Author Sangeetha Shinde Tee has always had something of a love-hate relationship with Coonoor, the pretty little hill station town where she spent her formative years.
“Actually, while I was living there, it was mostly hate,” says the writer with a laugh. “It's the most gossipy place on earth, and I resented that intensely. But, writing this book has been very cathartic.”
The book in question is A Moral Murder and Other Tales from The Blue Hills , a series of short stories about life in Coonoor, which was recently launched at Landmark by writer and playwright Shreekumar Varma. Naturally, gossip and the Club (the hub of all said gossip) feature prominently in the tales.
“People there are so friendly and yet can be so vicious,” says the London-based author and former journalist who has written for Reader's Digest, Savvy and Femina . “No one does anything but go from lunch parties to tea to cocktails at the Club and then to bed, and gossip becomes a way of life.”
Sangeetha knows all about that firsthand, having been something of a rebel there in her teens. “If you go to the market even now and ask about Dr. Shinde's daughter, eyebrows will shoot up,” she laughs.
Yet, she says, you won't find a more colourful cast of characters anywhere else: “It's such a uniquely cosmopolitan place — every religion, every section of society is represented there — and there's such a confluence of elements.”
And then, you have the mysterious legends and ghost stories that abound, some of which have made their way into the book. “Coonoor is very atmospheric, often dark, with clouds moving overhead, and that gives rise to stories of ghosts and such,” she says. “My parents used to petrify us with stories when we were children!”
No wonder then, that in spite of her somewhat conflicted relationship with the town, Sangeetha has plans for a sequel somewhere down the line. “I have at least another 200 hundred stories in my head that I'd love to put down at some point,” she says.
But first, she's already started on a novel, based on the life of a slum woman she met while living in Chennai briefly a few years ago. “This is a woman who was sold three times in her lifetime and has survived unspeakable atrocities,” says Sangeetha. “Unfortunately, her story, quite common to those in her strata of society, is one that's not often told.”
Coonoor, meanwhile, will remain a constant in Sangeetha's life, since she and her husband David have built themselves a home there. “I'm going to be growing old there, it's inevitable,” she says ruefully. “The place just grows on you like a wart!”
