Anjana Menon on her anthology Onam in a Nightie, being a part of JLF London and more

If you want to read a book about the COVID-19 pandemic that engages more of the heart than the head, read Anjana Menon’s anthology titled Onam in a Nightie: Stories from A Kerala Quarantine. It is sensual and political, intimate and aloof, outward-looking and introspective. How does she manage to do this? Read the book to find out for yourself.

Published by HarperCollins India, it will make you look for the entertaining and the sublime amidst the painful and frustrating moments of life. Menon, a former journalist who now runs a content strategy consultancy, wrote this work of “creative non-fiction” based on her stay in Kerala. She divides her time between Delhi and London but the pandemic took her to her parents’ home in Kerala. She was planning to stay only for a month or two but ended up staying for seven months, at the end of which she didn’t feel like going back to Delhi.

As Menon gets ready to speak at JLF London, an international edition of the Jaipur Literature Festival from 10 to 12 June at the British library, we catch up with her for an email interview. She is excited to participate in the festival, which promises to celebrate “South Asia’s unique multilingual literary heritage”. Menon is excited that she gets to be part of this festival with “brilliant writers such as Geetanjali Shree , Shashi Tharoor and Monica Ali, to name a few”.

Here is an interview with the author.

Reading Onam in a Nightie made me think of an unforgettable line from Amitav Ghosh’s novel The Shadow Lines – “…a place does not merely exist…it has to be invented in one’s imagination”. Do you think this might be an apt summary of what your book is all about?

I’ve largely tried to capture the place through its people and my interactions with them, because it is people who make a place what it is and give us a sense of belonging or ostracisation. And of course, it is very much a narrative of my experiences in a place and unique time in history, invested with the peculiarity of a sweeping pandemic.

The experience of moving in with one’s parents during the COVID-19 pandemic has been an emotional roller-coaster for many people, and immensely gratifying for many others. It seems that you lucked out. What did your parents have to say after reading this book?

They enjoyed the book and the honesty of it and I heard the odd chuckle here and there. Mercifully, their attitude, like most of their generation, is one of ‘get on then, now that your book is done.’

You write about two kinds of human species in the book – Keralites and Delhiites. Before you tell us where you place yourself, could you describe the defining characteristics of both?

Delhi is the seat of power and hierarchy wears its residents. Access to power is an agency to get things done or avoid them. Kerala, too far out from Delhi, seems a place where access to community is a better way to get around.

How did your experience as a journalist serve you while writing this work of “creative nonfiction”? Why did you pick this genre to tell the stories that come together in this book?

I think the ability to observe served me well. This was an unplanned book. As I mentioned in the preface, this book started as a daily journal because there was nothing much to do during a lockdown, stuck as I was, in a room quarantine. So, I can’t claim that I had a grand plan. The everyday events and experiences drove the structure and the genre.

Which story was the most difficult to write? Which one was the easiest? Why?

The stories wrote themselves because I was capturing what I saw, and slipping some of my childhood memories or experiences of other places I had lived in.

I can’t say that one was more difficult than the other. What I was often wondering was whether the reader would delight in the ordinary, as I did.

Having worked amidst the chaos of a newsroom, what was it like to write at leisure? Did you find a marked difference in your writing process when your notion of time changed?

Slowing down sped up the writing, because I could take in more things and enjoy them without an imposed deadline. It almost invested a natural urgency to the storytelling because I didn’t want to lose the moment. Being able to tell people stories, without the restrictions of a style guide or a rule book, set the writer in me, free.

What is the kindest thing that someone has told you after reading this book?

A homemaker wrote a short memoir of her late father-in-law who she lost to Covid and shared it with me. I was touched by that. She said that my book made her realise that ordinary people too have the remarkable in them and that their story is worth telling.

Could you tell us the story behind the beautiful illustrations that we see on the cover?

It has been done by a young teen from Thrissur, the town the book is set in. I first spotted Anujath Sindhu Vinaylal’s painting in a newspaper during the quarantine. The Kerala government had picked one of his childhood paintings as a cover for their gender budget. It was a painting that captured all the things that mothers do. It was remarkable for a child to have the sensibility that even adults don’t – we never acknowledge or value the work of mothers. I reached out to him because I intuitively felt he would bring something special to the book and it was important for me to give him a space in a book set in his hometown.

If there were an award for the most ingenious book title, I suspect it would go to you. How did you come up with something that is just perfect? Which titles did you reject before this?

The original working title – Beyond the Backwaters – didn’t capture the tone of the book, which is funny and heart-warming. So, I called a friend, who is also a journalist with a great sense of humour – Madhavan Narayanan. I was telling him about the chapter titled “Onam in a Nightie” and he immediately asked me why that wasn’t the title of the book. Sometimes you can’t see what’s in front of you and you need someone else to show you the way. I’m so grateful to him for that.

What are you working on at the moment?

On getting this book to as many readers as possible! I think there is a huge misconception out there that the role of the author ends as soon as the book goes to the printing press. I think that’s when the fun ends and the work starts. So, all aspiring authors, be warned.

Chintan Girish Modi is a journalist, commentator, and book reviewer

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