'Indian English writers get fewer readers'

Writer Anita Nair inaugurated the Indian Ruminations literary festival in  Thiruvananthapuram on Saturday.

Nearly 70 delegates, including writers and poets from around the country, are participating in the two-day event, organised by online Indian English writers' journal Indian Ruminations.

The theme of the festival is ‘Exploring Indian Alternatives in Reading and Writing.'

Ms. Nair said although more and more young talents were coming up, Indian English writers did not get acceptance like foreign writers in India. “I think the whole idea of contemporary Indian English writing is a misnomer. A large section of people, especially the academia, do not recognise Indian writers post 1960s. Although Indian English writers are accepted elsewhere, in our own country we have fewer and fewer readers,” she said.

Additional Chief Secretary K. Jayakumar delivered the presidential address. Mr. Jayakumar said world writers were edging native writers out of the shelf in Kerala as world literature invaded the Malayalam literary space. “The space that is taken away does not belong to established writers but the struggling young writers of Kerala,” he said. Mr. Jayakumar said that with the advent of the Internet and blogging, the hierarchies of publishing had been shaken and the publishing business had become more democratised. “Our publishers should take up the responsibility of familiarising our writers to the world. Having good translations is equally important. Translation has to be encouraged and promoted as a highly paid profession,” Mr. Jayakumar said.

Full report here Hindu

A new chapter

Author Anita Nair, who turns scriptwriter with “Lessons In Forgetting”, talks about her constant quest to reinvent herself

“Joyously invigorating, and agonising,” is how Anita Nair describes the experience of writing the film script for of her latest novel Lessons in Forgetting. “While fiction is my first love, I need to constantly challenge myself. Hence I seek different forms and structures,” says the author of novels such as The Better Man, Ladies Coupe, and Mistress, besides many short stories, essays, travelogues, and poems. Lessons in Forgetting takes the issue of female foeticide head on. Says Nair: “According to a 2007-survey by the UN, over 2,000 unborn girls are aborted every day in India. While it is illegal to reveal the sex of the child through pre-natal scans, the law has so far been ineffectual. Son Preference for sons, dowry, and patriarchal systems are said to be the key reasons for female foeticide. According to campaigners, many fertility clinics in India offer a seemingly legitimate facade for a multi-billion-dollar racket — gender determination is still big business in India.” The film is produced by the Bangalore-based Prince Thampi of Arowana Consulting. It marks the directorial debut of Unni Vijayan, alumnus of Film and Television Institute, Pune. Made in English with sub titles wherever the dialogue is in Tamil, the film it is to be completed by early October. Excerpts from an interview with the author.

The book received good reviews. Were you sceptical about adapting it into a film?
Not really. As I was doing the screenplay myself, I knew I would be able to capture the essence of the book without losing its layered textural values. There were instances where I left bits out, and at other times introduced a new scene to make the connection seamless. I had some semblance of control. It was also a learning experience.

You recently translated Thakazhi Sivasankara Pillai's magnum opus Chemmeen…
A translation would require me to walk the way of another writer and see his landscape and characters through his eyes. The very first line of the book had me in knots. Chemmeen is in fishermen's dialect. This was unfamiliar territory and I put the pen down. What was I going to do? Over the course of the next fortnight, I roped in my secretary, a Malayali, to read out the book aloud to me. I have no formal education in Malayalam. What I do have is an ability to understand and comprehend the nuances of the language. The familiarity with the cadence grew into a natural ease. It was perhaps one of the most creatively satisfying things I have done.

Full interview here Hindu

Move over, men!

Writing was never regarded as a women’s forte. Yet, mainstream literature has been known to be silently nudged by the saintly articulations of Akka Mahadevi, Mirabai or Lal Ded in the past. It was during the national movement in India that many writers put down their experiences in the spirit of social reform. The women writers associated with the Progressive Writers’ Movement, in particular, such as Rashid Jehan and Ismat Chugtai are well known for having taken up social issues that affected the lives of women. But women have always had to work from the peripheries to snatch, as it were, this position in society.

