Anita Nair is the author of the new novel Hot Stage, the latest in her Inspector Gowda series. Her books have been translated into more than 30 languages. She is based in India.
Q: Hot Stage is the third in your Inspector Gowda series—how would you describe your character at this point?
A: In Hot Stage, Inspector Gowda has been promoted and is now Assistant Commissioner of Police. Gowda realizes that nothing has changed except his designation. This makes him even more hungry to take on cases even if it means having to work with other crime investigation agencies like the Central Crime Bureau.
His passion for what he does is even keener, making him take risks that could end his career and ruin his relationships as well. This is the Gowda we meet in the first pages of Hot Stage.
Q: What inspired the plot of Hot Stage?
A: When I started work on Hot Stage, I wanted to explore the world of right-wing terrorism. Around that time, I met a youngish man who worked with special children. During several conversations, he revealed that he had trained as a kick boxer and that he had been involved in illegal fights once.
Until then, I had never heard anything about illegal fights in Bangalore or anywhere in India and had thought that it was restricted to cinema. That illegal fights happen in Bangalore and every other metro in India. That these are big stake bets and a whole system has evolved around it set me thinking.
Q: Do you usually know how your novels will end before you start writing them, or do you make many changes along the way?
A: Not to the exact detail but I have a broad sense of the story before I actually capture it. But when the actual writing begins, I discover each time, how everything is dynamic and there are instances where the end I had planned on no longer works. And hence I have to let the organic nature of storytelling lead me in another direction.
Q: The novel is set in Bangalore--how important is setting to you in your writing?
A: The setting and the storyline almost always occur to me at the same time.
For instance, the Borei Gowda series is intrinsically related to Bengaluru as it is called now. But Gowda, the character is synonymous with Bangalore. The city as it once was. Borei Gowda is a Bangalore boy of the ‘70s and ‘80s.
His persona is drawn from his childhood and early adulthood. Which is why his understanding of crime and criminals is caught in a rather precarious place because nothing is what it seems anymore. The Bangalore of his youth has changed into something he barely recognises. The demands made on him by the city and its people are very different from what he was used to.
Gentle laid-back Bangalore is now this monster city that never sleeps. So to survive Borei Gowda has to evolve with the city and up his game.
And the city and its secrets add to the narrative in a way that wouldn’t be the same if the Gowda series was set in another city. For Bengaluru determines both the plot and pace.
While the nature of the crime might not differ from place to place, what drives the crime and criminal is very rooted in where the crime takes place. The scene of crime is not just an investigator’s starting point, it is also the writer’s.
Q: What are you working on now?
A: A children’s book about an 8-year-old boy.
And a collection of state of the nation
stories spanning the last decade in India.
Q: Anything else we should know?
A: The fourth novel in the Gowda series is already brewing in my head….
--Interview with Deborah Kalb
No comments:
Post a Comment