NEW YORK - Raj Kamal Jha, author of The Blue Bedspread (April 2000, Random House), has a simple word of advice for wannabe writers: Substance is more important than style. For most writers, Jha says, the challenge is not 'how' to write but 'what' and 'why' to write. For Jha, "writing fills a certain kind of hole" in a person.

Jha himself writes with both style and substance. But his style is simple. The Blue Bedspread is made of short intricate stories narrated in simple sentences. Jha spins pithy prose into a lyrical lullaby and a shocking story. The novel is a series of life stories narrated to a newborn baby by her deceased mother's brother. The novel is brought to a finale by eight simple words.

Jha was in New York as part of his North American book tour. In Manhattan, he addressed an eager group of over sixty journalists and others, organized by the South Asian Journalists Association (SAJA).

What inspired Jha to write this book? "A virus in the head that keeps growing" he says. He finds no conflict between the objectivity of journalism and the creativity of fiction. Both deal with words, he says, but he admits that his short stories, simple sentences and real life ("not black and white") characters might be influences of journalism.

Jha's reading style was especially suited to the sense of the book. His voice is soft and gentle, with an occasional stutter adding meter to his prose (In Jha's novel, the narrator overcomes his stammer with a simple idea: "when you find it difficult to say something, when the words get trapped in your chest, …. you can always write it down"!). The book's simple sentences rolled out from the author like gentle waves on the beach; gentle waves carrying strong currents; currents that lash at your heart.

Although he didn't intend to inject any large theme into the book, Jha says he tried to deal with the "very repressive nature of what goes by the name of family values" in India. Jha's novel does this in plot and sketches rather than through character and analysis.

The book features taboos like incest and domestic violence. Jha artfully manages to discuss these in livid rather than lurid terms. Asked to comment on these taboos, Jha denied that the book itself was about deviant sexuality. But Jha had specific comments on domestic violence. He said he was more concerned about psychological violence than physical violence, the latter of which one could escape from.

Jha has been weaving The Blue Bedspread in his mind for years. He had written the central chapter as long as five or six years ago. He sent it as a short story to an obscure Delhi magazine called, "Civil Lines" which published it in mid-1996. Then, Jha said, a "phenomenon" happened (referring to "The God of Small Things," Arundhati Roy's successful debut novel). A publisher in London read Jha's story. Later Random House won the bid to publish the book.

Jha is a journalist who has bloomed into a novelist at the young age of 34. His day job, as an editor of The Indian Express in New Delhi, stretches routinely to midnight. After that, Jha switches effortlessly to writing fiction.

Jha plans to continue his job as a journalist.

- John Laxmi is a New York-based freelance writer. He can be reached at jlaxmi@aol.com