The Story Teller

ANURADHA ROY, the only Indian to be nominated for the Man Booker 2015, may be “shy” and “awkward”, but the STROKES OF HER PEN are sure and sharp.

- Anjuly Mathai

The best novels are those that hide well the stitches that hold them in place, when the blood and toil that went into them are tucked deep into the folds of the story, invisible even to the discerning reader. Anuradha Roy, 49, is the omniscient narrator of her books who lies camouflaged in the narrative. Somebody once told me that while creating a character, the novelist needs to ask one crucial question: what makes her tick? Here, we turn the spotlight on the novelist. What makes Roy tick?

Writing, she says, might be in her genes. “There were two writers in my family, both renowned and both women: Jyotirmoyee Devi on my mother’s side and Maitreyi Devi on my father’s,” she says. “Maybe this made it feel normal in my family for there to be a child who wrote—my mother gave me a blank notebook when I was very little, and this filled up with stories. My father gave me his typewriter and taught me how to use it when I was about thirteen so that I could type out whatever I was writing.”

That typewriter must have come in handy years later when she wrote her first novel— An Atlas of Impossible Longing. “When I was writing my first book, we were in the early years of Permanent Black [the independent press she runs with her husband],” she says. “With a first book, you don’t know for a long time whether it is for real, so it is hard to give it priority when there is other work to GE be done. I used to set an alarm and wake up every day at 4am to write the book. Since I am not a morning person, this was punishment. I was very glad when the writing was over. I always am.”