Bali Rai - reggae, ex-gangsters and zombie-demon-cowboys

Leicester has produced some pretty famous authors in the past: Sue Townsend, Pippa Goodhart, Allan Ahlberg… But the newest and most exciting yet is Bali Rai. His gripping novels of love, crime and racism captivate teens and adults alike, and what’s more, they’re all set in Leicester. I went along to the workshop he was running at our local library, attended by a couple of aspiring writers and fans (including myself). After a morning of an informal Q & A about publishing, agents and descriptive writing, I took some time out with Bali to discuss his life and works.

How did you start writing and who and what inspired you?

I‘ve always been inspired by my favourite writers; I began writing by copying people like Roald Dahl when I was a kid and when I got a little bit older, Sue Townsend, Douglas Adams and people like that. All I did was read something I really liked, like Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy, and write my own versions of it, or write extra bits.

There are a lot of hard-hitting topics in your books, like rascism, gang crime and arranged marriage. Have you ever experienced any of these first-hand?

Racism, yes. You couldn’t grow up in the 1970s and ‘80s in Leicester without being abused racially. And gangs… We were all in gangs when we were younger, but we weren’t criminals, its just one of those things about hanging around. As we got older, though, a lot of the friends that I grew up with did become criminals. I’ve got a couple of friends now who you could only describe as ex-gangsters. One’s a chef now, which goes to show that gangsters can grow up and get proper jobs. But I know a lot about that part of society because I’ve been on the periphery of that, looking in.

Leicester features prominently in your books. Why is that?

I love the whole concept of Leicester and Leicestershire. Everywhere I go, I talk about how great the city is. People who sometimes don’t understand it here talk about the multiculturalism in a negative way; I want my job to be to go around and prove that Leicester works… Multiculturalism isn’t a failure like so many politicians say, but is actually very successful in a city like Leicester, and it produces very well-rounded individuals. I am a product of multiculturalism and I‘m happy to be that way. Sometimes you think, hang on a minute, I’m always talking about how beautiful other counties are, but I haven’t ever really properly looked at Leicester. Leicestershire is great; we’ve got loads to be proud of. I just think, why set a book in London, why set a book in Birmingham when I can set it in Leicester?

You write mostly about teenagers, but what were you like when you were growing up?

Like every other teenager, I had my good points, I had my bad points. I did the stroppy thing; slamming doors and shouting. I think I went through a similar upbringing to most teenagers, the only difference would’ve been that my dad was very ill from when I was about seven or eight years old and he didn‘t really recover. When other lads’ dads took them to football or taught them to swim or ride a bike, my dad couldn’t do any of that stuff, ‘cause he was very ill, and then he died. So I still can’t ride a bike, and I still don’t swim very well, and I used to be ashamed of that as a youngster. It made me react badly to certain situations. So I had that going on outside of the normal teenage trauma, but other than that I was mostly a regular teenager.

What kind of music do you like?

Laughs That’s a really bad question to ask if you want to get this interview over quickly! I’m a massive reggae fan. I collect old-school reggae music, I have 4000 reggae records on vinyl, and I can’t afford to buy them any more. I’m going to start digitalizing them all and selling them off, I don’t have space for them all. I’m a huge fan of most old fashioned music… I love old soul, reggae and ska. Nowadays, there aren’t many bands I really like, but I like the fact that a couple of years ago, pop got replaced in a lot of ways by guitar and indie bands, I liked that whole explosion. My favourite band at the moment is Vampire Weekend, I think they’re awesome. I love that you can listen to their first album and it takes you everywhere around the world and into every musical genre you can think of. I really, really also like the growth of female vocalists too. Like Adele, Lily Allen and Kate Nash: they write their own lyrics and they’re not plastic: they’re good role models for young women in society.

What prompted you to go to Thailand and work in schools there?

They invited me: I got an invitation from a librarian, so I agreed to go but I didn‘t look at the address. It was called Shrewsbury school, so I assumed it was in Shrewsbury, but it was in Thailand. They invited me out there for a week. It was amazing… So much fun. Other than work and all the rest of it, I got out of it the experience of a place I’ve always wanted to go. And I didn’t do the tourist thing; I got to know what the culture of the city is really like, especially the teenage culture. One of the things I learned was that Thai parents often pick very weird and random names for their children. There were apples and oranges and knives and forks… We think it’s funny, but it’s a cultural phenomenon. And you get to talk to real Thai people, like when the parents came in. As a tourist, maybe I wouldn‘t have had the opportunity, you’d only talk to food vendors and shop owners. I just love working with young people anyway; I like going to new places and meeting new people. It’s entertaining, its fun, its fulfilling and it’s nice to go to another country and help young people with their writing. I like helping anyone with their writing. And it was boiling hot too, which helps.

Your new book, Killing Honour, is based on something that really happened; can you take me through that?

Killing honour is inspired by the whole concept of honour killings and domestic violence. (un)arranged marriage, Rani and Sukh and The Last Taboo [Bali’s previous books] are all about British Asian Leicester. There’s a lot more to them than that, but they have that linking element. I never understood why I was writing them, but when I finished Killing Honour, I realised that they were all related by the idea of honour in South Asian families. Killing Honour is based on a few high-profile stories over the years. In Leicester, one out of every three people is descended from a South Asian, so it’s a really big thing. There are so many stories about young men and women being killed or being abused by their family because they didn’t marry the right person, for not following their religion, for not wearing the right clothes. There was an explosion in these stories and I wanted to explore them. I found out that 17,000 cases of honour-related abuse happen in the UK every single year, and between 8 and 12 murders a year. The violence and forced marriages made me angry, it made me think. There’s an experience close to me; someone who married into my family committed suicide because of honour-based violence; I’ve thought about all it ever since I was a teenager. It’s a mix of different things that made me want to write Killing Honour, but the biggest guiding factor was anger. If you look at domestic abuse as a whole, it’s an epidemic. It’s happening in the UK and people aren’t taking it seriously enough. We don’t do anything about it – every year, those figures stay static. Just as many people are beaten and killed by their partners. There was a woman in Leicestershire who was stabbed by her ex-partner last year even though she’d reported to the police that he’d threatened to kill her. They were supposed to enforce a restraining order; they didn‘t and he stabbed her to death on the way to work. This is not just happening here and there, it’s happening week in, week out. I just want young adults to think about it, and not just from a British Asian perspective. If we can get young people thinking about what makes people abuse each other, maybe we can do something to change it. It’s saddening… there’s a lot of real rage in that book.

Lastly, what have you got planned for the near future?

I‘ve gone a bit mental, a bit fantastical like I used to when I was younger. The book I’m writing, called The Planet of the Chickens, is aimed at younger readers, it’s about a crazy geek who becomes the world’s richest man, and hates all humans because they pick on him, so he employs an army of chickens. It’s very silly. The next teen novel is called Fire City. It’s a zombie-demon-dystopian-future-cowboy story with a bit of superheroes and comics thrown in. It’s a real mix of genres and it’s something really different to anything I’ve done before. I’ve taken a classic cowboy western plot, set it in Leicester in twenty years time and added demons and zombies. It’s a bit mad but I wanted to have a bit of fun while I’m writing it. Killing Honour has taken a lot of the anger out of me, and I wasn’t in the mood for writing a modern British story yet. I have an idea for one… But for the next six months, it’s going to be horror-fantasy-craziness.

Check out Bali’s website and Twitter:

http://www.balirai.co.uk/
http://twitter.com/#!/balirai

Killing Honour is released July 2nd.