To (Re)Write Some Wrongs - by Harini Nagendra

When did you know you wanted to be a writer? Who hurt you?

For as long as I can remember, I loved books. My sister, 11 years older than me, was often in charge of child care - she told me made-up stories, and taught me how to read early - she could give me a book and I would sit quietly for hours, instead of pestering her with questions :-)

We also played a game, one that I loved very much - which I also follow now with my daughter. We think of three things - like a princess, a tree, and a tomato (the more bizarre the list, and the less obviously connected the items are, the more fun this is) - and off we go! One person begins the story with a few lines, hands it over to the other to continue, and then it goes back again, to the first in line. 

(here's one we did some months back - The Princess and the Giant Tomato) 

Since I loved to read, I thought I'd also try my hand at writing! My father was my first, very patient reader - he traveled a lot on work, and I would write small 'books' for him on sheets of school notepaper, stitch them together with thread (this was in the dinosaur age, before staples were a common household accessory) and he would lavish praise on me (very patient, as I said). I kept writing, mostly for myself, occasionally also writing stories for newspapers and magazines. When I started to write popular science pieces for wider audiences, that's when the writing bug truly bit me - in my mid 20s, about a quarter of a century back. 

But writing mysteries took longer - much longer. I first got the idea for the book that would later become The Bangalore Detectives Club in 2007 - but it took me several years to get from the idea to the finish line. Now, in 2024 - with four non-fiction books, and three fiction books, I finally feel somewhat like a writer, but I can't say in any way that I ever imagined writing as a career option - it's just something I always liked to do, just like reading. What a joyous privilege, to spend hours storytelling, and get paid to do it!  

Who hurt me, though? No one... but I do write a lot about issues of environmental degradation (in my non-fiction) and women's rights (in my fiction). Though not personal, they bother me, as they bother most right-thinking people. My 1920s Bangalore mysteries respond to both of these. By re-creating the past, when Bangalore was a city of verdant meadows, emerald lakes, tree-lined avenues and wooded parks, where kites swooped overhead and turtles and fish lined the waterways, where people left the first handful of cooked rice out for the crows, and kept sugar and milk at the base of anthills for the ants to feast on, I can retreat to a better environmental past, and - hopefully - get people to re-imagine a world where people and nature can co-exist. And by talking about the challenges that my heroine Kaveri and her women friends confront daily, to study, work and function as equals within society - I hope to shine light on the many obstacles placed on women during those times, challenges that women in my own family faced - like both my grandmothers, very bright women, who were taken out of school early, and married in their early teens. Those kinds of hurts have a way of transmitting themselves down through generations, in oral memories. 

You can't change history, but a writer can try and re-rewrite some wrongs!