Disappearing August

I realised today that it's the last day of August and I hadn't posted anything all this month, partly because there has been too much design work for our publishing house, Permanent Black. Also, unusually for me, I actually did one reading this month and am getting ready for another next month. The first was at SAP, in Delhi. SAP is a giant international software company and believe it or not, one of the perks it offers its employees is a book club. I've never heard of something like this. Perks to employees are usually fancy luggage and smartphones at the end of each year or anything else that can be clearly and easily quantified. But books?

Anyway, they have this book club, to which they bring authors to speak, read, meet. I was quite intimidated at the thought of a roomful of bright young computer engineers, but they turned out to be sympathetic and attentive, plus sure of what they demanded of a book (a gripping story, characters they could empathise with, a sense that the book would shut out the world) and full of curiosity about writing and publishing.

The next event will be an interesting one because I am doing it with the translator Arunava Sinha. Arunava has translated (last counted) 14 Bengali books into English, among which is Chowringhee, which was shortlisted for UK's Independent Foreign Fiction Award, a hugely prestigious prize. Arunava and I will talk about our work with each other and with the audience and there will be a brief reading from An Atlas of Impossible Longing in French and then in English. It'll be informal and anecdotal. This event is organised by the French Embassy and the Alliance Francaise and the details are in this card. It is open to all.

Begum Anees Khan

Once a week around midday, Maulvi Sah’b would come in through the gates of our school in Hyderabad and class would divide briskly into two and troop off to different parts of the building. Those who were Muslim would be at religious instruction classes with him for the next half hour while the others trudged through moral science lessons. Something similar happened during language classes. We would hear a singsong chorus of “A-salaam-aleikum, Aunty”, from the Urdu classroom as we sat at our Sanskrit or Telugu lessons. Through my nomadic childhood, I’ve been at many schools. None exemplified the idea of secular India as intensely as this Muslim school in Hyderabad. Begum Anees Khan, who made it so, died in Hyderabad on August 16. Her passing feels symbolic, as if it signifies the death of a quixotic idea. Anees Khan was not given to seeking the limelight or making speeches. She never spelled out her secularism. It was instinctive: instead of words, there was act...

A Tagore in Nainital

Sudakshina, from Chitra Deb's 'Thakurbarir Andarmahal' Earlier this month, I went to Abbotsford , a historic estate in Nainital, for the Himalayan Echoes literary festival, run by Janhavi Prasada. The festival took place on the extensive lawns of the estate, which is now run as an elegant hotel, but originally it was a family home and the place had been acquired from its British owners by Janhavi’s great grandfather Jwala Prasada and his wife, Purnima Devi, in the late 19 th century. Janhavi’s new book, Nainital Through Stories, Memories, History mentions this in its first few pages: From Nainital Through Stories I was intrigued to learn that Purnima Devi was a niece of Rabindranath Tagore. She was born (according to Wikipedia) on 13 May 1884, at No. 6, Dwarkanath Tagore's Lane, Jorasanko, Calcutta, to Hemendranath Tagore (1844–1884) of Jorasanko. Hemendranath was the older brother of Rabindranath Tagore, and son of Debendranath Tagore, founder o...

Painting a Residency

I spent most of May and a part of June at the De Pure Fiction residency in a tiny, isolated hamlet in the Occitanie in France. To write about the place and what it did to my work and to me will take time -- to reflect, to let things settle. Meanwhile, Isabelle Desesquelles, the French novelist who runs the residency, asked me a set of questions before I left, and has posted it on the blog with watercolours I painted while I was there. La Lettre #36 _______________ Anuradha Roy a publié cinq romans. Elle a résidé à la maison De Pure Fiction en ce printemps pour son prochain livre et depuis, les chevreuils, les oiseaux - rouge-gorge familier, huppe fasciée, pivert, coucou - les lézards verts, les libellules bleues, les papillons semblent s’être mis eux aussi à la lecture, la cherchant sous les pétales d’un coquelicot ou au travers du feuillage des oliviers. Peut-être même, tous, envisagent-ils de faire le voyage jusqu’en Inde et l'Himalaya où Anuradha Roy vit, ...

anuradha roy

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