In conversation, Meenakshi Reddy Madhavan

Meenakshi Reddy Madhavan studied English Literature at Lady Shri Ram College in Delhi University and has been a journalist for many years. She writes the popular blog The Compulsive Confessor where she talks about her experiences as a young, single woman in urban India. Her first novel, You are Here, published by Penguin releases this month.

You have been writing your blog, The Compulsive Confessor, for many years. How important has blogging been in your evolution as a writer?

All writers, I feel, need to be writing constantly in order to be writers. The blog has helped me keep some sort of weekly discipline and hone my voice, so that by the end of two years I was writing exactly as I wanted to.

Tell us a little bit about your first novel.

It’s about a young girl negotiating the world. It’s based in Delhi, but I think it could also be any other big city in the world. Arshi, the protagonist, is trying very hard to get her life in a shape that she recognises. The book sort of goes back and forth between time so that you get a clear picture of who she is and who she wants to be.

There has hardly been any major work on this theme by an Indian writer. How difficult was the process of writing the novel, since there were no precedents to go by.

Not difficult at all. I’ve been writing some version of the same story since I was about seventeen. It began with Poornima who was sixteen in Seventeen And Still Standing and then there was Maya, I think, in In Limbo. (Whose best friend was called Arshi!) It’s basically a story of my generation and of people like me, and since I like to think that my work isn’t derivative, I guess it was okay that there weren’t any precedents.

You Are Here is a curious and intriguing title. How did you arrive at the title, since naming a book is the part writers find extremely difficult.

Oh, it was really, really tough coming up with a good name. I batted around a few hundred before I came to this one. It was the result of a brainstorming session with some friends, one of them said, ‘You are here’ and it clicked in my head. It’s supposed to be like a map sign, because Arshi really wishes she has one to help her see where she is and where she’s going.

People who read your blog often compare it to Sex and the City. How much has popular culture influenced your work?

As much as popular culture has influenced anyone else’s work I guess. I personally don’t believe there is much of a comparison to be made between my blog and any Western thing, whether it’s Bridget Jones or Sex And The City. But I guess for lack of anything else to compare it to, that was the closest label. Yes, it is about being young and single in a big city and the stuff that comes with that–dating, sex, men, friendships–but that’s where it begins to become my descriptions of being young and single and not Sarah Jessica Parker’s.

Tell us a little bit about your literary influences. What books did you read while growing up?

I read pretty much everything I could get my hands on. I loved the Anne of Green Gables books and Laura Ingalls Wilder books and as I grew older, I loved Salinger and  Gone With The Wind. Things like that. Basically, I’ve always loved your ’search for self’ stories, mostly stuff with a female heroine and things that spanned many years and generations.

You represent a new wave of young writers living in India, who are challenging stereotypes and exploring new themes. Do you think that the importance of Diaspora writers will diminish as time passes by?

Is growing up in a big city such a new theme? Perhaps in India, maybe, I mean, my book has no references to mango pickles or snake charmers, but I think it’s time we stopped thinking of ourselves with any labels at all. Women writers, diaspora writers, it’s all very lazy labelling to put people and books in brackets. I don’t see why any of us have to be representative of anything, except ourselves.

How much do you think globalization and its effects has changed the landscape of our cities? How have you dealt with this in your book?

As someone who has lived in two major Indian metros, sometimes when I think back to ten or fifteen years ago Levi’s jeans was something you got your ‘foreign’ relatives to bring back. The poshest localities now were then wilderness and the very first McDonald’s came up – it’s all very startling. I am old enough to remember pre-Internet, pre-cable TV days and sometimes I catch myself wondering what we did back then and if a child from now was teleported back in time how long would it take before they killed themselves out of boredom? It’s been interesting to watch also how globalisation has made us as a people change, I feel that now, a decade later, we are more confident and yet also struggling with a basic identity crisis–balancing the traditions on one hand with the modernity that new India is all about. Most of that is stuff I’ve delved into in my book.

Are there any plans for a book tour?

Yes, I will be launching the book in Delhi on the 22nd of August and then in Mumbai around the end of the month. There will be other cities, but I’m not sure which ones.

What next for you now? Are you working on another novel?

I’m figuring out the life of a writer.  Right now, I have a couple of columns here and there, and I’d like to travel once the book is out. I do have another book in mind but it’s in gestation stages, so I don’t know whether you could call that ‘working’ on something!