Written with plenty of heart and a touch of humour, Bharati Jagannathan's A Spoonful of Curds brings together a dozen short stories that unfold around Tamilians – both in India and abroad. From negotiating an arranged marriage and surviving the politics of the domestic realm, to love blossoming for the first time between newlyweds and empowering journeys of self-discovery – these stories bring out the curious, sometimes eccentric, singular world of their loveable characters. Accessible yet evocative, this is perhaps the closest we can get to a new R.K. Narayan – stories set in the recent past, told for the present and sure to be cherished in the future.

Talking about A Spoonful of Curds, the writer, Bharati Jagannathan, said -

‘Most of these stories were written in the first decade of the century, which doesn’t seem so long ago, but much of it was before Facebook had been imagined! I had a long commute to work by bus each day, slept when I could find a seat, and eavesdropped on the conversations around me when I couldn’t. When co-passengers got off, I would complete their conversations and life-stories in my head. Most works of fiction state that the characters bear no resemblance to anyone living or dead; these stories are peopled by folks like you and me and all those around us.’

Expanding on this, we have here a conversation with the author offering us a peek into her writer's mind -

1.       What is your writing routine? Any specific time of day you prefer, or a place you find it most comfortable to do it in?

Bharati: I don’t really have a routine. There have been times when I have felt compelled to write despite being neck deep in work. And long stretches when I don’t write at all. I usually write at my laptop, but have often scribbled stuff on random scraps of paper during my long commutes, or in a free moment in college

 2.       Which of the characters was the most challenging to write?

 Bharati: Not so much a character as a story. Guilt. It was just too painful to carve out in words even though I had the framework all worked out in my head. Finally, I opted for a positive end, because I couldn’t make myself write the degree of pain I had envisaged.

 3.       Which of these stories is your favourite?

 Bharati: Tough to say. Each story has a certain flavor and association. In Memoriam is really a tribute to my own maternal grandparents, so it is possibly more special than others.

 4.       How do you battle writer's block?

 Bharati: Have struggled with writer’s block for years actually. I force myself to write small things when that happens, but it still is very difficult to finish anything when that happens.

 5.       What is the inspiration behind these stories?

 Bharati: A variety of things. Some are really imagination let loose. Many have some roots in something someone said, a conversation overheard, a situation one faced oneself.

 6.       Which story did you have the most fun writing?

Bharati: A Spoonful of Curds, undoubtedly. It was one of my earliest stories, besides.

 7.       Any particular reason for choosing Tamilian characters, or was it more about writing what is familiar?

 Bharati: A lot of my stories have non-Tamilan characters; in fact, if I look at it statistically, of the 40 odd stories on my laptop, only 15 have Tamilian protagonists.  It is just that I put together these stories for a collection so that there is some common thread. That said, yes, there is a certain insider’s perspective that I can bring to Tamil characters. In stories which are less centred around the domestic realm, the characters are usually non-Tamil, especially as I have lived my entire life in north India and am more familiar with the north Indian cultural landscape.

8.       How much of your life influences the stories you write?

Bharati: I guess the influence is inescapable. I could not write, for instance, as a teenager or a twenty year old—their look out on the world must be entirely different from mine. My own preoccupations, my perspective on the world do colour my themes and my writing.

 9.       Has the subject you teach influenced your writing in any way?

 Bharati: Definitely. History is embedded in everything we do. I cannot but help but think historically! Who else but a historian would have footnotes in a book of fiction! More seriously, history is about making sense of the chaos of the past, bringing a framework to understand processes. I guess a story is, in many ways, a way of knitting together diverse events and incidents to make a logical, coherent narrative.

To read more, get your copy of A Spoonful of Curds here - https://www.amazon.in/SPOONFUL-CURDS-Bharati-Jagannathan/dp/9390327644/ref=sr