The backwaters of Kerala often haunt her dreams. No wonder she rebuilds them through her words. Bangalore based author Anita Nair has just launched her third book and her second novel, Ladies Coupe (Penguin). She says the novel has only helped her to discover some more mysteries of life.

From aspiring to be a psychiatrist, to almost being sure of becoming a journalist, to finding a hold in the world of advertising, to actually becoming a writer, Ms Nair has travelled life on her own terms. And the journey, she says, has been most delightful.

It’s finally becoming a writer that the lady settled for when she quit her 12 year old job in advertising a month ago. “I’ve thoroughly enjoyed advertising. In fact, there was a point where I knew it helped me in my writing.” So why did she decide to quit her job? She smiles. “There is a point in time when you need to be disciplined. Advertising was that time for me. Now I’ve outgrown that phase and sort of enjoy it like this.” Does she miss advertising? “Not really,” she chuckles, “because my husband is into advertising. So I still keep hearing about board meetings and campaigns.

” What is it that she aims to look at through her writing? “See, it’s not really an issue I’m trying to answer. Only that I try to understand what disturbs me, be it things in me or things and people around me. And by the time, I finish writing a book, I know there are some answers that I’ll have.”

So what answers did she find after her two novels, The Better Man and the more recent The Ladies Coupe? Says the author, “I’m not trying to be a moral science teacher, but there is this certain strength deep inside that every individual has—I look at how each character achieves this.”

Our curly haired writer is almost transferred to another world when she talks about her moment of strength and, yes, her sleeveless shirt only shows the goose pimples more prominently.

Gathering herself together, she says, “It was a night in my village. I was sleeping out in the open, when I woke up with this bright light shining in my eyes, it was almost like a flashlight. And when I opened my eyes, there was this beautiful white light and a lovely star-studded sky, It was then that a feeling of contentment and beauty filled me. I realised that no matter what goes wrong, this beauty, this feeling of serenity, will always be there. It was much later that someone told me that the milky way is very clear from that part of the village.”

While her novel The Better Man has a male protagonist, The Ladies Coupe revolves around Akhila, a 45 year old single woman. Having explored writing for both men and women, who is it she prefers to write for? “I’m more comfortable writing for men. You can be yourself, unlike with women, where you have to be very careful, politically correct to be precise. One wrong word, and you’ve made a wrong move,” she says, matter of factly. And has she been careful in her new book? “That is where I’ve missed. I always tend to take my own turns.”

Ms Nair builds her story around an imaginary village in Kerala—what is it that she is looking at? “I’ve never had a chance to really live in my village. It is through my writing that I tend to go back into a world of my own.” Ms Nair is currently working on a children’s book on folk myths, which will be published by Puffin. And yes, she is going back to her village after the hectic schedule surrounding her book release is over.

It wasn’t the usual thing, a woman writer exploring unusual territory – the man’s world, in this case. But readers and critics alike gave their verdict: Anita Nair’s debut novel The Better Man, published last year, was a winner. So is Anita a writer “who is only secondarily concerned with her gender and the like” (Gentleman)? Her second novel, Ladies Coupe, recently published by Penguin India, should answer that. It has an all woman cast and is about a single woman’s decision to break free from claustrophobic traditions and multiple identities as daughter, sister, aunt, provider, and live life on her own terms. The Bangalore-based writer has also just bid goodbye to her advertising career and will concentrate on her “addiction”, writing. Man, woman, and what’s next? Gods, she says, adding, “I need a break from humans.”

Ladies Coupe: In the beginning… Some years ago I was buying a ticket and I found this special ladies line clubbed with the handicapped and senior citizens. I was a little disturbed by the blatant inequality and I wanted to write about it. Either you discuss it or write essays. In my case, whenever things perplex me, I write fiction.

“I am not a feminist” I wanted to show the quality of strength in a woman, in this novel. I am not a feminist but I feel strength is not usually considered a womanly thing. There is a lot of strength in women that doesn’t come out naturally, it has to be forced out of them – it could be circumstances or a change in lifestyle.

The course I started writing Ladies Coupe in February 1999, then stopped when editing work began on The Better Man. Then I resumed in February 2000 and finished by the end of the year.

The way it works… I plan certain incidents and the narration happens as I write, which is in long hand. Then when I key it in, I add some things, elaborate on it. I partly draw my characters from stories, films or people I see, sometimes at a railway station. I remember meeting someone like Akhila some time back very briefly. She had a sad look in her eyes. I wonder about their lives and write.

