There was a time when you could count on your fingers the number of significant Indian authors who wrote in English. R.K. Narayan, Raja Rao and Mulk Raj Anand to begin with, and then the likes of Amitava Ghosh, Vikram Seth and Arundhati Roy.
These days you find a new Indian author coming out with a book almost every other day. Anita Nair, one of the more widely read Indian writers in English and who is at home in different genres, is not so sure about the quality of all those books.
“Still there are writers I respect, like Kiran Nagarkar, whose Cuckold bowled me over; and it certainly is nice to see English writing in India getting so much acceptance,” Ms. Nair told The Hindu here on Saturday. “When I began to write, some two decades ago, it wasn’t as easy to get published. There were very few publishing houses and the readership for Indian writing in English wasn’t so wide.”
Ms. Nair, who spoke at two sessions on the third day of the Kerala Literature Festival, has to her credit novels such as Ladies Coupe , Mistress , The Better Man , Cut Like Wound and Idris . Her short stories and poetry too have charmed readers.
“Poetry is something that comes directly to my mind, while I have to work harder on fiction,” she said. “I research extensively for novels; I have to be certain about whatever I write.”
The research for Mistress took her to Unnayi Variyar’s Nalacharitham Aattakatha , one of the all-time classics in Malayalam. She wants to translate it into English. “I feel I am destined to translate Nalacharitham ,” she said.
Ms. Nair, who hails from Shoranur, has already translated a classic Malayalam novel, Thakazhi Sivasankara Pillai’s Chemmeen . “I am self-taught in Malayalam,” she said. “I have enjoyed reading writers such as M.T. Vasudevan Nair, M. Mukundan and Vaikom Muhammad Basheer. I am also an admirer of V.K.N., who is untranslatable and who perhaps has no equal in any Indian language.”
New book
Her next book is due to be published soon. “It is titled Eating Wasps and it is a literary novel,” she said. “It shares its setting, and a few characters, with Mistress. ”
