India is my inspiration: Anita Desai

One of India's most prolific writers, novelist Anita Desai proves to be a "Global Connection" herself.

The truth is that wherever I am, I am Indian, and wherever
I go, I carry India with me. We are inseparable, joined at birth.

Born in Mussoorie, India, the novelist, short-story writer and children's author is the daughter of a Bengali father and German mother. (She is the mother of Kiran Desai, who also is an award-winning author.)

With a career spanning four decades, Desai has written 14 novels and received numerous literary accolades. She has been a finalist for Britain's prestigious Booker Prize three times.

Her novels include Clear Light of Day (1980); In Custody, which was shortlisted for the Booker Prize in 1984 and made into a film; Baumgartner's Bombay (1987); Fasting, Feasting (1999); and The Zigzag Way (2004).

Educated at Delhi University, Desai now lives in the United States and is an Emeritus Professor of Writing at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. The acclaimed author talks to CNN about about the inspirations she draws from her homeland.

Full report here CNN

Zooming in on small towns

What’s the most famous address in the world? Perhaps the one most people remember (other than their own, of course) is 221B Baker Street, the home of super sleuth Sherlock Holmes, though it is fictitious. That’s the power of fiction.

We’ve been to most great cities of the world, along with some fictional ones like Metropolis (Superman’s hometown) and Gotham City (Batman’s abode), through books based in them. Similarly, the world knows more about Mumbai thanks to Slumdog Millionaire and Shantaram. And the theory goes for small towns too, cases in point being R.K. Narayan’s fictitious town of Malgudi in his Malgudi Days and Ruskin Bond’s short stories based in and around the hill town of Mussoorie.

While Narayan and Bond will always remain evergreen, a host of new authors are now revisiting small towns through their writing. Anjum Hasan explores Shillong in Neti Neti, Sarita Mandanna wanders through the coffee plantations of Coorg in Tiger Hills. Many of these authors — a majority of whom are first-timers — admit that it’s easier to base their stories on familiar ground. And where better to start than home?

Mandanna feels it’s all about writing about a place that one can best relate to. “I chose Coorg because it is visually appealing and since I was born and brought up there, I could visualise it really well. Tiger Hills is like an ode to Coorg, my hometown in every sense. When you first write, you always write about something that is close to your heart.”

Full report here Deccan Chronicle

Mussoorie Diary

On good days, the drive from Mussoorie to Delhi takes seven to eight hours, and when I arrive at my destination, I am bent double, looking like a question mark. It takes two or three hours and a couple of whiskies with my hospitable publisher for me to unwind and look my usual self, i.e. an exclamation mark!

In spite of the discomforts of a long road journey, I prefer it to other forms of travel. You don’t see much from trains any more—the windows appear to be made from some sort of opaque, frosted glass (or are they just dirty?), so different from my boyhood journeys when you pulled up the shutters and countered the telegraph poles rushing past. The romance has gone out of rail travel. And as for flying, there appears to be a general reluctance on the part of planes to take off. Last month, I was given air tickets to visit KIIT (Kalinga Institute of Technology) in Bhubaneswar, and dashed down to the not-so-jolly Jolly Grant near Haridwar, only to find that the flight to Delhi had been cancelled due to fog on the runway.

Grabbed an ever-ready taxi and got to Delhi in time for the scheduled flight to Bhubaneswar at 7 pm, only to find it being postponed again and again until it was finally cancelled around midnight. Fog on the runway, of course. Scores of flights were being cancelled and the departure lounge (‘lounge’ is a misnomer) resembled a chaotic Howrah railway station. Two days later, on my return, I had to again take a taxi to Dehradun. Jolly Grant was still fog-bound.

Full report here Outlook