(Essay)

The idea for my second novel, Arjun, came to me during a family vacation to India. In August 2010, we visited Udaipur in the state of Rajasthan. We stayed at a Heritage Hotel that used to be the palace of a Maharajah. The current Maharaja lived in an adjoining complex. In the middle of the large hotel there was an open square with a museum, shops, and a restaurant. One day, my wife and our son decided to visit a restaurant located in the market square for lunch. As we were eating, I noticed a small dog making rounds between one end of the complex and the Maharaja’s residence. I was curious about the way the dog moved as if he was on a mission.

“What’s with the dog?” I asked the waiter.

The waiter was standing in front of us, wiping his hands on a cloth wrapped around his waist.

“Oh. Yes.” He replied. “He’s a regular. We call him Bahadur, a hero. He’s Maharaja’s dog. He makes rounds between the office and the private residence.”

“Doing what?” I asked, getting more curious.

“He’s a trained soldier dog. He has served in the Indian army, maneuvering through the battlefield carrying messages where the soldiers couldn’t go.”

I have included this incident in chapter 23 of my novel Arjun.

I came to know something I hadn’t known before: that animals play a role in the military. It stayed in my mind. I had a feeling there was a story there. Not necessarily about dogs in the military but military duty in general. As I thought more, an idea occurred to me: what if I wrote a story about a second-generation Asian Indian boy growing up in America? What if his father had more traditional values and wanted his children to follow careers that he perceived to be perfect for them? Among the Indian diaspora, it means being a doctor or an engineer to achieve a prominent status in the community. On the other hand, his children have their own ideas about their careers based on the environment they are growing up in contemporary America. What if they choose nontraditional careers against their father’s wishes?

At that time, I was managing a Meetup writers’ group. I wrote a three-page chapter-by-chapter summary of my novel for review by the members. They liked it and encouraged me to write it. As I wrote each chapter, these members read and critiqued with helpful suggestions for improvement. When I thought I was done, I got the first draft professionally edited.

Like most writers, I was under the impression that traditional publication should be the goal to get recognition in the literary world. Having self-published a book on Amazon, The Choices They Made, I wanted to try taking the traditional publication route. I studied successful queries, read many articles, and attended seminars on the surefire ways to attract literary agents. I wrote to over 200 literary agents using industry databases to review their wish lists, only to get rejections. Most agents’ wish lists were generic, not specific as to what they were looking for.

The most frequent response from the agents was to the effect that publishing is a subjective industry. That if they reject my story, it does not mean that someone else also would not like it. I was under the impression that immigrant stories were in demand. That was not my experience.

Then I undertook a substantial revision of the draft, thinking that there might be a way to improve the storytelling. My wife became my trusted reader and developmental advisor because of her knowledge and sensitivity to the subject matter: how does one assimilate into a new culture without severing one’s traditions?

Following is a synopsis of my revised novel, Arjun.

Arjun is a ninth grader interested in baseball and music. His father Vijay, a first-generation immigrant from India, is a professor of Engineering. His mother, Sharada, is a stay-at-home mom. Vijay has a strong belief in a specific career each of his children should follow. Arjun’s career aspirations clash with those of his father, who wants him to be an engineer.

When his elder son, Krishna, decides to be a doctor, Vijay is ecstatic and promotes it among his friends at every chance he gets. Vijay is not as specific about the career for his daughter Lakshmi. Upon the recommendation of his brother Mayur, Vijay encourages Lakshmi to befriend a young Indian doctor intern from India, Akaash. Lakshmi also has a friend from high school, Doug. After a period of dating, Akaash proposes, and Lakshmi accepts. Doug, meanwhile, relocates to Seattle to work as an electrician in his uncle’s home building business.

During a trip to the Pentagon and while visiting Udaipur, India, for Lakshmi’s traditional Indian wedding, Arjun witnesses something that dramatically changes his view of his future. He decides to have a career in the US military and enrolls in an ROTC Program in college against the wishes of his father.

As time passes, Lakshmi accidentally discovers that Aakash is having an affair with a male doctor colleague. They break up. Lakshmi moves in with Doug. Krishna has second thoughts about his career as a doctor. He decides to pursue a career in the theater.

Vijay is devastated to see his dream of his children following a career path he had envisioned for them disappear before his eyes. “The world is collapsing around us, Sharada. I don’t understand anything anymore.” He says to his wife, Sharada.

After graduating from college, Arjun is posted to the Army base in Stuttgart, Germany, as a commissioned officer. When visiting a local bar, he meets and falls in love with a German girl, Lily. After a two-year stint on the Army base, Arjun is deployed to Khost, Afghanistan, for active duty. While guarding a high school against an attack by the Taliban, Arjun narrowly misses grave injury. Despite the danger to his life, he saves the lives of people in his platoon. For his bravery, he is awarded the Silver Star in a ceremony at the White House.

I didn’t want to repeat the same cycle as my first novel. I wanted my story to be read. Making money was not my goal. In an article, “The Pep Talk We All Need Now and Then” in the Writer’s Digest January/February 2026 issue, Kim Catanzarite says, “No one in publishing knows what they are doing.” She further goes on to say “…many editors  of course edit very well and some writers know how to write a great book, and I’m sure there are marketing experts out there who are stellar at publishing books, up the ladder of success, but in general no one knows if a book will do well or if a cover is the “right” one or whether they are making the “best ” marketing and/or financial decisions to ensure a book’s success.”

This is why I made a deliberate choice to publish Arjun on my blog, ashokshenolikar.com. I decided to post one chapter a week. The novel had forty-four chapters. It took me about a year to post the entire novel. I got daily stats of how many were reading it from which part of the world. Some returned regularly. Some left comments. This made me happy that my story is out there and being read. This would not have been possible if I had self-published it using one of many platforms available. As a friend had commented, one does not recover the money one spends in self-publishing a book. Getting professional edits, professional book covers, marketing, etc., is an expensive undertaking with no guarantee of success.

I no longer consider success as generating revenue or getting acclaim. By sharing my story on my blog, I found readers from all over the world. The ultimate goal of a writer is to finish a story and find readers who enjoy reading it. Unlike a novel that is published by self or by traditional ways, a blog has no expiration date. It is there forever. That is not the case with a published book. If a book does not generate revenue, the publisher may stop printing it. A self-published book may get lost over time in the crowded field. Not so with a blog. I find people are still reading stories I wrote on my blog more than fifteen years ago, including the first draft of my self-published novel, Choices They Made. The pre-publication version on my blog, What Did You Say Your Name Was?, is still being read by people all over the world.Whereas the self-published book Choices They Made is dormant.

The first chapter from Arjun has been published as an independent story in the magazine Freedom Fiction Journal under the title An Afternoon at the Ballgame. Chapter thirty, in which Lakshmi discovers the affair Aakash is having with his male colleague, is slated for publication in the magazine Down in the Dirt in September 2026, under the title I Thought I Knew Him. I expect that people will continue to read Arjun on my blog, for years to come. That, I find, is amazing. This is reason enough to fill my heart with joy.