Travel writer Indu Balachandran, who had an illustrious career in advertising, has won acclaim for her book, Runaway Writers . There was a recent reading and conversations on the book at Catholic Club’s iBrowse Book Club. In an email interview, the author, also a travel writer, discusses her book and how she went about crafting her delightful characters -- Amby, Bobby and Mini.
Excerpts:
How did the idea germinate for Runaway Writers ?
The trigger came from a phone call by a publisher who’d read my first book ( The Oops & Downs of Advertising ). ‘How about a funny-romantic story of a Tam-Brahm girl pitched unexpectedly into a world of glitz and glamour?’ he asked. Yes! By day’s end, I had an advertising slogan for it— ‘Find the life you love. And the love of your life’. I began thinking of a girl who quits her job to chase a dream… Now, it’s a bit difficult to be romantic in the heat of Chennai — so I sent off my protagonist, Ambujakshi (Amby) to a fab Writer’s Workshop in magical Greece. A life-changing experience I’d gone through myself…
How does humour writing come so easily to you?
I blame my father for the unhealthy diet of Mad Magazines and Ogden Nash poetry that my sisters and I were fed with as kids! We began early, writing nonsense poems of our own, and maybe humour became a default setting in my writing. Then I joined advertising. Now it’s hard to survive unless you have the ability to laugh at yourself, so I kept my sanity (30 years in JWT!) by writing about the funny side of advertising for magazines, and ultimately a book.
How did you craft the characters of the three girls?
There’s my favourite quote: ‘I write because I want more than one life. It’s greed, pure and simple’. I put in bits of all I wanted to be, into the three girls, who all run away to become writers, their one big passion and form a delightful sisterhood in Greece. Amby has my ‘voice’ the most, so does Bobby, who reflects my fabulous years as a travel writer, reviewing eco-friendly destinations all over India.
What was the most difficult and enjoyable part of writing the book?
The difficult part was figuring out what my editor meant by ‘put in lots of romance!’ I’m simply hopeless at the 50-shades stuff. So I stuck to light-hearted love — with words. I enjoyed writing the leg-pulls, romantic banter and repartee between the serious Amby and the easy-going KayKay, (the devastating hot-bod film star that Amby is a ghost-tweet-writer for). The enjoyable part was indulging in my travel writing passion — magical Greece.
Has your career in advertising influenced your writing, or have you tried breaking free of that mould?
There’s no better training ground for writing than advertising. It teaches us to be story-tellers. Be under the skin of a new person every day. To make every word count, to accept feedback, re-write, edit, and re-write endlessly; never to bore people. It teaches us the tricks of hooking people with an intriguing start, reward them for their attention, and surprise them with a twist in the end! Advertising led me to fabulous interactions with Bollywood during Pepsi shoots — so Amby’s secret love for her film-star boss is pretty much my own ever-lasting crush for SRK and Maddy combined!
What are some of the challenges in writing a novel?
The greatest challenge is what to reveal when. Another is knowing how to ‘kill your darlings’ -- not literally killing off people, but listening to feedback from your editor or best friend and ruthlessly cutting out what you personally thought was a fabulous description, or a very witty joke!
What were the responses to the reading at the event?
Frankly, am overwhelmed at the response. I’m pleased it’s become a bit of ‘lad-lit’ too, so many flattering responses came from guy friends. At the Catholic Club event in Bengaluru, I read from Amby’s typical Tam Brahm upbringing in Madras — the whoosh of our pressure-cookers at 6 a.m., our obsession over Godrej steel ‘biros’; liberally applying Ponds talcum powder on our faces… it drew the most laughs and nodding heads; many ‘southies’ could identify with these situations!
An amazing thing just happened: my book has been bought over by a U.K. Publisher, Jacaranda, and is being reprinted in London soon — with possible European translations. Perhaps my best ‘reader response’ of all!