Vermillion Clouds: A Century of
Women’s Stories from Bengal
Translated by Radha Chakravarty
Women Unlimited; Pp 231; Rs 350

Through the ages, short stories have found an affinity with women writers: the illustrious names of Swarnakumari Devi, Indira Devi, Anurupa Devi and Nirupama Devi cannot be brushed aside. Although no one can forget the remarkable contribution of its pioneers, lately many women writers have taken to writing short stories such as Jhumpa Lahiri, Vandana Singh, Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni, Bharati Mukherjee, Anita Nair, Ginu Kamani and a host of others who write in regional languages in the Indian literary landscape. Radha Chakravarty has done well to translate lesser known Bengali short story writers and give them visibility in this anthology.

Most of these stories possess a naiveté that we might even call an artlessness, which is not surprising considering the time period they were written in. Early women writers lacked the art of constructing an arresting plot coupled with crisp writing, the methods of developing central characters, novel subject matter, or the subtle suspense of a denoument that make for "good" story telling.

Full report here Tribune

‘I owe it to the writer in me to be unfettered’

So many books in such a short while, even as you keep switching genres all the time. With the release of your fourth novel, are there any secrets you would share about the writing process?

I suppose I keep switching genres with each of my novels because I need to make the process of writing as interesting as it can be for myself first. I would like to think that only by doing so would I be able to keep my writing fresh and challenging. There are no real secrets but I do know for sure that before the writing I need to put in a certain amount of research to be able to give the story telling an interesting twist. And once the process of writing begins, everything and anything becomes grist for the mill. I suppose if there is a secret, it is this: that I won’t rush myself until the last word is written, and I keep telling myself that until the book goes to press there is room for change.

Why does Meera imagine she is Hera, the Greek goddess? In what ways, did you feel, were the women in Indian mythology insufficient for this purpose?

Meera is the child of a strongly anglicised upbringing. In all probability she would have read the Greek myths before she read any of the Indian myths. So there is a natural affinity that she feels for Greek mythology rather than our Indian one. And so when she locates herself in the world of mythology, she finds herself a Greek parallel rather than an Indian goddess to build an intrinsic connection with.

The other aspect, of course, is that as someone who has read Indian mythology extensively and delved into it for two books of mine (Mistress and The Puffin Book of Magical Indian Myths) I failed to find an Indian goddess who was the composite of good and bad, strength and vulnerability, love and hate, naivety and manipulation all at the same time. Our myths tend to depict a woman as either a goddess or a she-devil. The only one I could think of was Draupadi but she wasn’t a goddess and her story wouldn’t have fitted Meera’s as well as Hera did. Or even suited someone like Meera who did see herself as the queen of the world. Her world, at least!

While there may be some character in our puranas, who would have been as apt as Hera perhaps, unless one was a myths expert the chances of stumbling upon a goddess as human as Hera is very unlikely. And Meera isn’t that so it would have been a flaw in characterisation for me to have used such an Indian parallel.


Full interview here New Indian Express

India to be guest country at Turin Book Fair

Literature fans may be rubbing their hands together in anticipation of the 23rd Turin International Book Fair, which kicks off in May and sees India take on the mantel of guest country.

The event takes place at Lingotto Fiere, an old Fiat plant transformed into an exhibition centre in 1985, with publishers attending to discover new talent or thrash out negotiations with current writers and the general public arriving to enjoy the huge array of books and cultural activities that go on.

While two sections are devoted entirely to trade professionals, there is plenty for travellers at accommodation in Turin to do and see.

Among the Indian writers who will be attending the show are Q&A author Vikas Swarup and other top names such as Anita Desai and Anita Nair.

Full report here

The storm within

Anita Nair’s latest novel suggests that we examine our personal choices to see how far they are complicit with the quagmire we have created, and in which our children must live...

