“I write about teenage lives in multicultural, inner-city Britain”, answers author Bali Rai, when I ask him to describe his books. And when he’s not scribbling away, he spends his time sharing his many passions and ideas with young people. I got the chance to pick his brains on some of them...

So why did you choose to write for teens?
I didn’t. My first novel, (Un)arranged marriage, just happened to be about a young lad. You meet him when he’s 13 and the story ends when he’s like 18. I always say that I don’t write specifically for teens, but what I write about is teens. I think it’s quite a fascinating age to write about. I don’t mind who reads them.

How do you manage to write as a teenager?
I’m very lucky in that four of my best friends are people I went to school with. We spend ages remembering all the stuff we got up to! At least half my family are under twenty five and I meet thousands of teenagers in schools. I listen and observe.

What elements do you try to incorporate into your stories?
The most interesting thing for me is this idea of ‘Britishness’. What modern day inner-city Britain looks, smells, feels and sounds like. How people react, interact and live.

Why do you think it’s important to get young people reading?
It’s the single biggest factor in creating a happy, aware and vibrant society. You can’t argue with the fact that, the more you read, the more intelligent you become. For a lot of people, especially inner-city readers and readers from deprived backgrounds, it’s the first and sometimes only ladder out of deprivation. If you look around the world, education is key to eliminating things like poverty and discrimination.

And why don’t a lot of teens read?
It’s to do with not having access to books and feeling like they own books. As a kid I thought they were written for and by people different from me.

Whose responsibility is it to get people to read?
Everybody’s. Some authors just write and don’t feel the responsibility to get people to read, but I feel passionately that it is down to us. Otherwise, why do it?

In one of your books, Dream On, the main character is an aspiring footballer. Was that you?

Yeah, I desperately wanted to be a footballer, but I was never good enough. It’s about trying to achieve your dreams and believing in yourself and overcoming knockbacks.

Do you think that British Asians are under-represented in football?
Absolutely. There’s been one British Asian player in the premiership, and that’s about it. At the beginning of the book I wrote a little article about it, to do with cultural prejudice, racism, expectations of parents…all kinds of things.

What do you think of ‘gang culture’ today?
In terms of knife crime, I’ve been looking at the figures and there’s not much difference between now and in the ‘80s. We haven’t had an explosion of knife crime, what we’ve had is an explosion of the media reporting on knife crime. When I was at school in the ‘80s, we only had four TV channels and no internet. Now, you can’t pass wind in Edinburgh without someone in London knowing about it! ‘Local’ stories have become national media bandwagons. Gang culture itself exists in any time when we have deprivation. We now have the biggest divide of rich and poor in this country. There’s a lot of desperation and lack of hope. A lot of the gang culture at the moment is to do with not having anything else to do, and it’s scary. Not like a politician thinks it’s scary, I don’t get scared if I walk past a group of teenagers, it’s scary for youths. The way that they’re depicted in the media makes it seem like every person wearing a hoodie is going to stab your granny and nick your car and it’s just not true. 95%, of the thousands of teenagers I talk to every year, are great people.

Why did you decide to make a career out of writing?
The idea was that I’d do a politics degree and then a journalism course, but I ran out of money. I always thought it would be great to be an author and I showed some work to somebody and it got taken on. It was a dream, never a choice.

You’ve actually combined politics and writing in a book for teens on politics. What did you hope to achieve with it?
I just wanted to do a very simple guide to basic political definitions, like democracy and conservatism and liberalism. I’m quite worried that we’ve got 18 year olds in this country going to university, who can’t tell us what democracy means. And it’s through no fault of their own. We don’t teach young people about politics in a clear, concise and interesting way. The guide is supposed to be funny, irreverent and completely biased. I wanted it to be an in-your-face kind of slap.

You grew up in a Punjabi family in Leicester. Has cultural conflict affected you?
Yes and no. My first novel (Un) Arranged Marriage is all about that, cultures within cultures. I used to have to leave Britishness at the door at home, but after a while it started to mix and come into the house. The conflict was always there, but every generation has its conflicts, it’s part of the wider British society.

Do you think it’s different for British Asians now than when you were growing up?
It’s become easier. The generation that first arrived had to put up with really hard times. Living in ghettoized areas, being hunted on the streets in the ‘60s and ‘70s by neo-Nazis – now it’s a lot less blatant. We’ve got a lot more opportunities because of what our grandparents and parents have sacrificed, and we’ve grown up in a society where we have friends who are black, white or whatever, and we’ve become more tolerant, which I think is fantastic. But it’s also harder because the original cultural identity is disappearing. I also see now unfortunately, in a lot of areas, third or fourth generations sometimes becoming more segregated than their parents were, and I don’t understand where that comes from. I’m hoping to explore that in novel form.

Another one of your books, Concrete Chips, features some disgusting school dinners. What’s the worst food you had at school?
At my school, we had four time slots for lunch. The early one was brilliant, you got all the freshest food. But if you were on late lunch… I picked up a chip once, no lying, and chucked it at a guy’s head, and it cut his forehead because it was so hard!

What do you think of celebrities that have come out with books?
I hear a lot of claptrap about “It’s going to help young people to read” – well, I’m sorry but Jordan doesn’t write her own books. It’s a blatant lie. You’ve got all these ‘authors’ jumping on the bandwagon, but when it comes down to the nitty gritty and turning up to schools on a rainy Tuesday, they’re not going to do that. They’re going to make the money, take the praise and disappear. The real problems we’ve got are falling rates of literacy and too many reluctant readers in the UK, and celebrities aren’t doing anything to help that.

You’ve got a new book out next year called City of Ghosts: What’s it about?
City of Ghosts is weird. I tried to put it into a genre and I can’t. It’s set in WW1 partly in Brighton 1915, partly in India in 1919. It’s magical realism with elements of fantasy and it’s a ghost story and a love story that parallels.

So are you a Jamie Oliver fan?
I saw him the other day at a Doncaster football match doing something for his TV show, getting sworn at and booed. When people carry on doing things when they’re cursed and vilified for doing it, you know they’re doing it with the right intentions. I hate it when people slag him off, at least he’s trying. We need our kids to eat healthier stuff.

What advice would you give to young people who want to start a writing career?
I think what’s really important is to concentrate on actually processing their writing. I meet so many people that want to be writers and they don’t do enough writing. Practise makes perfect. For me, a good writer is somebody that’s not scared to explore their own imagination. Read a lot, pick up inspiration, but don’t worry about what you think should or shouldn’t be in a book. Try and be natural and write your story the way it comes out.

Would you like to see any of your books made into films?
Yeah I’d love to see all of them! Particularly The Whisper or The Crew, and ‘Rani and Sukh’. The problem is with Rani and Sukh is it’s got that edgy realism that is what’s preventing it from going to film right, which I think that says a lot more about our film industry and filmmakers, than it does about the appetite of the public. My favourite British Asian films are Baji On The Beach and East Is East, and both of them have an edge of realism, but this was early in the careers of the filmmakers. Now I’m not sure if even the money would be provided for those films. There’s not enough saris and samosas and banghra dancing!

Are you still waiting for that call from Bollywood?
Oh, that old joke! I tell you what, if Bollywood called, I’d jump on it. I’d love to try a bit of acting.I can’t sing. I can’t dance and I’m going bald, so I’d get a villain’s role. But I’d love it!

Interviewer: Eilidh Brown
Editor: Sarah Kabar

Listen to the full interview at:
www.radiowaves.co.uk/cube
www.balirai.co.uk