James Strecker: If you were asked for 50 words for an encyclopedia to summarize what you do, or have done, in the arts, what would you say?
Karen Trollope-Kumar: Well, I don’t think I can come up with 50 words – how about 5? Memoir writing, scientific writing, teaching, journaling and public speaking.
JS: What important beliefs do you express in your work?
K T-K: First of all, I believe in connections of the human heart – that it is possible to build a bridge of love across the divides of religion, language, class, culture and ethnicity. In my book, Cloud Messenger, I reflect on the ways that I connected with so many people in the Himalayan foothills. Ultimately, I think this was my greatest achievement in those years I spent in India. Not the medical work that I did, but in the friendships I made.
Second, I believe that each of us has an essential nature – a set of personality traits, gifts and talents we were born with. When we try to fight against our nature or to try to be someone who we are not, then inevitably we’ll feel frustrated and disappointed. But when we begin to understand our true nature, we can find ways of expressing our gifts and talents in our daily life. It took me a long time to learn this life lesson, but it is so essential for happiness.
JS: Name two people, living or dead, whom you admire a great deal and tell us why for each one.
K T-K: Both of the people I’ll mention are also described in Cloud Messenger. John Last has been my mentor and friend for many years. He’s a renowned public health physician, who was one of the first scientists to write about the health consequences of climate change. I admire him greatly for his work, but also for his role as a mentor to hundreds of students over the years. He always took time to spend with students, and many of those students became lifelong friends. HIs encouragement for my writing has been invaluable. The second person is another friend, Ginny Shrivastava. She grew up in Canada, and as a young woman she met and married a graduate student from India. They moved to the state of Rajasthan in north India, and Ginny has lived there ever since. She’s done remarkable work with tribal women, helping them to organize and use their collective strength to improve their living conditions.
JS: How have you changed since you began to do creative work?
K T-K: I’ve always wanted to write, but I’ve certainly struggled a lot with “writers’ block”. I am rather a perfectionist about my writing, and as a result I have a lot of unfinished writing projects. Now that Cloud Messenger has been published, I think it will be easier for me to move on to other projects and actually finish them!
JS: What are your biggest challenges as a creative person?
K T-K: Probably my biggest challenge is trying to overcome perfectionism and self-doubt about my writing. Also, I need to be more disciplined about setting aside time for writing. I am still working as a family physician, and I also have numerous volunteer commitments in the community. Sometimes, I feel too busy to set aside some quality time for writing. I need to work on that.
JS: Please describe at least one major turning point in your life.
K T-K: Certainly, the biggest turning point in my life was that moment when I decided to leave Canada, move to India and marry Pradeep. It was a huge leap of faith, because I really didn’t know him very well and I certainly didn’t know much about India. That decision changed my life in every possible way – and I don’t regret it for a minute. My worldview has been broadened by the experience of living in another culture, and marrying someone so different from myself has been a fascinating journey. Pradeep and I have now been married for 32 years, and we are still very happy. Although we live in Canada primarily, we have deep connections to India and we spent part of every year there.
JS: What are the hardest things for an outsider to understand about what you do?
K T-K: Many people who have read Cloud Messenger say to me, “I just don’t understand how you could have decided to leave Canada in the way that you did.” I believe that some decisions are made on a deep intuitive level, and that was certainly the case for my decision to leave Canada. Somehow I knew that by moving to India I would embark on a great voyage of self discovery. There were many hardships and crises during those years I lived in India, and the work we tried to do had only limited success. But what an adventure it was!
JS: How and why did you begin to do creative work in the first place?
K T-K: As a child, I used to enjoy writing journals and short stories. I also used to like to make up stories and tell them to the kids I was babysitting. As an adult, I’ve written a number of articles on medical subjects during my career as a family physician. But “Cloud Messenger” is the first book I’ve ever written, and it took me a very long time to write it. I think that a memoir presents particular challenges – how do you decide what to include and what to leave out? How personal and revealing will the narrative be? How do you represent people in the narrative who are still living? Lots of questions to be considered! In writing the book, I began to perceive so much more about those eventful 11 years in India, and subtle patterns emerged that I had never considered before. It was a wonderful experience to try to capture that period of my life in prose.
JS: What haven’t you attempted as yet that you would like to do and please tell us why?
K T-K: Right now I am attempting to get Cloud Messenger more widely known. Since the book was published last fall, I’ve spoken at a number of different venues in Hamilton and Toronto. I’ve been getting excellent reviews, which is encouraging. But it would be exciting to see if Cloud Messenger could attract a national or international readership. That’s my next challenge!
JS: What are your most meaningful achievements?
K T-K: I’ve worked as a family doctor for over 30 years now, both in Canada and in India. It’s such a great privilege to work as a physician, because we become witnesses to such significant events in peoples’ lives. I’ve always loved that part of my work as a family doctor, and I treasure my memories of all the patients I’ve gotten to know over the years. I’ve also done a lot of teaching over the years, mainly to medical students, and I’ve tried to impart my love of the humanistic side of medicine to them. In my personal life, being a wife and mother has been a fascinating (though often challenging!) journey.