The distinguishing features of Anita Nair’s fiction, exhibited right from her debut novel The Better Man, are her command over the craft of storytelling and her ability to navigate between the more nuanced demands of literary fiction, of character and plot and the broad brush strokes, the drama, the excesses, the grand stands and the Manichean play of pulp. The impact of Nair’s writing depends upon how well she balances between the two and in Lessons in Forgetting, her fourth novel, she hones her art to perfection.
Lessons in Forgetting is in the main the story of two people — Meera, dutiful wife and mother, inveterate page 3 party-goer, writer of cookbooks and ruler on corporate etiquette and J A Krishnamurthy (Jak), a professor and scientist attached to an American university, who specialises in the study of cyclones — two complacent and fairly replete people who suddenly discover that like the cyclones that Jak studies, they have been living in the deceptively calm eye of a storm, which gives no clue to the masses of air that are building up and which will soon wreak havoc upon an unsuspecting coastline. And it is from the calm eye of the storm that Nair takes us into the heart of the turbulence in her characters’ lives, scene by scene, page by turning page.
Meera has to confront the fact that her husband Giri has run away and she has now to earn a living, support her children and care for her mother and grandmother who live with her in the monumental colonial-style Lilac House. Jak, divorced and casually cruising among his colleagues’ wives, applying his pattern-seeking scientific mind to single out those “he knew to be most vulnerable and hence most eminently f**kable,” has to return to India because his 19-year old daughter has had an accident.
Smriti, his beautiful, free-spirited daughter, who had chosen to return to India from the US for her graduate studies, has been attacked and violated in a coastal town in Tamil Nadu which she was visiting as part of an educational project with an NGO on the girl child. Even as he takes charge of his paralysed and traumatised daughter, he discovers that she has stumbled upon a thriving, illegal business in female foeticide.
Like a light fibre-glass frame that bears a heavy load, with no protruding rivets and ribs to show how the whole holds together, the scaffolding of this novel bears its dark story, the lives of the different characters touching lightly, intersecting in unexpected ways, till they are interwoven inseparably.
We see Nair’s subtler skills at play in the tracery of Meera’s genteel life. We can understand how Giri is captivated by the lace-and-linen Lilac household, with its interesting dowagers who speak of “Sir Richard Attenborough and Satyajit Ray in the same breath” and of “the time David Lean was almost here when he was shooting ‘A Passage to India’.”

Of discoveries

Meera, who has successfully “strangled panic even before it made known its presence,” through all the crises in her life. “...when daddy died leaving very little behind ... when Giri was laid off work, when Nayantara left home at seventeen, ...when the septic tank overflowed and the mushy sweet pong of faeces began permeating their every breath, ...when she discovered a lump in her breast and in Giri’s briefcase a secret sheaf of bills...,” now has to move forward, stumbling and coping. Middle-aged Meera has to unlearn to be Giri’s “Goose girl of the lilac house”, and rediscover her natural self.
Simultaneously, Nair deals her characters a melodramatic hand; they are confronted with extreme situations and offered drastic choices; their emotions are wrung out and their appetites are stoked reflexively — this relentless pattern can be rather fatiguing and it is here that one looks for a finer discrimination from the author. Fathers and husbands desert families; sons predictably grow violent or withdrawn; marriage, sooner than later, palls and gives way to adultery; deserted wives take on young lovers, the older women shoulder on alone.

Dark Lessons

Anita Nair has made authorly forays into essays and children’s writing, but it is when she returns to fiction that she seems most at home.

Lessons in Forgetting contains two narratives of loss that intertwine almost as though one hopes to seek some comfort from the other. Meera’s husband, Giri, has deserted her in a crumbling, once charming bungalow in Bangalore where she is surrounded by the pained and watchful concern of her ageing mother and grandmother and a young uncomprehending son. Minutes after Giri has walked out, however, Meera meets cyclone expert, Jak, returned to India from an American university to investigate a set of mysterious events that have led to his nineteen-year-old daughter lying in a comatose condition, her face frozen in a grimace, her fingers curled as if continuing to fight the ghastly experience that has led to her catatonic state.

Drawing parallels between life and the unpredictability of cyclones, shifting between multiple points of view and likening Meera’s story to that of the mythological Hera’s would seem to serve up an over-rich mix. But Nair pulls it off, maintaining a taut pace as Jak begins his quest, thankfully refraining from getting overly mawkish and eventually providing a longed-for redemptive ending without the triteness that could quite easily have accompanied it.

