Ten year-old Chitrangana Varma lives in Swapnalok Society in downtown Mumbai, hangs out with friends who aspire to be cool, loves her mother’s yummy angel cakes, and hopes to grow up to be a ‘bathroom decorator’ of repute. But what she really wants is to find her father, whose identity is a mystery to her.This rather cinematic plot came to Suchitra Krishnamoorthi a year back while on a break from the frenetic pace of her newly acquired passion, painting. “I had written the synopsis many years ago when I was living the life of a bored, idle housewife in London. Then last year, I decided to take a break from painting — I had had 13 back to back solo and group shows — and was exhausted. While cleaning my desk I found this story outline. Six weeks later I had a novel and a month after, a contract to publish,” says Krishnamoorthi of her debut novel Swapnalok Society, The Summer of Cool (Penguin).The book which will be formally launched in end January, is the first of a series of four books that deal with the adventures of Chitrangana. Krishnamoorthi agrees, hesitatingly, that she had her daughter Kaveri in mind when she was writing it. “I do not view The Swapnalok Society as a children’s series — more like a set of stories that can be read by anybody age ten onwards. But, my personal life has been turbulent lately so it’s also something I viewed as a return to innocence, the way I hoped and envisioned life would have turned out to be. That’s a lot of fantasy of course,” says Krishnamoorthi, wryly. Of course, there are generous parallels to real-life characters. “There’s khadoos uncle and haldi maami and the boy from upstairs who falls in love with my didi. The characters have been fictionalised but their origins are real. I hope my friends will forgive me,” she grins.Post her split with director Shekhar Kapur, Krishnamoorthi had been busy with her career as a painter. There’s been intermittent stints as a poet too, but the one-time playback singer-actor says even though she is game for acting assignments, playback is a complete no-no for her. “I don’t have the personality of a playback singer. I do acting work as and when something excites me or when I am offered so much money that it’s foolish to refuse.” In the meantime, work on the series is well underway. “I fall ill when I can’t express myself. I am halfway through the third one already,” she says. Singer-actor-painter. Now author?
