PREPARING THE GROUND is a second collection of 'Leaves from an Undated Diary', which appeared in Hindi under the title ANTRA in 1975. The first collection, BHAVANTI in Hindi (1971), was published in translation as TRUCULENT CLAY in 1982. Neither a compilation of impromptu jottings from a writer's field-book, nor a diary recording day to day events in a writer's life, nor studied epigrammatic utterances, nor again a collection of miniature personal essays, both BHAVANTI and ANTRA sought to be all these and yet more : an attempt to present an integrated vision of the writer's struggle with his medium, defined in the widest sense as including the tools of his craft, his literary, social, spiritual environment, his interaction with his contemporaries and with their pet ideas.