Full review here Outlook 

Storm connections

Over her novels, Anita Nair’s finely delineated characters have got etched into our memories, especially the women. Meera and JAK, both caught up by unexpected disaster, add to that canon. Nair returns three years after her previous novel, Lessons in Forgetting, with a first book set in her place of residence for the past two decades, Bangalore, and in the fictional seaside town in Minjikapuram in Tamil Nadu. Though centered around the imperious and seemingly unchanging cantonment area—modern life, often discordant—has seeped into this novel. That was intentional, she says, as it was to write the better part of this novel in present tense, and structure it to parallel an impending cyclone. Suman Tarafdar caught up with her to understand the storm connections. Excerpts

This is an ambitious, layered novel. It’s also dark. Was it easy to visualise the two protagonists?
I finished with Mistress, which completely tired me out. So I wanted to do this light, breezy novel. That was in October 2006. But I soon realised that it would not be me, that light books were not my genre. Instead, I decided to look at what at that time was important to me. I started looking at the two characters, Meera, whose life is built around predictability, and JAK. Everything he has done is whimsical. Nevertheless, both their lives are touched by disaster. Both have broken up with their partners; they have become stagnant. This is all working down to the structure of the cyclone. For me, it was a coming together of many ideas, things that I wanted to do. The trick for me was to be able to do all of this without making it dense.

Full interview here Financial Express

Caught in cyclonic weather

When she was done with her last novel, Mistress, about the world of kathakali artists in Kerala, author Anita Nair decided she would write “a light, easy book”. Researching Mistress involved a lot of arduous digging into an esoteric subject and it had taken a lot out of her; she wanted to try her hand at writing the sort of comfort novel we often turn to when we don’t want to be emotionally or intellectually taxed, something she succinctly calls “refined chick lit”.

She discussed it with her editor, and got down to it with relish. It was not to happen. “A few months into writing this novel, which never saw the light of day, I realised that if I were to put in three to four years of my life researching and writing a book, I wanted it to have a certain heft and weight,” says Nair a trifle ruefully. “I love reading books by, say, an Alexander McCall Smith or a Maeve Binchy, and I would love to write something like that — easy, relaxing and yet extremely well-written. But I came to the conclusion that it would be a waste of time; it wasn’t me,” she adds.

Full report here DNA

Novel recipes

In a quiet corner of Fire restaurant in The Park, Anita Nair can be found peaceably communing with herself. The acclaimed Bangalore-based writer, after visiting the Jaipur Literature Festival, has stopped by in the capital for the launch of her fourth book, Lessons in Forgetting, a Harper Collins publication.

The author of four novels and numerous non-fiction works, including literary essays, children’s books, retelling of myths and legends, averaging a major work a year for the past decade-and-a-half, is refreshingly approachable. No airs — except the turbulence of her latest work, which, she explains, she has structured like a cyclone.

Full report here Hindu

Anita Nair to pen historical fiction

Bangalore-based Anita Nair is to return to familiar territory - a book on Kerala. However this one is going to be set in medieval Kerala, which she says is a fascinating period that people today know little about.

Nair was born in Kerala's Mundakottakurissi, near Shornur. Her links to the state have remained strong even though she grew up in Madras and has lived in Bangalore for the better part of two decades now. Her earlier writings about Kerala include Where The Rain Is Born: Writings About Kerala and Mistress.

Her latest novel, Lessons in Forgetting, has just been released by HarperCollins.

Anita Nair is the best-selling author of  The Better Man, Ladies Coupe and and a collection of literary essays, Goodnight and God Bless. Mistress was longlisted for the 2008 Orange Prize in the UK. It was also a finalist for the 2007 PEN/Beyond Margins Award in the USA and for the LiBeraturpreis 2007 in Germany. Anita's books have been translated into twenty-nine languages around the world.

For a fresh look

For the publishing troubled, the focus on India seems to be an ongoing story. Frankfurt and Paris had the spotlight on India last year, and London follows is following it up with an ambitious line –up of India centric events at London this year.

The London Book Fair, on at the British capital’s Earls Court from April 20-22 this year, is focusing on India as an emerging market and literary hub. This trade fair will look at not only English writing from the south Asian nation but also other vernacular languages, Alistair Burtenshaw, group exhibition director of the event, says during a recent visit to India to promote the fair.

Burtenshaw admits that the global publishing industry is reeling at the moment. But he is confident of the rebound for the sector as well. “Publishing is a very forward looking industry,” he says. “Even in a challenging economic environment, they are going to look ahead. Out industry relies on great writing, and that is not going to stop.”

The London Book Fair, part of Reed Exhibitions, is one of the largest trade fairs in the world for the sector. While leading publishers, distributors, exporters, agents and writers are present, since 2004, each year, the fair has also selected a ‘market focus’ country. A major area where Burtenshaw hopes LBF will see activity is the sale of copyrights, especially for new authors. While Indian literature has already made deep inroads in the western markets, Burtenshaw feels the fair will help the industry look at India through fresh eyes.

