This is a new take on the Your Say section, and it might seem a little strange to still call it “Your Say” when I'm doing most of the talking. I hope this explanation resolves what seems to at first to be a contradiction, and makes it clear why I've made these changes to the section.

I receive a lot of emails from readers. I've spoken to a lot of writers — I meet other writers every chance I get, at Writers' Festivals, seminars, conferences, and in bookstores, and love talking with them — and it seems to me, after a lot of discussion with those writers, that my emails are of a different order to the emails that they receive.

First of all, there's the sheer number of them. I get hundreds of emails every month, and as far as I can tell not many writers do. Second, there's the “first letter” phenomenon: a large number of the emails I receive begin with the words “I've never written to a writer before …” and that seems to be unusual. Most of the writers I've spoken to receive most of their emails or letters from people who've written to writers before, and are accustomed to expressing their views about books and writers. And third, there's the subject matter of many of my emails. People write to me about their marriages being in trouble, or about the girl/guy they love; parents write to me about their children who take drugs, and younger readers write about their parents taking drugs; soldiers write to me about the wars they're fighting in Iraq, Afghanistan, Africa and Asia; people write to me about how their lives have changed in the most dramatic ways after reading Shantaram; men and women write to me about having lost children; people write to me about their struggles with cancer and other life-threatening illnesses; people write to me about the men and women on death row whom they're trying to help; bikers and outlaws write to me about finding a way to express their love; and a lot of men, women, boys, and girls write to me about having been sexually molested, or raped.

From what I can tell by talking to other writers, it's fairly unusual to receive so many emails of this personal, profoundly emotional nature. And while I'm amazed and grateful and honoured that my novel has provoked such an intense emotional response from so many readers — and while I read every single email I receive, even though I can't possibly reply to them all — it does present me with a problem in putting such letters and emails here on my website.

I started this section, a couple of years ago, with the intention of putting your emails here so that after time a lengthy feedback process could be established. But so many of the most moving letters and emails I receive are so personal that I simply couldn't publish them here — even when the writers have stated that it's okay to do so. Publishing those letters and emails would have felt wrong for two reasons: 1) because they're so personal, and 2) because they're often flattering to me, and publishing them would've seemed too self-aggrandizing. All the people who know me well would tell you that while I have strong, deeply considered opinions about things and I'm confident in any situation, I have an allergic reaction to being self-aggrandizing.

So, after it became increasing clear that I couldn't reprint the emails and letters I received, I decided to change the Your Say section of the site by deleting existing emails, and then using your emails and letters as the starting point for a series of dialogues with you, my readers.

The first of those dialogues begins this week, with the first of what I'm sure will be a series of comments on the question of sexual abuse.

A recent email, unique but addressing a fairly common theme among my readers, talked about how the reader's identification with my character, Karla, became much more poignant when it was revealed in the novel that the character had been raped by a man who was in a position of authority over her.

I chose to give this aspect to my character's history because I felt it to be such an important issue. So many of the women I've known, across the world, have been sexually abused or assaulted, that I felt I had to incorporate this subject in my novel, Shantaram. I'm not exactly sure why, but women open up to me: they tell me things, quite often, that they haven't told their closest friends. During the course of many late night or quiet afternoon conversations, a lot of women — I mean, a lot: way more than half — have confided to me that they were sexually abused. This terrible fact and the painful narratives that spin outward from it were and still are part of the background — the wallpaper or landscape — of my life and travels across the world.

One night, many years ago in Bombay, I was talking with some friends about the wonders that can be seen and experienced in a walk around Bombay city completely alone at 2 or 3 o'clock in the morning. One of my friends, a young Israeli, said, “It must be good. Of course, as a woman, I can't do that.”

It struck me — stupidly, for the first time — as horrifyingly unfair that women can't enjoy this great pleasure, walking around a city alone in the soul-sleep hours after midnight, without fear that men will assault them. As this insight burned its way into my consciousness, and the stories of sexual attacks, told to me by women in every country where I lived, increased in number through the years, I resolved to include a component of this sexual abuse in my novel, Shantaram.

The theme of sexual abuse is in the novel because it's central to the over-arching theme of the trilogy, of which Shantaram is the first part: the theme of alienation. But it's also there because it's a central concern of my philosophy and my world-view. I say this categorically:

UNLESS AND UNTIL WOMEN ARE FREE TO WEAR WHATEVER THEY WANT — OR WEAR NOTHING AT ALL, AS THEY FREELY CHOOSE — AND GO WHEREVER THEY WANT, AND DO WHATEVER THEY WANT, WITHOUT FEAR OF BEING ATTACKED BY MEN, WE CANNOT TAKE THE NEXT STEP TOWARD DEVELOPMENT AS A SPECIES.

This is not the problem of women. Not ever. This is our problem — the half of the species that is male. We have to take responsibility for it. We have to acknowledge that half of our species lives in fear of the other half — at least some of the time, and sometimes frequently — and that the shame and disgrace for that is ours. And we men have to change it. We have to see the right for women to be free and safe — safe from us, for God's sake — is not only a fundamental and non-negotiable human right, but also a first priority in our cultural, educational, legal, and political actions, expressions, and institutions.

There'll be more on this topic in the future, as I receive more emails from you, my readers. Until then, I send you my strongest wishes that you be free, safe, happy, and successful in all that you do,

GDR

snapshot by Michelle