1. Akhila Saroha: I would like to begin by congratulating you on the publication of “Sleeping Without The Maid.” How has the response to the book been so far? Jimmy Arujo: My sincere and humble thanks to you, for your kind wishes. My gratitude to you knows no bounds, for the generous review that you have given my book in THE RISE INSIGHT. The overall response to my book “Sleeping Without The Maid” has been overwhelming and cheerfully positive, both from readers who are connecting with me for the first time, and from dearly cherished friends who joke that I am a public nuisance who ought to be confined to a padded cell with enough books, chocolate and music, to keep me out of circulation and mischief for a lifetime. Their good-natured ribbing done, they hasten to express wonder that I still remember some incidents so vividly, from a rather embarrassing past that many of them have shared, individually or in good company, with me. The uncomfortable awkwardness of those memories make me kick myself often enough, and I can easily understand the discomfiture of my friends, though they can rest perfectly assured that no references or revelations will ever be made about their identities. Unable to contain my rising embarrassment beyond a point, I chose to write it all as some rudimentary sort of confession, with no hope whatsoever for succour or redress or forgiveness, by wringing the piquant essences of those past misdemeanours into this book “Sleeping Without The Maid”. Well, not all of those incidents have been included in this book. Many of them will show up, in all their shocking mischief and graphic glory, in the next few books that I will be publishing in the months and years ahead. The embarrassing lifetime of a doddering idiot, blundering through the merry shoves and yanks of fortune, knocking head and limb and funny bone with alarming frequency on the occasional tunnel walls of life, can hardly be condensed into any one book without making that book too heavy for even a staggering trailer truck to lug around without careening out of balance. 2. Akhila Saroha: What led to the idea of writing “Sleeping Without The Maid”? Were there any events that inspired the work? Jimmy Arujo: Being socially awkward to the point of embarrassment when I was a kid, and being unable to articulate any sentence coherently without hemming and hawing, unless I was with friends who knew the devil I could become at a moment’s notice, reading has always held a special place in my wayward saunter through life. When one reads a whole lot of fiction, while studiously avoiding non-fiction, the news, politics, studies and religious texts, there comes that critical threshold when the balance of understanding that teeters precariously on the fulcrum of inquisitiveness, swings away from the safe territory of intake, to the dangerous realm of output. That, aided by the lazy eye that dreams and sees far beyond what the active eye can even dream of seeing, adds outlines of colourful fantasy to the rough sketches that real-life incidents draw on the mind’s fertile – and often virgin – playfield of possibilities. I easily drown in reveries of my embarrassingly colourful past, marked by deeds and incidents that often catch me shaking my head in indignation, laughing shamelessly at myself, or muttering nonsense to myself, at the sheer shame of it all. Remembering people, places, indiscretions, incidents and misdemeanours, my ever-inquisitive mind found an outlet for evocative expression through writing this book “Sleep Without The Maid”. There is quite a bit of steam and sizzling narration yet to burst forth, but that will have to wait till my next book gets published. 3. Akhila Saroha: How easy or difficult was it for you to decide the placement of poetry in “Sleeping Without The Maid” and keep it simple to understand for the readers? Jimmy Arujo: Choosing poetry as the medium of expression challenged me with arriving at an appropriate ‘flow’ or sequential placement of the story-poems in “Sleeping Without The Maid”. Chronological sequencing lacked verve, and alphabetical sequencing peeled the narrative nude, to the point of the superficial pretentiousness that commonly afflicts today’s world. Having spent hours, weeks, months and years in crystallising my thoughts into concepts, then etching those concepts into words, and then eventually stringing those words into poetic flow, helped me to structure this body of work into a fairly rational stream, with the rhythm of a babbling brook. It is a humble wellspring that seeks paths for its water to flow without shame or excuse for its girlish giggles, or apology for its roguish laughter, as it tumbles downstream of its own volition, seduced by its undeclared ambition to become the soul of the ocean by eventually flowing into it. The reader can open this book to any page, and enjoy a truly satisfying read, because all the stories are standalone entities in their own right, and each story sits and fits within its own individual page. It can hardly get any easier or entertaining than that, for any reader. 4. Akhila Saroha: What are your views about present-day writing? Do you think it does complete justice in depicting human nature in the light of “Sleeping Without The Maid”? Jimmy Arujo: It is quite interesting to read the works of today’s writers, which is not very unlike those of writers from other decades, centuries and millennia, at least in terms of the understanding and the depiction of human nature. Each writer has their own take on human nature, in their analysis and their attribution of characteristics to individual characters within their narratives and stories. There are so many gifted writers in this day and age, who have the advantage of inspirations and idioms from the golden past of literature. They are blessed to have a much wider palette of experiences, literary nuances, and greater literary freedom afforded by social media and a rapidly evolving lexicon of new