybe I’ll follow Salik’s advice this year and actually stick to writing more frequently? Nah.