KOCHI: For 74-year-old Radha Nair, age is just a number. She proved the same by recently publishing her book ‘Breaking The Cocoon @40’. Thought-provoking incidents from everyday events and hilarious narratives form the crux of the book.
Though Radha has been writing since her childhood, it was after winning an All India-level competition on the topic ‘The moment that changed my life’ in 1972, that she embarked on a literary journey. Her story about her father, a career diplomat who was cruelly assassinated in Canada in 1961 while she was just 15, was praised by the India Book House Pvt Limited who requested her to write stories for children.
“I wrote stories that mostly dealt with history in the Amar Chitra Katha. Later, after my marriage with P M Nair, a scientist at the Bhabha Atomic Research Center, I became a stay-at-home mom. However, I continued writing with the support and encouragement of my family,” says the children’s author. After her husband’s retirement in 1994, they moved to Thiruvananthapuram, their hometown, during which she did an awareness campaign about AIDS.
At the age of 60, she quit advertising and went back to her first love, which was writing stories for children. She authored ‘Appu Stories’, a story about an elephant, for DC books. She even collaborated with Aswathi Thirunal Gauri Lakshmi for a book ‘The God Who Rules A Kingdom’ which focused on the Sree Padmanabhaswamy Temple through the eyes of two children.
The book was published by Poorna Publications. A year after her husband’s death in 2018, her younger brother Krishnan encouraged her to write about her experiences in the advertising industry in Mumbai, when she was in her early 40s. “Initially, I decided to solely focus on the advertising field, but decided to add other incidents which could be relatable,” she said.
Though she completed the book earlier this year, she couldn’t find a publisher due to the lockdown. But, with the help of Aswathi Thirunal Gauri Lakshmi, Poorna Publishers decided to publish her book. The 31-chapter book covers all instances of her life, from the assassination of her father and her times in an ad agency to the death of her husband and popular Facebook posts on ‘Her Trivandrum’, a women-only Facebook group. Breaking The Cocoon @40 is available on Amazon.