Author Bio

by Pravin Vemuri

ammar sabaa

Pravin Vemuri is a writer from Bangalore, India. He has been published in Out of Print, Mean Pepper Vine, and Spark.

***

Pravin Vemuri has had many near-death experiences.

He’s got no chill.

Or a six pack.

***

Pravin Vemuri writes about socially awkward men with the occasional yeast infection.

In nearly every story, they marry the wrong person.

And write poetry.

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Pravin Vemuri’s writing affirmations are:

1. Art is emotion.

2. Plots are easy.

3. And characters are projections. Think of every story as a house of mirrors.

4. If action is lifeblood then dialogues are the guts. Probably why you need to give this at least ten years.

***

Pravin Vemuri is a writer and marketer from Bangalore. He works in the renewables space, for an organization that has enabled the production of 107 Tera Watt-hours of clean energy, the equivalent of preventing 72 million metric tons of CO₂ from entering the atmosphere.

When he goes to universities to hire, he spiels: “We don’t feel at all pretentious when we say that we are making the world a better place.”

Of late, the line doesn’t get the kind of response it used to.

So he tells them his company offers generous stock options too.

***

Pravin Vemuri has been obsessed with death since he was six. A hard-earned fixation from having survived childhood asthma.

Unsurprisingly, also unwittingly, he turned to atheism by seven.

To existentialism by sixteen.

To hard drugs soon after.

***

Two weeks into the study break for high school board exams, Pravin Vemuri and his friends met for dinner at the newly opened McDonalds at Lokhandwala, Mumbai. They were all sleep deprived, in need of a reset.

Post dinner, they took a walk up and down one of the many streets next to Versova beach that end in the marshes, when inexplicably, he began to plead with his friends to leave because everywhere he looked, he saw the color red.

He slept fitfully that night. Haunted by a deep sadness. And dread.

The next morning, his friends called to tell him that the police found the body of a woman in those marshes. Assaulted and stabbed, few hours after they had left.

These premonitions come to him every few years.

Unprompted. Uncalled for.

They aren’t always about death.

But they portend only pain and sorrow.

***

Pravin Vemuri’s favorite bits from other authors’ bios:

1. “He writes about things he doesn’t fully understand.”

2. “He has been meaning to finish things.”

3. “He is interested in silence, the cessation of the spoken word.”

***

When he was in his twenties, Pravin Vemuri believed it’s better to not have lived, better there was nothing at all. Because isn’t nothing more probable? And a far less gloomy state?

But now that he’s a father, he won’t have it any other way. His daughter is nine. She still holds his hand and begins every conversation with, “Daddy? Can I tell you something?”

The day she lets go, perhaps embarrassed by her old man, he might just – much like the father in the Roddy Doyle story believes – lay down and die.

Or more likely, cry into his beer.

***

Pravin Vemuri believes AI is the rich white man’s last hurrah against diversity.

He believes that the myth of funny guys getting the girl (“At least he made me laugh!”) was invented by a spurned Hollywood scriptwriter who wrote that very dialogue for the starlet who had done the spurning.

He believes extreme metal is the closest expression we have of the instantaneous and intimate realization that the universe is fundamentally unfair and incalculably cruel.

Pravin Vemuri loves cricket, especially test cricket, especially when played in Australia. His favorite cricketers are Rahul Dravid, Jasprit Bumrah, and VVS Laxman. He owns many of their posters. As does his daughter.

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Pravin Vemuri is a writer from Bangalore, India. He has been published in journals such as Out of Print, Mean Pepper Vine, and Spark.