Keep The Change by Nirupama Subramanian. Some fawning and an Interview

I keep lamenting to anybody who bothers to listen that Indian chicklit is murdered at the hands of hollow-headed twenty-somethings who seem to have absolutely no understanding of the genre, let alone sensibilities that could translate well into a work of literature. It was a pleasant surprise then to find Keep The Change by Nirupama Subramanian-- a light, funny, incredibly well-written book about the life of Damayanti B, who lives in 32 Amman Kovil Street, Chennai, enduring the aggressive attempts of her parents to get her married off. A few pages in, Damayanti finds herself in 124 Pine Crest ('...there is no sign of any pine or any crest in the neighborhood') in Mumbai after landing a cushy job at a bank where she battles the conundrum that is having a career and finding true love while heeding her amma's  advice of 'not doing anything silly.'

I'd seen Keep The Change at bookstores dozens of times and never really picked it up. A note to jacket designers here, please do your authors a favor and make covers that won't make people run away to the outstretched arms of the Literary Fiction section without even reading blurbs. Don't go all Don't judge a book by its cover on me. I will have to point you to Pradeep Sebastian's The Groaning Shelf-- an anthology that validates everybody's secret urge to perceive books as objects of physical beauty meant to be caressed and coveted, to defend myself. Also, if the good people at Harper Collins are listening, WHAT IS IT WITH YOUR HARPER PERENNIAL LINE? Ahmed bhai on the Fourth Block pavement seems to be selling better quality paperbacks. <Splutter. Fume>

It was one of those evenings when Puja and I were sitting in office and berating the likes of Advaita Kala (Puja says she's pretentious), Ira Trivedi (The lady I am running a hate campaign against, ever since she had that grand book launch with Junot Diaz) and Meenakshi Reddy Madhavan(who, for someone who seems to have some sense of literature wrote a disappointingly sad book) when Puja said that Keep The Change was a pleasant vacation from the absolute trash being churned out in the Indian chicklit market.

The plot is fairly straight forward. The humor is simply fabulous. Written entirely as a series of letters to a girlfriend, Keep The Change features, also, a Little Voice in Damayanti's head offering silent rejoinders and caustic rebuttals. The cast of characters includes a social butterfly Sonya Sood ("Madras minimalism has given way to Punjabi baroque"), colleague and warm friend Jimmy, the gorgeous Rahul and an intimidating CG, besides Amma and Appa and the handful of eligible suitors.

The boy was a specimen who deserved to spend the rest of his life in a jar of formaldehyde on a laboratory shelf. They were really scraping the bottom of the barrel since this one was only a lowly finance manager at a Coimbatore company called Gajalakshmi Spinning Mills.


He looked like a fat beetle, ogling my chest from under thick, black glasses. He quickly shifted his eyes when I stared back at him. He was almost two inches shorter than me and had slicked down his hair with perfumed coconut oil. Yuck! He had a little pink plastic comb in the back pocket of his blue polyester trousers. Double yuck! In this unfair world, a boy looking like a constipated blob of ectoplasm can aspire to get a fair, beautiful, well-educated girl who can do the Bharatnatyam while singing Meera bhajans and make ten kinds of rasam, but if a girl, however accomplished or intelligent, has even a tinge of brown in her complexion or slightly crooked teeth, she is immediately rejected. I hated the way he appraised me quickly while pretending to stare at the calendar on the wall behind me. 


'I want my wife to be adjusting well with my parents,' the boy declared when we were sent to a corner 'to get to know each other'. He had this irritating habit of popping out his tongue and licking his lips after every sentence.


Little Voice: 'Adjust? Like I adjust my sari pleats with three sharp safety pins?'
'Oh! I said, a sort of questioning, sarcastic 'oh' which he seemed to take as assent to his statement.
'I hope you are not planning to be employed after marriage?' he continued.
LV:'If I do give up my dead-end boring job, it is not going to be for another dead-end boring job as your chief housekeeper.'
I said, 'Yes. I am.'
'Then how will you manage the children?'
LV:'Duh!'
'What children?' I asked. Was I going to become stepmother to his illegitimate brats?
'Oh, we must have one child within a year of marriage.' His tongue flickered out for a second like that of a lecherous toad about to gobble up a fly.
'At least, two totally. My amma says we should not be putting off for too long. Amma says that she would like one boy and one girl. We must start trying right away, no planning. She is really waiting for grandchildren.'
LV:'And you are really waiting for unlimited free sex.'
Me: 'Ah-ha?'
'So I think, with two children, my parents and the house to look after, you will be quite busy at home itself,' he continued, blithely ignoring by disgusted expression.
LV:'I would rather be kissed by a Dementor that come within a mile of your body!'
'My horoscope is not very positive about children, so I don't think there is any use even trying,' I said to him feigning an air of deep despondence.
Boy returns to bosom of his dear amma. Girl sulks in corner.

 As is evident, Nirupama Subramanian, unlike the aforementioned writers of books on young, single, Indian women knows full well that one of the central ingredients to a good piece of chicklit is wit and humor. Puja can't get over the insult 'You Idly face' (we plan to use it very strategically in office some day) and I have large amounts of admiration for someone who can manage to slip in Milan Kundera quotes between hilarious narrations of office goof-ups.

