A journey from finance to fiction

Sarita Mandanna, whose first novel, Tiger Hills, released in India last month, is an alumnus of IIM, Bangalore and Wharton. In her 30s (she divulges no more), and as vice-president at Equifin Capital, a New York-based private equity firm, Mandanna flits between the world of numbers and the world of fiction on a daily basis.

Tiger Hills is a love saga set in Coorg’s spectacular landscape of hills and coffee plantations and spans 50 years across the late 19th and early 20th century. In an interview with DNA, Mandanna speaks about writing, her childhood in Coorg and why she needs to come back to writing after a day spent number-crunching.

Why did you choose to pen a period saga for your debut novel?
I was born in Coorg and lived in the hills, in the beauty I describe in Tiger Hills. I don’t have a literary background, so when I sat down to write a novel, it made sense to write about something I know best and love above all — Coorg, and a fondness for history. I simply combined my love for the two. As I began writing, I realised I needed a large canvas where I could weave in details, do justice to the beauty of Coorg, and the pride of its people.
Why do English novels by Indian writers always have to have either tigers or mangoes or pickles or spices in the title?
The ‘tiger’ in my book’s title is there because tiger weddings were very much a part of the culture at that time. It is an important part of my tale.  

How did you start writing?
My life around numbers has been expectedly fast, logical and very often exhausting. There came a time, more than five years ago, when I would come home and television or reading didn’t interest me. In fact, nothing did. One day I just sat down with my laptop and started writing about anything that came to my mind. I quite enjoyed that and turned it into six or seven short stories. David Davidar (former Penguin honcho) saw my work and said I should write a novel. I was stumped, but decided to give it a shot.

Tell us about your life in Coorg and after. 
I was born in a family that travelled a lot because my father was an army colonel with the Gurkhas and posted in the President’s Secretariat. I spent a lot of time in Delhi at the Rashtrapati Bhavan complex. But he made sure we always spent the summers in Coorg. My mother is a doctor. Life after Coorg has mainly revolved around the finance sector, until writing happened. I am married, and don’t have kids. The Coorg I knew from my childhood is different, and mystical, compared to the place tourists frequent today. In my book I wanted to capture the transition that took place before the freedom struggle — coffee plantations thrived, western influence grew in the region, women chopped off their tresses for bob cuts, western forms of dance became popular…

Do you plan to continue with finance and writing, or would one take a backseat in the future?
I don’t see myself giving up either one for the other. I started writing because I wanted to create something. But it can be a very draining process to have to create an imaginary world at all times. I need my job to keep me rooted. Writing is something I want to come back to after a world where one plus one is always two.

What are you working on now?
It took me five years to write Tiger Hills. I slept only for 4-5 hours because I didn’t want to slow down with work in order to write. I have started researching for my next novel but I’m not really sure what will come out of it. I know that I cannot sit on it for five years; neither can I burn myself out like I did with Tiger Hills.