Most of author Sindhu Rajasekaran’s tales explores femininity, love and loss and a tinge of sadness. The short stories from her recent book, also her second one, So I Let It Be, have been featured in magazines like the Hong Kong’s Asia Literary Review and Singapore’s Kitaab among others.
What’s unique about Rajasekaran’s journey as an author is that she’s an electronics and communications engineer, who shifted gears due to her love for English literature.
She was always interested in science during her growing up years which explains her engineering degree. “Back then, one wanted a secure future,” she says.
But then the inevitable happened. Just before she was to leave for the US for her Masters in engineering, her first novel got longlisted and published with Crossword Book Award 2011.
“I’ve always had a passion for reading and writing. But it was at this time I suddenly realised that I wanted to be more of a writer and less of an engineer,” she says.
So Rajasekran enrolled for a Masters in English – Creative Writing at University of Edinburgh.
“At this course, I learnt to view writing as a craft. I realised a writer can improve her craft through practice. Since then I’ve been experimenting with the written word,” says Rajasekaran.
It was also during the course that Rajasekaran forayed into creative writing. Over the next five years, she wrote 12 stories, and surprisingly each of these revolved around women as theme.
“The stories in So I Let It Be are about 12 women, each radically different from the other. It was not a conscious decision, it just happened,” says Rajasekran, adding she intended to write a novel.
The author says she owes her skills to her father, who, she says, always encouraged her to pursue her dreams. But, for her, writing has not always been an easy field.
“Sometimes, for days on end, one doesn’t get a word to write. I’ve gone years without writing a word,” she says, adding the impulse comes from within.
That’s why it is said creative writers are moody! “While you are at it, writing is energising, but otherwise it is exhausting,” she remarks.
The one book that she finds quite inspirational is Arundhati Roy’s God of Small Things. She also loves to travel, witness varied languages and landscapes as these experiences fuel her writing.
“I like to travel, to experiment with how my words transform in different places and circumstances,” she says.