The fair sees about 75-100 seminars over three days and usually draws about 25,000 attendees. Last year, there were about 1,800 exhibitors, from 36 countries and 413 companies. This year, publishers, booksellers and industry representatives from 67 countries will be present at the fair. The growth of the LBF in recent years has also meant the fair has a more international flavour, with about half the exhibitors coming from overseas.

About 45 writers, including major names like Vikram Seth, Amit Chaudhuri, Anita Nair, Javed Akhtar, Amartya Sen and Ramchandra Guha are among the writers scheduled to attend the fair. Already 78 Indian exhibitors have signed up, far exceeding expectations, says Burtenshaw. About 40 cultural events, including seminars and workshops, are planned. “It will help Indian publishers to sell rights of works by Indian authors to other markets,” he says.

The fair aims to focus on different aspects of Indian publishing. With India already the world’s third-largest producer of English language titles, and a still growing economy compared to negative growth rates in most of the OECD economies, the country offers considerable marketing opportunities.

“This will see writing not only from Indians writing in English, but also from the other languages spoken in the country,” says Burtenshaw. The British Council is putting together the programmes, and Sujata Sen, Director, East India, British Council, points out, there are 32 languages in India with over a million speakers, and there is great scope for translation. She points to Sahitya Akademi’s programme, and hopes more translation rights will be discussed.
And the events will not be limited to LBF alone but will also form part of the Edinburgh, hay, Norwich and Newcastle literature festivals. As part of the build up, the Kolkata Book Fair this had its spotlight on Scottish writers, and BCL organized about 50 events during the festival, points out Sen. “It is all about long term sustainability and engagement, adds Burtenshaw. “The rationale is to create greater business opportunities.

With a going rate of £254 per square metre to rent place at the fair, participation does not come chap. But Capexil is giving financial assistance to participants. LBF has also been helping out potential Indian exhibitors through workshops and seminars, conducting workshops for agents on how they can make a book successful, on participation guidelines, how to set up appointments, which titles to promote, how to present stands, preparing the right publicity material etc. While many of the subsidiaries of international publishing houses have been participating in their global stands, many have also taken stands in the India pavilion, Among the participants from India at the fair are Roli, Rupa, Macmillan India, Mapin, Niyogi, OUP India, Penguin India, Sterling, UBSPD, Zubaan, Wisdom Tree, Ratna Sagar, Research Press, Pearson Education, Palgrave Macmillan, McGraw Hill, IBH, Cambridge University Press India besides a host of printers.

Whether the fair is able to achieve its goals remains to be seen, but what already seems guaranteed is the greater visibility of the India in one of world’s global financial capitals desperately in need of some succour.

India focus at London Book Fair

More than 45 leading Indian writers, translators, critics, academics and industry professionals will be coming to the London Book Fair, to take part in a varied programme of events based on themes of cultural and linguistic diversity, designed to enable better market understanding through contemporary literature between India and the UK. This is the first time such a wide variety of authors has been showcased in this way, and the event will bring together the largest representation of Indian writers ever assembled at a publishing trade show.

Writers including Javed Akhtar, Amit Chaudhuri, Namdeo Dhasal, Ramachandra Guha, Jaishree Misra, Daljit Nagra, Anita Nair, Bhalchandra Nemade, Nandan Nilekani, K Satchidanandan, Shankar, Vikram Seth and Pavan K Varma will take part in a series of ten seminars and readings at the Fair, as well as additional events in London and around the UK. These events will highlight the richness and diversity of contemporary Indian literature, with over 15 Indian languages represented across a total of 40 events.

The British Council is hosting the following seminars:
- Imagining India: the world of fiction
- Home and the world
- Literature of identity
- Literature of conflict
- India writes
- India translated
- Literature of the cinema
- Bestsellers and popular writing
- Literature of ideas
- Battle for the Indian reader

Susie Nicklin, Director Literature, British Council, said: “Many people in the UK feel they know India and her writers, which is not surprising given their justified success in this country; many readers in India feel they are au fait with British contemporary literature. In fact, all of us will benefit hugely from this opportunity — a major part of an ongoing British Council programme – to discover more about each other’s literary cultures and societies.”