Grumpy but lovable bookworm, Nilima, is having a regular work day at Chikkamma Tours (Pvt.) Ltd, ignoring an annoying co-worker and trying not to be too obvious about her crush on her boss, Shwetha. That is, until a quick break leads to her (literally) stumbling upon the body of the travel agency’s neighbour, Jagat Desai, the man who runs one of the city’s most iconic bookstores. What follows is, in author Unmana’s words, a ‘queer, cosy, bibliomystery’, with Nilima teaming up with her colleagues to solve the mystery, uncover the messy dynamics the dead man seemingly had with everyone in his life, but also to be close to her ‘charming, beautiful, and poised’ boss.
The novel, Chikkamma Tours (Pvt.) Ltd (Westland Books, ₹499) has gained attention for its representation of several queer women characters in a story that doesn’t make identity or coming out the sole focus, but gives them space to be heroines and side characters in a mystery without pigeonholing them into the trope of a tortured villain. “Coming out stories are important, but they shouldn’t be the only kind of story. For me, genre fiction is especially exciting because the rule is that you know who the hero is from the beginning, and you know that they are going to triumph at the end. It was exciting to see a figure who is not conventionally attractive, not a very active person, who would prefer to sit at her desk and stalk people online, and not extremely perceptive.” She adds, “I wrote the book that I would have wanted to read as a younger queer person.”
Set in a corner of Jayanagar, with apt descriptions of Bengaluru’s rains, and nooks and crannies that people who love and live in the city will be familiar with, the city comes alive in Unmana’s hands, who despite being a frequent visitor, has never lived in the city herself. Despite this, having started the story in a writing workshop in Bengaluru six years ago, she felt it was a uniquely Bengaluru story to tell. “I considered moving it to Mumbai because it would be so much easier to write a novel based in the city I lived in but I couldn’t… of course, the books and bookstore culture, which I was absolutely inspired by – I’d never seen a city, or maybe even just a part of the city, where books and bookstores are that important. Another thing was this feeling of a small town – even though Bengaluru is a big city, it feels less anonymous than Mumbai in a lot of ways,” she explains, making it the perfect setting for a cosy mystery like the Agatha Christie novels she loves and was inspired by.
The book, since its release, has found a readership among Bengaluru’s mystery lovers, particularly young queer readers, notes Unmana. “To be honest, I was not expecting this kind of response and was not aware of it for a long time but I knew the book was doing better in Bengaluru than anywhere else. But I was not prepared to meet so many people who had read the book,” she says.