Nirupama Subramanian is a graduate of XLRI and works as a corporate trainer. She lives in Gurgaon with her husband and daughter. I went ahead and mailed Nirupama and pestered her to answer some questions which she so graciously did:


How long have you been writing? When did you start writing Keep The Change?

    I have been writing articles,poems and short stories for a long time.I used to publish sporadically in newspapers and magazines. I started writing Keep The Change in July 2008 and finished the first draft by November 2008.

 How did you make the transition from writing short pieces of fiction to a full fledged novel?

    I think I always wanted to write a novel and had some idea of the subject. A novel requires more discipline and dedication. But it wasn't very difficult to transition since I knew what I wanted to write. It just takes an idea and the will to commit time to it.

What was the process of writing Keep The Change like?

  Writing Keep The Change was enjoyable. For me, it is important to have fun while doing what I do. Keep The Change flowed quite easily. I loved doing the Little Voice pieces and even laughed while I read my own stuff. I wrote the first 12 chapters at a stretch and then had a bit of a break while I wondered if it was any good. I didn't show it to anyone till then. Then I structured the story, wrote  chapter outlines and completed it. I write whenever I get time. During the days I am not at work ,after my daughter goes to school, sometimes at night when I manage to stay awake. I also work as a freelance consultant- that is my day job so on some days there is no time to write.

There wasn't too much editing work . My editors gave some useful suggestions that I incorporated but the story line was pretty much the same.I did very little rewrite work and most of my first draft has been retained in the book.

How difficult was it to get your first book published?

 

   I was quite lucky. I had the right kind of book at the right time. I had offers from Penguin and Harper Collins, the only publishers I approached. They both reverted pretty quickly, within two months, I think and were interested in the book. So it wasn't too difficult. I think publishers are quite open to all kinds of books these days. 

What do you think of similar writers in the genre in India? Have there been books you really liked? Even better, books you didn't like?

   There is a lot of interesting new writing in India across genres. I enjoyed Swati Kaushal's 'Piece of cake' and Anuja Chauhan's use of contemporary Indian life and mores in The Zoya Factor and Battle for Bittora. I do read  Indian fiction, Literary and other categories. I liked Serious Men and Saraswati Park. Now that I am a writer, I am more sympathetic to the efforts of other writers. Yes, there are probably some books that shouldn't be out there but haven't read anything terrible of late.

Do you feel that Chicklit is sometimes dismissed as 'light reading' when in fact good writing is essential for great chicklit

I think Chicklit is light reading in the sense that you don't have to strain to enjoy the book or understand it I don't like the term too much, especially the chick part but that is the label that seems to apply to this genre. I think any book,despite the genre should be well written. A good story, well told makes for good reading. You can't  compare Chicklit, though with angst ridden  feminist literature though both might talk about women in search of their own identities. The style and treatment are different and both can be effective. I personally don't look down on any genre except ' badly written pretentious books' which should have been mercy killed by the publishers before letting them  out to the world.

 Was there a bit of you in Damayanti? What were the inspirations behind the character?

 I think there is a bit of Damayanti in me and every other girl. I wanted my character to be more like the girls I see around me, not a party hopping page 3 type who could be in any part of the world. I see the struggle between the being 'traditional' and 'modern' that many girls go through and many have come to an arrangement that blends both in a way that makes sense for them.

Really! What does CG stand for?

No idea! Didn't think of a full name. I thought he could be a little mysterious.

  What feedback have you gotten from your readers/critics?

 

    Mostly very good feedback. Some critics did feel that the story was fairly usual, similar to a typical  coming of age novel and nothing very novel about it. I believe that  one of the merits of the story is that most people can resonate with it. I value the feedback from many readers who said they could really relate to the story of Damayanti and have found themselves in similar situations. The readers are not just young girls, but older men and women as well. The book has done really well and has stayed on the best seller list for a year. So I am very pleased with the way it has shaped up.

 What are you working on now?

    My next book. Not a chicklit novel but a contemporary urban story  set in Gurgaon where I live now. 

Have you at any point felt that you had to work on your writing? What did you do then? Have you ever experienced such a thing as writer's block? How did you deal with it?

   I do want to write more, write better. Sometimes, especially with what I am writing now, I do feel the need to stop and recalibrate. I give it a rest for a while until a new compelling idea comes to me about how to move the story forward. I keep reading other books. My inspiration is what I see around me, life as it unfolds. Usually something comes along which helps me overcome the blocks.

Who are your favorite writers? What books did you read, growing up?What are you reading right now?

I followed the typical reading trajectory of anyone growing up in the 70s and 80's. Enid Blytons , Nancy Drew, Hardy Boys, P.G Wodehouse,Agatha Christie, then moving on to the Ludlums, Irving Wallace and Arthur Haileys. Later, it was mostly classical fiction- Hemingway, Maugham,Graham Greene and then Rushdie,Vikram Seth et al. I enjoy the writing of Marquez, John Updike, Alice Munro,Ian McEwan. Though I mostly read fiction, my latest read  is a non fiction one called ' The Difficulty of Being Good' by Gurcharan Das, based on the Mahabharata, which I found very interesting. I also finished Orhan Pamuk's Museum of Innocence before that.

Keep The Change is published by Harper Collins in India.