Belling the Cat

In an event kicked off by author Jeet Thayil at the Max Mueller Bhavan,the award ceremony saw Roy in conversation with her publisher David Davidar from the Aleph Book Company. Roy spoke of how the greatest challenge for her was to “keep the cats,cats”,and not give them a more human persona. “Every ‘meow’ is different,” said the author,” and translating all of those meows was difficult. There’s the ‘we need to talk’ meow,‘my food bowl has been empty for 20 minutes’ meow. What I really enjoyed was looking at humans through the perspective of stray animals.” This year saw 78 entries,and besides Roy’s book,the other five in the shortlist included Boats on Land by Janice Pariat,India Becoming by Akash Kapur,Foreign by Sonora Jha and a pleasant kind of heavy and other stories by aranyani.

Roy spoke of how she has eventually fallen in love with Delhi,a place she earlier looked at as rather brash compared to her home town

of Kolkata. During an audience interaction later,with Roy,a young gentleman asked her,“I’ve heard that cats are like women,ignore them and they’ll come to you. What do you think of that?” Pat came Roy’s reply,“Most women and cats I know will just move ahead and find better company.” Another light moment came when Thayil,while handing over the award to her,pretended to have forgotten the cash prize of Rs 1 lakh.