The journalist-turned-author Meenakshi Reddy Madhavan has a reason to smile as her third book ‘Cold Feet’ was launched in Hyderabad at Landmark recently. The editor of Brown Paper Bag at Delhi is well-known for her blogs which airs her views on all topics under the sun which cannot be limited to 140 characters for Twitter/Facebook, fesses the author. City Express catches up with the author for a chat on her new book and some more.
A writer trait
The happy-go-lucky author has been a passionate writer since childhood and blogs at the compulsiveconfessor.com under the pseudonym ‘eM.’ When asked about how she stepped into an author’s shoes, Meenakshi shifts the focus on an enthusiastic friend. “A friend of mine encouraged me to write novels while I was just a short story writer,” says the graduate in English Literature from Delhi.
Her first book ‘You Are Here’ about a bold 25 year-old woman was semi-autobiographical but disappointed her readers. The subsequent book ‘Confessions of a Listmaniac’ was the story of a ‘typical’ teenager. “Umm, the character reflects what I was when I was 17,” she adds with a giggle. “I write for Indian youth,” says Meenakshi, on a more serious note about her target audience.
Take on ‘Cold feet’
Deviating slightly from her previous work, ‘Cold Feet’ revolves around five women who deal with issues related to love. The dilemma the protagonists undergo at diferent points in their romantic lives is conveyed by the title of the book. The author says that love is not necessarily between a couple but can extend to different relations. A trend which seems to have spilled over from the movies, the presence of a lesbian character in her book is intriguing. “It was accidental,” says the author who explains that the characters in her latest book try to discover themselves at the risk of venturing out of their cushy lives lived within a bubble. “With respect to the structure of the story, I have come a long way from my first book,” she adds.
Women and more
But why all women protagonists, don’t men get cold-feet? “I could always connect to women and write about them better. While I wrote about men in my previous books, I felt like they were cut-outs and that there was something lacking about the characters which I could not discover. I think that makes my stories more women-centric.” She says women are more real.
Meenakshi hopes to experiment with non-fiction in her future works and her parting short to aspiring writers is to keep at it. “Read and write” are the two magic words eM drops.