Liberally speaking

Nayantara Violet Alva, daughter of popular writer Anuja Chauhan, and granddaughter of politician Margaret Alva, released her debut novel Liberal Hearts, a coming-of-age novel that doesn’t shy away from exploring class politics
Namya has a lot on her plate when she starts college at the fictional Maurya University.
Namya has a lot on her plate when she starts college at the fictional Maurya University.(Photo | Express)
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BENGALURU: Reeling from her parents’ separation and her first love dating someone else, Namya has a lot on her plate when she starts college at the fictional Maurya University. Overwhelmed, she sneaks off at night to smoke a cigarette but gets no respite, having to hastily hurl it when she hears someone approaching.

Flying over the wall that separates her elite university from the local village, this cigarette lands on Aman, a village boy and brilliant student who had to give up on his university dreams after losing his father. This moment changes the course of both youngsters’ lives in Liberal Hearts (Penguin Random House India; Rs 350) by debut author Nayantara Violet Alva – becoming the start of a romance that shakes up their worldviews.

“They test each other’s notions, and are there for each other – being such lonely people living their contained lives. Both of them enable a certain character growth in each other’s lives, to reach a point where they face their demons and are able to move on,” says Alva, who was recently in Bengaluru to visit her mother, popular writer Anuja Chauhan, and grandmother, former politician Margaret Alva. Over the weekend, she also made her debut at Jaipur Literature Festival as a part of a panel on debut writers.

Despite the fun, banter-filled and old-Bollywood-like romance between the main characters, according to Alva, the story is much more than a romance and more of a coming-of-age story. “What ends up happening is an inherent tussle between the village and the college for cultural reasons, for political reasons, but lived through a very personal lens. You have this elite culture constantly leaking out of the college and into the village – how does that affect the social dynamic and the relationship when she meets this boy?” she asks.

With chapters switching between both characters’ points of view, the book delves into these themes in a manner accessible to Gen Z particularly. “There are a lot of different themes it taps into – from Gen Z anxieties, Gen Z ambitions, privilege, peer pressure, wanting to be accepted, wanting to be cool…it references the way our generation feels. They will feel seen,” she says. And because she comes from a television/web series background, she wanted to write a vivid visual ‘binge-able novel’.

Now 26, Alva started working on the novel back in college as a pet project. The years of writing, re-writing, and waiting to hear back from publishers, were not easy. She says, “You go from writing something all alone in a room to it becoming something everybody’s scrutinising and criticising. At that stage, I was really lost,” she recalls. Crediting her mother with supporting her through it all, she says,

“The advice she gave me really motivated me to finish the book. It was not something I was taking seriously. Then, I was down one day, and frustrated, and she just told me, ‘Whenever I’m in situations like this, writing always helps me get out of these situations mentally’.

When she found out I’d written 60,000 words, she said, ‘Oh my god, that’s a lot. You have to finish it!’ Conversations like that, because she’s not just my mom, she’s also somebody whose creative opinion I really respect, have really helped make the process easier.”

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