For someone who taught theatre and directed plays at Alliance Française, Chennai, it does not come as a surprise that a performance art by Marina Abromovic at Avignon, France, captivated her and inspired Priyamvada Purushottam to “create a work of art. The Purple Line emerged,” she says. This book is the story of a gynaecologist Mrinalini Krishnamuthy who tells the readers of the lives of seven women. Says Priyamvada, “It is an exploration of womanhood. Whether she chooses to become a mother or not, either way she is tied to that four letter word: the womb.”
Being a fan of Virginia Woolf’s Mrs Dolloway, who as Priyamvada tells us is the inspiration for her to start writing, she uses the protagonist Mrinalini as the ‘mouthpiece’ in the book. She explains, “Although it is a complete work of fiction and has no semblance of autobiography, I expressed some of my own views through the gynecologist-narrator. Like the right to contraception, the right to abortion and more importantly, the right to live (in the case of female foeticide and infanticide that takes place in India even today). In many ways, it was liberating for me to write this book, emotionally exhausting but liberating nonetheless.”
On being asked why the book was titled The Purple Line, she says, “When I came to the part where the sixteen-year-old Pooja (a character in the book) looks at the inerasable purple line on the pregnancy kit and comes to know that she is pregnant, I knew that it would be the title.” She hopes that when women read this book they get the courage to break free from their shackles.
Her career started off as a copywriter with O&M and then went on to pursue theatre, poetry and finally taught French, theatre and directed plays at the Alliance Française, Chennai. She was also a part of the theatre troupe Magic Lantern and travelled with them. “I am a bibliophile and Francophile. Some of my favourite writers are French.” says the author, who loves reading Let The Great World Spin by Colum McCann and The Unbearable Lightness of Being by Milan Kundera. She is working on a collection of short stories titled Animal Stories about People where each story revolves around an animal or the idea of an animal, which she promises will have a humorous side to it after the intense experience of writing The Purple Line.
— kaviya@newindianexpress.com