From chick-lit to political pot-boiler

Anuja Chauhan is rather peculiarly placed to write this book, a rollicking romance set against the backdrop of a no-holds-barred battle for a key constituency during Lok Sabha elections. No, she’s not contested an election like her heroine ‘Jinni’ Sarojini Pande, but being married into an A-list political family, she has undoubtedly got a ringside view of the freak show that is an Indian election.

Her mother-in-law is Congress veteran and Uttarakhand governor, Margaret Alva, and Chauhan has often hit the campaign trail with her, observing through her sharp copywriter’s eyes the crazy-making shenanigans of Indian politics. In fact, she calls herself her mum-in-law’s lucky charm, “she’s never lost an election when I’ve campaigned with her,” she adds.

Chauhan’s first book was the best-selling The Zoya Factor, a romance between a young advertising executive and the captain of the Indian cricket team. It is acknowledged as one of the best to emerge from the Indian chick-lit stable, though Chauhan is quick to deny that her books are chick-lit. “Just because I write about love and romance doesn’t mean it’s chick-lit, come on!” she says. “Show me the pink cover!”

It has to be admitted that although her books follow the adventures of young, single, attractive women as they negotiate life and love, they are far too sharp and biting in their observations of people and society to be classified as fuzzy, heart-warming romance. Battle for Bittora, for instance, is littered with characters that are noble and heroic and evil and a little ridiculous, all at the same time. “I wanted to create viable characters. And I wanted to show that people in politics are just like ordinary people, and maybe not like ordinary people in some ways but that’s because they have compulsions ordinary people do not,” says the author. 

The most entertaining incidents in the book come from political anecdotes related by her mother-in-law (whose only trait she has borrowed for Jinni’s feisty grandmother — a wily veteran politician — is her obsession with Shahnaz Hussain products and her friends).

“Like the bit about the Election Commission guys following candidates around to see they don’t do anything out of line, like spend more than a certain amount of money on campaigning. I’ve heard of someone who just threw money out of a suitcase from the top of a building because the EC men were after him,” chuckles Chauhan.

Mother-of-three Chauhan, who just turned 40, recently quit her day job as executive creative director and VP of the leading advertising agency JWT. She joined advertising when she was in her 20s, and climbed the ranks of the ad world with characteristic élan, creating such iconic slogans along the way as ‘Nothing Official About it’ and ‘Yeh Dil Maange More!’ campaigns for Pepsi.

She also handled the Frito Lay and Nokia accounts. How did she find the time to raise three children and write two books? “You know, you just find time to do the stuff you want to do. Like I always make lack of time an excuse for not exercising, but when it comes to writing I just manage. I wrote on flights, while waiting for a client, even sneakily at work,” she says.