Over a century or so ago, the city of Bengaluru managed to finally curb the plague that had broken out in the city in 1898, ravaging it for over a decade. One of the measures taken by the government back then, among several others, was this: paying locals a small sum of money for every rat they caught and killed. This fact makes its way into Harini Nagendra’s latest crime thriller, Murder Under a Red Moon.
As part of the thriller’s launch, held in the city recently, Harini reads a scene from the book that suggests as much. In the reading, we discover that sari-clad, feisty amateur sleuth, Kaveri, first introduced to us in Harini’s first novel The Bangalore Detective Club, comes away rather horrified at the sight of many small, hungry urchins killing rats.
This was inspired by something she read, agrees Harini, who was in a conversation with Usha Rao at the event. “There was a plague, and people were given money for the extermination of rats,” says Harini, after reading from her latest novel, which she considers a “cozy domestic mystery”.
Explaining what the genre entails, she says that although it involves the terrible crime of murder, it leaves behind a gentle feeling. “I write what I like to read. I think most writers do that,” she says, adding that she also likes that justice is always meted out in a cozy mystery at the end.
“Kaveri sleuths to set things right, to bring order to the world, to get justice for those who don’t have access to justice,” she says. “Those are the themes that, in some sense, are part of my research, so they were things I wanted to explore,” admits Harini, who leads the Centre for Climate Change and Sustainability at Azim Premji University.
In a freewheeling conversation, which veered into several topics, including whether the series was period or historical fiction (period, if you must know), whether there are more Kaveri-starring books were on their way (yes, they are) and how the city of Bengaluru is a character in these novels, Usha and Harini dissected this novel, the entire discussion serenaded by the gentle patter of rain.
While Harini admits that she has taken some creative leeway with history to suit the pacing of the narrative, she has also thrown in a lot of facts gleaned from research and reading. “I tried to stay true to the spirit of those times,” says Harini of her novel set in Bengaluru in the early 1920s.
A round of audience questions, which revealed some rather interesting titbits, followed the discussion. These included conversations about the zoo in Lalbagh that housed wild animals, including an orangutan, how women once swam and played tennis at the Madras Club wearing saris and why musk melon rasayana appears in the book. And, yes not surprisingly, nostalgia around Bengaluru appears and reappears throughout the evening. The Bengaluru of the 1920s was a cosmopolitan city with a strong sense of community and vibrant ecology, believes Harini . “It is similar to the Bangalore I saw 40 years ago,” she says. “I try to bring back that time.”