JS: What advice would you give a young person who would like to do what you do?
K T-K: I quite often have medical students asking me about my work in global health. I encourage them to get some experience at living and working in different environments. By crossing a cultural barrier, you learn so much about yourself. The experience of learning to see through someone else’s eyes changes you forever.
JS: Of what value are critics?
K T-K: Critics play an essential role for any creative person. It’s often difficult to see our own work objectively, and a critic can provide valuable insights and perspectives. When I was writing Cloud Messenger, I was fortunate enough to have several readers who provided me with excellent critiques of early drafts. My daughter was one of my sternest critics, who would tell me when I was beginning to sound pedantic or when my prose was filling with medical jargon. She encouraged me to write a much more personal narrative, and I think her critique improved the book immensely.
JS: What do you ask of your audience?
K T-K: In Cloud Messenger I describe the joys and challenges of 11 years of life in Himalayan foothills. Some of my experiences were frightening and disillusioning, and at times we faced problems of corruption and violence. But these negative experiences were far outweighed by the beauty and joy of those years in India. I would hope that people reading Cloud Messenger will see that this book is ultimately about the power of love. My greatest insight of the journey was the realization that it is possible to build connections of the heart across the divides of culture, class and religion.
JS: What specifically would you change about what goes on in the world?
K T-K: What saddens me most about the world today is that instead of moving towards a greater sense of unity among people, we seem to be moving in a direction of deeper divisions. This will diminish us as human beings. Our challenge should be to deepen our understanding of others, not to focus on differences.
JS: If you could relive one experience from your creative life, what would it be and why would you do so?
K T-K: It was that marvellous experience of finally breaking through a persistent writer’s block and feeling the narrative begin to pour out of my heart onto the page. I’d been struggling to write this book for years before I actually managed to do it – It seemed like such an impossibly difficult task to capture those 11 years of adventure and learning in prose. But once I finally broke through that block, I experienced such marvellous creative joy in the process of writing.
JS: Tell us what it feels like to be a figure who is presented somehow in the media. What effect does this presence have on you?
K T-K: I am not known as a writer as yet – I hope that one day I’ll be able to answer this question!
JS: Name two places you would like to visit, one you haven’t been to and one to experience again and briefly tell us why.
K T-K: I would love to visit New Zealand, which seems like a country of extraordinary beauty. Also, the New Zealanders I’ve met have all been kind and interesting people, and one of them became a special friend of mine. A place I’d like to visit again is a remote spot in the Himalayan foothills known as the Har-ki-Doon valley. I hiked to that place years ago with a couple of friends, and it was truly magical.
JS: Please tell us about one or more projects that you have been working on, are preparing, or have recently completed. Why do they matter to you and why should they matter to us?
K T-K: My daughter Sonia was ill with a severe eating disorder for a number of years, though thankfully she’s now recovered. When she was ill, we were both shocked to realize how little good information is available for parents as well as people suffering from these devastating disorders. Recently, my daughter started an advocacy and support organization for people with eating disorders called Body Brave. I have been working with her on several initiatives to promote positive mental health. We’ve started working on a book that shares the experiences of a parent and a child throughout the course of an eating disorder. I think it will be very helpful for families in which a loved one is suffering from one of these illnesses.
I’m also working on a writing project with my husband, called “The Seven Colours of Love”. My husband has been pursuing his spiritual life ever since I first met him, and he’s developed a set of teachings called Naturality. He describes this as a way of living that is neither religious nor spiritual, but natural. He’s written several books about his ideas and experience, and I think that “The Seven Colours of Love” will be a significant addition to this body of work.
JS: Let’s talk about the state of the arts in today’s society, including the forms in which you work. What specifically gives you hope and what specifically do you find depressing?
K T-K: Since Cloud Messenger has been published, I’ve been learning about a whole new world – the world of books, writers, and publishing. I’ve discovered some great sites online, such as Goodreads, where you can interact with other people who love books and get ideas for the next book to read. I’m also connected with some book bloggers and have attended some literary events. For me, it’s all completely new and I find it fascinating. The publishing world is undergoing a great deal of upheaval, but I don’t see this as a negative thing – I think it is opening up lots of interesting possibilities. Indie publishing is booming, and this certainly gives many more people a chance to see their work in print (including me!). The downside is that there are so many books on the market that competition for readership is fierce.
JS: Finally, what do you yourself find to be the most intriguing and/or surprising thing about you?
K T-K: On the surface, I look and sound like a calm, sensible family physician – which I am, of course! But what many people don’t realize is that I also have an adventurous and quirky side that leads me on all sorts of improbable journeys. Readers of Cloud Messenger will soon become acquainted with that side of my nature!