In Black And White
Publication blues, sometimes gender issues and sometimes innate censorship — Nisha da Cunha says Indian women are a hindrance to themselves as they have a natural censor in them — and yet the creative flow continues unabated. So what makes them write?

Anita Nair says that she always wanted to write, “I wrote fiction even as a child. Fiction is a great playing field for the imagination. It allows me to slip into the skin of so many characters. It lets me create imaginary lands and beings. It let me play God and control destinies. All of which calls for restraint and passion at the same time and it is this that drew me to fiction and continues to make it my first love,” says Anita Nair.

Sagarika Ghose decided to try writing fiction because someone asked her to try her hand at a book and she discovered that she really enjoyed it. Margaret Mascarenhas began writing fiction as past time about 10 years ago and never considered it seriously as a career option but, “I had such a good time researching and writing ‘Skin’ that I mightreconsider my options if the book does well.”

For Jaishree Misra, “Writing is the best job in the world.” She, however, confesses that she took to it “by accident or because of joblessness, both of which are true in their own way.” After teaching for 25 years at St Xavier’s College, Mumbai, Nisha da Cunha was at a loss when she lost her job: “I didn’t have anything to do. That’s when my husband and a friend suggested that I take up writing, and I did.”

With commendable results indeed!

Indian Diaspora and Women Writers
Across the world, women writers from the Indian Diaspora have carved their distinct niche. Bharati Mukherjee, Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni, Anjana Appachana, Kiran Desai, Indira Ganesan, Bharti Kirchner, Sujata Massey, Shauna Singh Baldwin and of course, the Pulitzer winner, Jhumpa Lahiri.

In the last half decade, writers of Indian origin have been appearing with clockwork regularity on the literary horizon. And leaving impressive marks too! Interestingly women writers from the Indian Diaspora far outnumber the male writers. Does that mean that women writers are doing better than their male counterparts? That may be up to the publishers and booksellers to answer, but there is no disputing that in numbers and output, women writers have taken the lead.

More...