BENGALURU: Children disappointing parents, some kids being favoured over others, the changing cycle of study, graduating, getting a job, getting married, having kids. These were observations author of multiple books, Aarti V Raman, took note of and turned into a book, The Worst Daughter Ever.
With this being her 18th book, Raman says the book, published by Rupa, was a culmination of many observations about the way families work in Indian society. “It’s an anecdotal, first-person narrative, which is set in Munnar, a place I’ve visited many times and have only fond memories of. So the only research I had to do was to sit down and understand Hindu funeral customs as Iyers do it and understand the tea estate aspect of it. In the case of The Worst Daughter Ever, it really was all about writing what I always knew,” says Raman, who always wanted to be a full-time author and took the plunge in 2018.
With several books hitting the market, there is a need to differentiate yourself as an author. For Raman, a solution to her own brand of storytelling comes from being as authentic as possible. “Since it’s my 18th book, I have established my own voice – feminist, empowering, strong characters with internal and external conflicts,” she says.
But the challenge lay in publishing, especially the wait. Raman points out that publishing in India works as it does everywhere else, and responses take a while to come. “But for The Worst Daughter Ever, the journey has been surprisingly smooth,” she says about her book. Unlike some authors she admires, Raman doesn’t have a disciplined writing schedule. This is because she calls herself an “instinctive storyteller.” “A story always comes to me full-blown – as The Worst Daughter Ever did – and writing it takes a matter of days. The first draft of this book was written in seven days in January 2018,” she says, adding that the main concern she always has is to get the story to full-blown mode in her head – almost like a movie that’s playing out – and then she just puts it down as quickly as she can before she forgets anything.
Raman believes that reading is the last great pleasure we all have, and it requires critical thinking and imagination. “So read more and dive into stories and experience this pleasure as often as you can. Books are the best, and the more the merrier, I say. No one ever not benefitted from reading, whether it is my book or someone else’s.”