Today, we’d like to introduce you to Kamla Kapur.
Kamla, we appreciate you taking the time to share your story with us today. Where does your story begin?
Kamla K. Kapur was born and raised in India and studied in the United States.
Her writing has included plays, novels, poetry, and essays, as well as reimaging Indian and Mid-Eastern spiritual writings. Her latest book, The Privilege of Aging, Savoring the Fullness of Life, is forthcoming from Inner Traditions in July 2024. She is based in Del Mar, California, and spends six months in the remote Himalayas with her husband and Yorkie.
I am 75, and I have been writing for over 60 years. I continue to do so actively. It has been a long and challenging road with many failures and falls that have been the stepping stones for my success in writing ten books. Persistence, passion, and faith in myself have tided me over and brought me to a point where I feel enormously successful. What do I mean by success?
I am successful when I am successful in my own eyes. My definition of success is accepting our measure of good and ill, aligning our wills to the Will of the Universe, being grateful for our many blessings, seeing the Oneness of all humanity, having compassion, caring for the lowly, offering help to those in need, working with our hands and minds on the small or large fields allotted to us.
Our task is to clean and upgrade the lens through which we see the world, i.e., our minds, which can both imprison and, when conquered, liberate us to lead more meaningful, engaged, purposeful lives.
Would you say it’s been a smooth road, and if not, what are some of the biggest challenges you’ve faced along the way?
My writing career has been very challenging. My first book was published when I was almost sixty. I have been writing since my early teens. That is a long road! Most of my suffering in life has also been caused by professional failures. It has taken me down many roads to hell and almost broken me with discouragement and despair.
Yet failure has always spurred me on and tested my resolve to persist on the path. Success became not giving up. I couldn’t. Writing is my passion, my life, my blood, my oxygen. The failures I forged into rungs of a ladder to success. What also helped was enough success getting published in newspapers, magazines, and journals, having a few plays staged, and two books of self-published poetry that were received well. I allowed them to prop up my confidence. When we lose self-confidence, we lose the game.
Thanks – so, what else should our readers know about your work and what you’re currently focused on?
My mentors have been the spiritual guides of our planet from all traditions who have taught me how to negotiate the challenges and tragedies of life.
They have taught me how to think in ways that guide me into happier, more expansive avenues of existence and experience, lift me when I am down, and bestow light and healing.
Contact Info:
- Website: kamlakkapur.com
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/writerkamlakkapur
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/KamlaKauthor
- Other: https://www.tiktok.com/@writingsbykamla
