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.
With her latest novel Lessons in Forgetting, Nair has done just the opposite of writing something “that doesn’t demand intellectual or emotional engagement from the reader”. An intense look at marriage, parenthood, destiny and relationships, the book also packs in themes such as the cyclical nature of events in our lives and redeeming our mistakes —all this along with strong portraits
of finely etched and far-from-perfect but identifiable characters.
Its two main characters — professor J Krishnamurthy, Jak to friends, and Meera — enter the novel at points when their lives are falling apart. Meera is trying to cope with a marriage that seems to fail overnight and Jak is looking for the truth behind an ‘accident’ that has turned his ebullient 19-year-old daughter into a vegetable.
“I have tried to look at what happens when you witness the devastation of a perfect world, which is what happens to both my protagonists,” says Nair. In a fine insight into the writing process, Nair reveals how finding a metaphor for this devastation helped her centre the book. Jak is a cyclone expert from a top US university — and cyclones and their aftermath seemed the perfect allegory for picking up the pieces of your life after it has been shattered by a particularly nasty blow.
Cyclones, created when hot air meets cold, also provided a metaphor for her protagonists and their essential natures. While Jak is a volatile person who thrives in chaos, Meera is the cool, collected ex-corporate wife and cookbook writer known for her perfect parties. Writing a book, Nair asserts, is most often a happy coming together of many things.
In a lighter vein, Nair says even the process of figuring out how you want your characters to look can involve a lot of heartburn for an author — till a bingo! moment. “I didn’t know what Jak looked like and I just couldn’t fix a picture of him in my head till I went to Italy and met this tall, distinguished-looking Italian gentleman who offered me a lift. He went to fetch his car and I was expecting something grand, like a Rolls maybe. Some time later, he trundles in, in this tiny car which is completely messy inside — and I said aha!” laughs Nair. The moment found a way into the book — in its opening chapter, Jak offers Meera a lift in a pint-sized car littered with the physical debris of his life.
Strangely for an author who loves and observes the city passionately, this is Nair’s first novel based in Bangalore. Large parts of its events unfold in the still-gracious cantonment area and one of its vanishing tribes of old-world bungalows features almost as a character in the book. Meera lives in “the Lilac House”, a colonial bungalow that’s been in her family for half a century and which creates a bone of contention between her and her husband.
“Bangalore represents, in many ways, what Meera is — calm, unruffled, gracious. But underneath, there are lacerations that emerge in a moment of crisis,” explains Nair. She admits that she hasn’t tried her hand at writing a fully realised ‘Bangalore novel’ —along the lines of the ‘Delhi novel’ or the ‘Bombay novel’ — because her familiarity with the city is restricted to the cantonment and its neighbouring areas.
And because she’s already started researching her next book, a historical novel based in 17th century Kerala, the city may have to wait a while before this quintessential Bangalore author tries her hand at capturing its many moods, something she already does through her columns.
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