'A book for all dreamers'

By Hasan Suroor

LONDON, MARCH 20. So, is Kerala turning into an assembly line for women writers in English! Arundhati Roy, Jaisree Misra, Anita Nair - and now Preethi Nair whose first novel ``Gypsy Masala'', which incidentally has nothing to do either with gypsies or with ``masalas'', had a quiet launch at the London International Book Fair on Sunday.

Her publishers, oddly named ``NineFish'', are pushing Nair's Kerala connection rather hard and they have come up with a catchline that Kerala's tourism boys can put to some good use.

``What do they put in the backwaters of Kerala, South India, that inspires writers such as Arundhati Roy, Jaisree Misra, Meera Nair (the film-maker) and Preethi?'' asks a NineFish media release, putting in one stroke the debutante Preethi in the same league as Arundhati Roy.

Preethi Nair herself, though, is more modest, saying ``no, no I've nothing in common with Arundhati except of course, the urge to write''.

The fact is that ``Roy and Co.'' may not even like to sit on the same table with her. For unlike them, there is no hype about her, her publishers are not even widely known outside London, and literary agents - real or imaginary - have not been chasing her with those huge - real or imaginary - advances.

Thirty-year-old Nair has spent most of her adult life in London and wrote her novel commuting on the local tube. It took her two- and-a-half years to get it out of her system - scribbling it on ``scraps of paper'' whenever she found a place to sit.

There are no gypsies in the book and the gypsy in the title denotes ``movement and a sense of restlessness'' that, she says, led her to write the novel. This was her way of escaping the drudgery of her nine-to-six job in a business firm which she has now happily ``chucked''.

``In writing this book, I was also pursuing a dream. I always wanted to be a writer and I thought it was about time I did it. So, here I am. I am a writer,'' she declares, adding that her next big dream is to see the book on the bestsellers' list.

And she is making sure it gets talked about in the right circles. She is handing out gift-wrapped copies of the novel to the Press and by Sunday evening almost every literary critic was carrying one.

What is the novel about?

``It is a complicated story but simply put it is about three members of a family - two women and a man - who talk about their dreams and how those dreams shape their lives. You've got to read it to understand it,'' she explains. It is a ``happy book'' which she expects all dreamers to identify with.

Even as yet another writer from India is expecting to make a splash internationally - that she may not succeed is another matter - Indian publishers are very nearly invisible at the Fair which has brought together nearly 13,000 professionals - publishers, booksellers, distributors, copyrights experts, literary agents and critics - from around the world.

The Indian presence is so notional as to be almost immaterial to the international publishing fraternity, and no one is even asking: Where are the Indians?

Send this article to Friends by E-Mail

Section  : Features
Previous : Know your English
Next     : A victim who will not hate