Interview in TIMES OF INDIA 2010 Print
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Tuesday, 17 May 2011 04:58
INTERVIEW IN THE TIMES OF INDIA (Sep 2010)


-         A little about your latest book and the story behind its conception and evolution.

‘Secrets & Sins’ is essentially a love story but also a study of marriage and infidelity. Its conception is that old familiar tale of a momentary flash in the head when a writer can almost see the whole book ready in written form. I’d just handed in the manuscript of ‘Secrets & Lies’ and the publishers had asked me to start thinking about the next book which is both an exciting moment as well as a terrifying one because it’s easy to imagine at such moments that all the stories that were ever there to be told have already been written. And by far more competent authors too.  

-         So where did the idea for the book come from?

I’d gone with a few colleagues to hear Shah Rukh Khan in conversation at a venerable old institution called BAFTA in London. It was quite amusing to see the BAFTA auditorium turn into such a raucous fan event with people whistling and singing along to the Bollywood soundtracks that were being played while we awaited SRK’s arrival. When SRK finally came on stage, I leaned across to my colleague and said, ‘Can you believe it, this guy went to the school that was next door to mine in Delhi. Not that I knew him back then, of course …’ I sat back in my chair and, suddenly, I had my story. What if Shah Rukh had not gone on to marry his childhood sweetheart, Gowri, but they had never forgotten each other. And both had subsequently gone on to become independently famous before they met again in a chance encounter … what was likely to happen next?

-         The essence of the book and a little about the story.

So that’s what it is – a Bollywood superstar called Aman has never forgotten Riva, his college sweetheart, even though both are married to other people. She’s now an award-winning writer and so the two of them have kept tabs on each other’s careers from afar. Then fate throws the pair together when they are invited to be on the jury of the Cannes film festival. You’ll have to read the book to find out what happens next. Go on, explore their moral dilemma with them!

-         Your fascination with ‘secrets’… (as per the titles of your last two books)

It’s not a personal fascination, merely a kind of branding exercise being carried out by the UK publishers – quite a common practice in the commercial fiction category in the west (eg the Shopaholic series). The three ‘Secrets’ books will not have anything else in common by way of narrative or characters, only their titles and the general theme of long-held secrets that can ruin people’s lives.    

-         After writing about Rani of Jhansi, who are the other historical figures who you’d be interested in writing about?

While researching Rani Lakshmibai’s story, I stumbled upon the fascinating story of Margaret Wheeler, the 18 year-old daughter of General Wheeler who commanded the Kanpur forces that fought to curb the 1857 uprising. During the confusion of the Satichaura massacre, Margaret was kidnapped along with another young Englishwoman called Amy Horne by the mutinying sipahis. Weeks later, when the uprising was put down, Amy returned to the British camp with harrowing tales of rape and cruelty. Margaret, however, disappeared, surfacing years later in the bazaars of Kanpur, seemingly having led a contented life as the wife of one of the men who had kidnapped her. Someday, when I have the time, I’d love to tell what was surely a sort of ‘Stockholm syndrome’ type story of this young woman.  

 -         Apart from writing, what keeps you occupied? A little about your association with special education and the development of the field in the country as such.

I’m helping set up a long-term residential home for people with learning disabilities on the outskirts of Delhi. The National Trust, headed up by Poonam Natarajan who founded a very successful Chennai NGO many years ago, has got the Delhi government to lease us (a group of parents) a disused community centre on three acres of land to get the project started so, suddenly, it’s all systems go. We hope to have our first eight residents living in by early 2011 and the project should have grown into a fully integrated community of about 70 users and carers a couple of years from now. It’s very exciting as, despite having some very good special schools and vocational training centres in the Indian NGO sector, there’s hardly anything by way of residential care available in India which leaves the intellectually challenged at the mercy of relatives once their parents are gone. Not that this is necessarily a bad thing but people with disabilities should have the same options that are available in other countries and professional care homes that offer independent living, structured activities and peer company should be one of them.   

-         Your other pet passions?

Oh it has to be that old cliché ‘travel’. Is there anyone who doesn’t like to travel, I wonder?? But it is something I love and, in my case, I can often craftily cloak it in the guise of ‘research’.  

-         How do you find time to write despite being so busy setting up a residential unit for young women with learning disabilities?

It may sound false, but I honestly don’t know. And I’ve been saying that since those London days of juggling my writing alongside a full-time job and the care of my daughter and housework and all the other pressures of living and working in the west.

-         About being a full-time writer in India, the travels, the travails, the triumphs…

Ah, but having said all of the above, I’ve now – since moving to India – developed a healthy respect for that previously hallowed group of ‘full-time writers’ whose ranks I so enthusiastically joined. It really does feel just as difficult to eke out the quiet time that is required for contemplation and writing here in India. Indian home and family life is much warmer than what was on offer in London but, by that same measure, it’s also a whole lot more demanding and chaotic. The distractions can vary wildly: anything from friend-in-crisis to VIP visitors such as a long-awaited plumber to a dog that’s just vomited on the carpet.   

-         What are your future plans?

To be honest, I wouldn’t mind taking a little break from writing so that I can focus my energies on the special needs project. However, that will depend partially on my publishers as, in this kind of economic climate, it would be unwise to turn down a publishing contract. Also, I say ‘partially’ because my own dependence on writing is possibly far more than I care to acknowledge at the moment.

-         What does writing mean to you? (as a means for catharsis, venting, expression?)

It’s simply something I must do, like eating and breathing. When I hear people say, ‘I’ll write a book someday’, I sometimes think – perhaps uncharitably – that they probably never will because, if they really were writers, that book would have been written by now. It’s about enjoying the business of writing enough to want to do it in the face of all kind of odds, the lack of time, paltry financial reward, no publishing contracts on the horizon. A writer will just want to write. Period.  

-    Writing in the genes… a little about your association with the late Thakazhi Sivasankara Pillai.

I’ve often wondered if there could be a writerly gene. I which case, I’m very lucky that Thakazhi Sivasankaran Pillai was my grandmother’s brother and a towering figure of influence in my childhood. My father and he shared a deep mutual respect and admiration and so I saw quite a lot of Thakazhi Amavan when I was growing up, both when he visited Delhi and on our family holidays in Kerala. Of course, he was the first person my father sent my first published piece of writing to. I was thirteen and it was a short story published in the Deccan Herald because we lived in Bangalore then. Thakazhi Amavan wrote me a letter which I suppose was my first piece of literary criticism – now how many people can claim the honour of having a famous writer review their first teenage doodlings? I like to think that there was some kind of blessing at work after that but I hasten to say too that I write very differently to Thakazhi Amavan: in English, not such high-minded literary material, certainly not with his kind of socialist leanings … Nevertheless, I’m certainly not going to pass up on the idea of a literary lineage!
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