An interview with city-based author Anuja Chauhan
Anuja Chauhan
Don’t let her petite frame undermine the power she can create with her sharp, witty and romantic narratives. Anuja Chauhan, the author of The Zoya Factor and Battle for Bittora, whose bestsellers are being adapted into Bollywood films, gives an insight into her latest book The House That BJ Built.
The mother, advertising professional and author who shuttles between Bengaluru and Delhi confesses she prefers her home in Bengaluru, “It’s the weather! I moved here for the weather — my garden is doing gloriously, everything’s abloom, and there are three birds’ nests in my verandah! Also, I love the local filter coffee – it’s just so good and only one tenth the price of a small cappuccino at Starbucks.”
She writes about what she sees around her. Battle for Bittora was because she was campaigning with her mother-in-law Margaret Alva and the idea for The House That BJ Built came when she saw something similar around property in her family. “My new book is about families — BJ himself, which is short for bauji and his brood of daughters. There are sisters and aunts and nieces and hot cousins and family skeletons and grudges and dark schemes of revenge.
It’s about everybody fighting for a slice of Hailey Road Cake — that is, an ancestral family home on Delhi’s posh Hailey Road that is about to be sold. It’s also about Bonu Singh, a girl with an agenda, and Samar Vir Singh, a man with a mission. This book takes forward the story of Those Pricey Thakur Girls, but after a 20 year hiatus; how (and if!) they’ve matured, and what happens to the next generation of Thakurs. In it, they figure out that the House that BJ built, is not the brick and mortar house they’re all squabbling over, but the family that grew up in the house,” she explains passionately about the crux of her book.
Admitting to how she likes to give her characters an edgy and quirky touch, she adds, “This book is about Bonu Singh, a girl with all kinds of chips on her shoulders, and a load of baggage. I do tend to write opinionated characters with lot of quirks, because those are the sort of people I find interesting. I like to take bits and pieces from here and there, from my life experiences and leave it to imagination. The cover of the book was shot in Bengaluru.”
A seamless blend of Hindi words make her sentences sound real and authentic for an Indian setting. No wonder then that her books have been picked up to be made into movies. Ask her about when the movies would be out and she rues, “I’m also waiting for the films to be out. The movie for my book Battle for Bittora hopefully should be out soon. Pooja Shetty bought the rights for The Zoya Factor from Shah Rukh Khan’s Red Chillies Productions. The talks have been on, but I think they’re still looking for the right actors to play the role.”
So how did she make her move to writing fiction, we ask and she reveals, “I work in advertising. I decided to try writing a novel when my company (J. Walter Thompson, Delhi) gave me a MacBook Pro to work on. My next book will be about the air force.” Signing off by telling us about her other hobbies, she says, “I’m into gardening and home decor, and I do a lot of stuff with carpenters, welders and painters.”
( Source : deccan chronicle )
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