Novel attempt

PUNE, June 22: Her father, a retired air marshal, grows orchids near Pune, her brother works on Wall Street, and she flits between New York,...

PUNE, June 22: Her father, a retired air marshal, grows orchids near Pune, her brother works on Wall Street, and she flits between New York, Mumbai and Pune, doing development projects for the Ford Foundation. And when she is not on the move, 35-year-old Sohaila Abdulali writes fiction. She recently launched her first novel, The Madwoman of Jogare.

The work, like most other first novels, has an autobiographical flavour. 8220;I write non-fiction to pay the rent, as fiction isn8217;t a profitable business for most of us,8221; she says.

The village where her parents chose to settle 11 years ago serves as the backdrop for her book, which, she says, is 8220;about land, about how it should be used, about whether to cut trees or to grow them.8221; That Abdulali loves the place is obvious from her account of the time spent with her parents.

8220;My father8217;s orchid farm received electricity only two years ago,8221; she remembers. 8220;Before that, it was playing scrabble in the candlelight and going to bed at eight.8221;

Abdulali insists her novel isn8217;t autobiographical. 8220;It has the spirit of the place and deals with issues close to the life of people who till the land. The place is real, but the people are not.8221; The animals in the farm that figure in the novel are real, though, and she calls her 8220;not very well-behaved dog8221; one of the stars of the plot.

In sections that spread over three years, this novel has a romance thrown in a very necessary ingredient! and a flashback to the colonial times. Interestingly, the mad woman of Jagore makes just a couple of appearances, but is central to the theme since she does a dance to augur good monsoons.

Writing a novel isn8217;t just about penning down your thoughts, but also about finding the right publisher, as Abdulali soon found out. In New York, she had to hunt for a literary agent first, since one does not just go to a publisher with a manuscript. 8220;It8217;s traumatic. Agents ignore you, don8217;t read your manuscript for months, don8217;t get back, and when you call, they don8217;t know you.8221; Finally, a friend asked her to get in touch with Harper Collins Publishers India. She called them from New York and they asked for the first section of her book. That was enough for them to agree to publish it.

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The Madwoman of Jogare has already taken a backseat in Adbulali8217;s scheme of things, as she8217;s busy writing her next novel, set in New York, 8220;about a bunch of Indians who don8217;t know what to do, where to go. I guess every expatriate has to write about that.8221; She chose New York as the setting simply because she finds it 8220;difficult to imagine life in India, sitting in New York. So I took the easy way out and wrote about expats.8221;

A Wall Street skulduggery sub-plot has been woven into the story, with her brother providing the background. 8220;But this novel is not as special as The Madwoman of Jogare, it is not about my life or about the place I love.8221;

Whatever be the reaction, Abdulali loves fiction 8220;because you don8217;t have to stick to the facts8221; and plans to keep writing for years to come. And nothing deters her, not even the absence of electricity, which forced her to write chunks of The Madwoman of Jogare in longhand. Or even spending long hours in mouldy archives to get the flavour of the language used by the British rulers for her section on the colonial times.