The Hindu : Tamil Nadu / Chennai News : “Indian authors negotiate their ties with traditions”

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Friday, Dec 19, 2008
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Tamil Nadu - Chennai

“Indian authors negotiate their ties with traditions”

Special Correspondent

‘Meeting Lives,’ a novel by Tulsi Badrinath, released

CHENNAI: Indian authors, who choose to write in English, manage to negotiate their relationship with traditions, Rukmini Bhaya Nair, writer and critic, said on Thursday.

Their works tell not only about themselves but also the communities, she said. The writers re-imagined the communities.

Auto-ethnographical

Releasing ‘Meeting Lives,’ a novel written by Tulsi Badrinath, Ms. Nair commended Ms. Badrinath for the way she wrote about the relationship. Ms. Badrinath’s work looked like autobiographical only to a certain extent. It was auto-ethnographical too, as the novel dealt with the way of living of people and traditions, she said.

Referring to the writer’s Chennai background, the critic said the novel was from a person who had understood the city where, according to the author, myths and legends were part of everyone’s rhythm.

The writer restricted herself to the city, its culture and its way of life, Ms. Nair said, speaking at the function organised by the Madras Book Club and Niyogi Books, the publisher.

Pointing out that the book also dealt with a relationship between a mother and a child, she said that in this instance, the child tired down the mother with question after question. The novel also conveyed tales of different mothers, some deprived and some fulfilling.

Ms. Badrinath said her work was an effort at mapping between the horizontal and geographical space, which pertained to everyday life, and ‘akasha,’ the spiritual component. She read out some passages from her novel.

Bikash D. Niyogi of the publishing house and K.S. Padmanabhan of the Madras Book Club took part in the function.

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