Crime of passion

Multifaceted isn’t a word you can throw around lightly when it comes to fiction writers. Whether it’s Stephen King with horror, Danielle Steel with romance or Louis L’Amour with Westerns, most spend years delving deep into their particular genres, rarely straying out of their comfort zone. But not Anita Nair, whose novels have traversed across genres such as historical, literary, romance and crime, finding success in all of them. The Bengaluru-based author has also dabbled with just about all formats: from poetry to short fiction, novels, essays and even children’s fiction, you could say Anita’s done it all. And with her newest book Chain Of Custody — the second in her Inspector Gowda series — Anita’s extending her foray in crime fiction.

But what started this literary-universe-spanning trait? Growing up in a Chennai suburb called Avadi among a closed community — a “microcosm”, Anita describes it — of people from across the country made her crave for permanence and  belonging, something she found in reading books… especially books that her elder brother read. “Whatever he read, I read… it didn’t matter whether it was the right age for me to be reading it. And my parents too were quite cool with what we read, as long as it wasn’t pornography!” Anita says, adding that she’d buy second-hand books from Chennai’s famed Moore Market, reading anything she could lay her hands on: “As long as it was a book, I would read it.”

But when Anita first picked up writing at the age of seven, a rebuke from her parents banished her writing to the closet, only surfacing at school. “We had these competition classes where you could write whatever you wanted to. At that point, that was the only thing the world saw of my writing. The teachers would be very excited with what I wrote and they would take it to other classes and read it out,” she says.

Chain of Custody by Anita Nair Rs 350, pp 320 Harper Collins

Her inspirations, too, were varied. One of them was English photojournalist Harry Miller, whose weekly column ‘Madras Diary’ was something Anita would watch out for every week, as a child. But even this was minimal, since she would read and be inspired to write by just about anything — something that’s evident in her repertoire. Anita explains, “Like anybody, I have different facets to my personality and I think that’s what comes out through the different forms of writing. I write poetry, for instance, because there’s a very sharp and sudden emotional upheaval, caused by something that I’ve witnessed or personally experienced. With fiction it’s more of a carefully considered piece of writing where I think about many things; I work on it very carefully before I write it. All of it is an extension of what I feel.”

While her first published book was a collection of short stories titled Satyr of the Subway, she’s most famous for her novels Ladies Coupé and The Better Man. However, her 2012 novel Cut Like Wound marked her entry into the crime-writing genre. Exploring different genres, Anita says, is something she does not just to quell her thirst to learn about the various things that interest her, but also to keep herself interested in her own writing.

She explains, “When I was working on Mistress, which is set in the work of Kathakali, it was a dance form that I was interested in and wanted to know more about. It became a way for me to understand what it was all about. When I decided to write my historical novel — I’m very interested in medieval history and I wanted to understand that period of time. When it came to crime, I realised that it enabled me to make social commentary, which I can’t do through my literary or historical fiction. Crime became my way of addressing the many things around us that need to be written about, but nobody seems to want to write about. It allowed me to be gritty the way I want to be, without having to worry about compromising in any sense at all.” Anita adds that music is a huge part of her life, and says that she still studies Carnatic music as a vocalist. Listing Anne Proulx, Ian Rankin and John le Carré as her favourite international authors, she also likes reading Indian writers such as Anil Ananthaswamy, Kunal Basu and Perumal Murugan — only a few from a huge list, she stresses.

And while Indian writing, especially fiction, has long been criticised for not being as originally riveting as its Western counterpart, Anita believes that her writing has always been different from the Indian mainstream. “I’m somebody who sits here in India, but my work is published in different countries and in different languages (Indian, too). The first book I’ve published is still in print and is still being read quite extensively. And I don’t think, if my work was ‘cheesy’ it would ever have this kind of endurance value. I think I have created my own little niche where I belong. That is a niche that unfortunately neither the literary establishment, nor the reader has been able to classify and say ‘she is a writer of this’ or ‘she is a writer of that’.”

With a children’s novel on its way for an October release, Anita has a busy year ahead. But she says she’s taking a couple of years off… only to work on researching for her next novel: “I am working on a book for children which will be out sometime in October, and then I’m taking a break for a bit. I will start researching on my next book, but I really don’t know — one says these things but then suddenly something could strike me and I might just furiously start writing again!”