Twinkle Khanna tests uncharted waters this week with a book of fiction, The Legend of Lakshmi Prasad . Comprising four short stories, the book marks a departure in genre from her bestselling debut Mrs Funnybones , a compilation of her newspaper columns.

Set across the length and breadth of the country, from Maharashtra to Bihar, from Kerala to Madhya Pradesh, the stories tell of a village girl on the trail of jardalu mangoes in the titular ‘The Legend of Lakshmi Prasad’; of finding love in the senior citizen lane in Salaam, Noni Appa’; and a fictionalised recreation of India’s real-life ‘menstrual man’, Arunachalam Muruganantham in ‘The Sanitary Man from a Sacred Land’. BL ink caught up with Khanna recently. The following are edited excerpts from the interview.

When did you begin writing, and how did these stories come about?

I wrote the first draft of the second story, ‘Salaam, Noni Appa’, when I was 17. This was my third attempt at writing the same story. My protagonists have changed and grown older with me. I wrote half a book when I was very young, and I wrote some terrible poems. I had this black file with an orange ribbon that had all my poems and I don’t even know where it is now. When I was asked to do a celebrity newspaper column, I said yes by instinct. I sat down to write the first one and I had so much to say, that it all came out really quickly and smoothly. It’s gotten much more difficult now, because I want to layer things. I try to look at the most sombre things with a little bit of whimsy to make them interesting.

What would you classify as the theme of this book?

The first three stories are about women, and the last story is about a man, who is a bigger feminist than any other woman in the entire book, which I think is interesting. The last one is based on a true story about this gentleman who made the low-cost sanitary napkin making machine. When I was writing my column on menstruation, I discovered his story, and I got obsessed by it. I started chasing him and then finally met him, and after many interviews I convinced him to let me fictionalise his story. I thought it was a very important tale that needed to be better known. We always hear about women doing things for women, and here was a man who was deeply concerned about the most intimate part of a woman’s life, and I found it fascinating.

Thematically, I think the book is about women finding their place, at any age, whether you’re 16 or 68, about belonging to an idea, belonging to themselves. It’s a book about equality which doesn’t really come with a tag --— people who’ve read the book say it’s a book about feminism without using the word feminism anywhere. But more than anything else, it was about topics that mattered to me.

Do you, then, consider yourself a feminist?

If I’m a feminist, I’m also a tree-hugger and a candle-maker. It reflects in everything I’ve done in my entire life. I’ve probably been a feminist before I even knew what it meant to be one. Whether it is living on my terms, doing a job that I want to, or holding on to my surname --— my daughter has my surname and Akshay’s too. I believe in equality and I work towards it in my writing as well.

We know you’ve written poetry, non-fiction columns, and short stories. Is a novel in the works next?

I once wrote a poem on maggots, which is locked away underground where maggots usually belong. A lot of people think the short form is somehow inferior to the long form. I read short stories every day, and in this day and age I enjoy it even more. I love the long form, but nowadays, I realise that it is taking me much longer to read novels. Our attention spans are so short that the short form is flourishing.

Who are some of your favourite authors?

My love for reading started with science fiction, and it is still the genre that gets my heart pumping. Isaac Asimov, Arthur Clarke, Neil Gaiman, PG Wodehouse and F Scott Fitzgerald are some of my favourite authors. But because I’ve started writing about the practice of daily life, to broaden my horizons I have started reading a lot more genres.

As a writer, what is the most important thing for you?

It’s about bettering my craft. It’s my love for words more than anything else. People ask me what I would recommend to writers, and I’d say, read everything. Read everywhere, read in the bathroom --— fill your head with so many words that the inexplicable urge to throw up on paper comes about. I hope that when I’m gone, bits of my mind will be left, floating in bookshelves everywhere.

Ritika Bhatia is a Mumbai-based freelance journalist and communications consultant

comment COMMENT NOW