Ladies Coupe vs The Better Man I found Ladies Coupe harder to write.It took a lot out of me. There were multiple voices and multiple lives that had to be lived out in my head. The Better Man was a quieter novel that way, the character too had his problems but it was all within his mind rather than actual problems. These women had actual problems. It was quite exhausting trying to experience them.

On criticism about the lack of women characters in The Better Man: Women may not have been larger than life characters in that novel but they had dignity. Some reviewers thought they were all props and not essential to the story but the book was written from a man’s point of view and what his needs are – women had no importance in his life, so the book too reflected that.

On the other hand, Ladies Coupe hardly has any men; it’s a woman’s book. If I had to include it all, then it becomes this magnum opus with points of view of everybody.

The Better Man was published by Picador USA but this book had initial problems being published by them. Why was that?

Well, actually what happened was that the editors had changed. Though they did like the book they felt that for the book to work in their country it required certain changes. So it was a question of how much I was willing to do that. I was not willing to change it. So they didn’t feel it was worthwhile. But it was all very amicable and I’ll be doing another novel for them.

Publishing abroad for recognition at home Well, that’s the way it seems to be happening. I don’t think it is very positive. Though I have never faced a problem that way – The Better Man (the first book by an Indian writer to have been published by Picador USA) was acknowledged here and abroad. In fact, I didn’t even meet my foreign publishers. I don’t even know what they look like.

Being a writer Writing is a necessity for me, an addiction. The best thing about being a writer is to be anonymous in one’s writing, being genderless, ageless, classless. It’s a challenge writing about people completely different from myself and my kind of life.

The art of storytelling Literary fiction can be written without being too academic or highbrow. I don’t think it’s fair to the reader to play those literary games. When I create characters they have to have a physical form, I need to touch and feel them. What next? I am doing a book for Puffin on Indian myths, resurrecting the not so well known myths. I need a break from human beings for a while. After that I’ll probably work on a novel, which will be set in Kerala, of course. I have planned this trilogy, starting with The Better Man.

Anita Nair’s second novel, Ladies Coupe, upholds the promise of the first. Five women—later joined by a sixth —find themselves travelling together on a long train journey in that well-known space, the ladies coupe, or ladies compartment.

Among them is Akhila, single, mid-forties, her family’s sole breadwinner, whom everyone takes for granted but without whom they would all be lost. Akhila is one day seized by a nameless desire — to get on to a train and travel to the farthest point on the map of India, Kanyakumari.

She gives in, and finds herself on a train with four other women— Janaki, Margaret Shanti, Prabha Devi and Marikolanthu.

As it often happens on long train journeys, your fellow-travellers are both curious and giving, and share not only their tiffin but also their lives with you.

After her initial resistance, Akhila begins to listen, and to tell, and in the process to learn.

At first, she asks for and expects to get help in making her decisions, and is told that she must decide for herself. Initially somewhat upset, she later recognises the wisdom of this advice and her respect for her fellow travellers goes up.

Each of the women is finely drawn (as are their men), each caught in a net of relationships partly of her own making and partly one that is ‘made’ for her. Once Akhila assumes the role of family head, her own wishes and desires are forgotten by everyone and she too puts a firm lid — not always successfully — on them. Margaret boils with rage against her drawer-of-genitalia-in-library-books husband, Ebenezer, for his many conceits but remains silent . Until such time as she decides to resist and finds her own unique weapon, like the others, to do so.

The young Sheela, who dresses up her dead grandmother’s body because she cannot bear to have her face the world looking so unprepared, could be a young Akhila or a young Prabha Devi in-the-making.

In the end Akhila, having made it to Kanyakumari, finds herself in a hotel called — what else ? – Sea Breeze, acutely aware of everyone’s surprise at a woman-on-a-beach-alone, and decides to make her own private rebellion. Much like Margaret who decides to rebel by feeding and feeding her husband into a state of benign fatness, Akhila takes desire by the horns so to speak. She releases herself from the hold of convention and family expectations, at least mentally. Now she can go back to her life, but with the knowledge that she is free of some of the shackles at least.

Even though, as Anita Nair tells us in an author’s note at the end of the book, the ladies queue and the ladies coupe are no more (presumably because the railways authorities have decided that women no longer need special concessions), women’s stories, such as the ones we hear in this book, will continue to tell a tale, and will find other spaces. Anita Nair’s low-key, sometimes funny and sometimes hard-hitting book, is not earth-shaking but is definitely worth a read. And if you’re a woman, and one who has had the experience of travelling in the ladies coupe, you might even find yourself in there !