CHENNAI: Even after moving out of India 25 years ago, nothing has changed for debutante author Viji Narayanan. She continues to watch Amitabh Bachchan movies, writes journals on her Facebook wall and is an avid reader of mystery, fantasy and romance. In 1993, this software engineer moved to Ohio state in the US along with her husband. She is now in the city to launch of her first book Many Dreams Many Lives. “My work and my family kept me busy until about eight years ago, when I started writing journals about my life on Facebook. When some of my friends commented that I had an entertaining way of telling a story, I felt encouraged to start writing short stories. What started out as a screenplay for a film turned out to be fiction,” says Viji, a Tamilian who was raised in Mumbai and moved out of India 25 years back.
The novel features six different stereotypical couples — three from India, and three from the US. Like many women in their early forties, the protagonist too realises that she has many unfulfilled dreams. She decides to re-evaluate her life. In her journey of self-discovery, she unravels many secrets about her friends and herself. “I had created four characters in my book and I could relate to each one of them. Most women in their forties go through their own midlife crisis but nobody talks about it openly.
We consider it a stigma to express our emotional and physical needs. We become victims of social conditioning. So my protagonist tries to motivate other women to acknowledge their desires and passion through her story,” says the 50-year-old whose target audience is men and women aged between thirties to late fifties.
Viji, a mother of three, is confident about the topic of her novel. There are not many Indian American authors who address issues faced by middle-aged couple and work-life balance, she says. To make the story intriguing, she added a paranormal fantasy element, spun it with mystery and suspense to make it more entertaining. “I did not realise how competitive the market was until I decided to publish my first manuscript. When the publisher mentioned that he gets almost 200 manuscripts every month I was shocked. So I decided to self-publish my first book through Notions Press,” she shares.
More than writing for novels, Viji, whose inspiration is Javed Akthar, was more driven towards scripts and screenplay for films. Given a chance, she would make a film out of this book. She would like Kajol or Rani Mukherjee to play the lead role, and wants the movie to be directed by Farah Khan or Karan Johar. “I had to even kill a couple of characters to make the story crisp and flow smoothly.
At the end of the day, people should start initiating a dialogue with their support system to acknowledge their needs. People should not suffer from mental or physical health problems at a later age by suppressing their inner desires. We should not be dependent on anyone for our emotional happiness. We should seize our own path to create our destiny,” she says.