New Delhi: As a writer, Anita Nair challenges herself to move into unfamiliar areas and one such detour gave birth to the psychological thriller “Cut Like Wound” in which she tries to lay open the underbelly of Bangalore that is mostly referred to as a glossy IT capital.

“This (‘Cut Like Wound’) is a novel that defies the conventional noir canon. I wanted to lay open to the world the underbelly of a city that is mostly referred to as a glossy IT capital,” the author of “The Better Man”, “Ladies Coupe”, “Mistress” and “Lessons in Forgetting” says.

“Bangalore is very cosmopolitan, and has to it many aspects of urban life. It represents a life style that it is fast and happening. But there is also a hidden Bangalore.

“Beyond the technocrats and big brands there also exists a city that has hardly been written about and this is what I wanted to capture, celebrate even. In this novel I wanted to trawl the city and different strata of the society,” Nair told PTI.

Steeped in the lanes Bangalore, “Cut Like Wound” takes place over a period of 38 days and introduces a host of unforgettable characters.

One of the characters is Inspector Borei Gowda. At Shivaji Nagar, a young male prostitute is killed and burnt alive on the first night of Ramadan. It would have stayed as yet another unsolved murder, but for Inspector Gowda. As bodies begin to pile up one after the other, and it becomes clear that a serial killer is on the prowl, Gowda recognises a pattern in the killings which no one else does.

Even as he negotiates serious mid-life blues, problems with his wife and son, an affair with an ex-girlfriend, and official apathy and ridicule, the killer moves in for the next victim.
“As a full time writer, I need to constantly challenge myself to move into areas that I am not familiar with and this book was the result of one such detour,” Nair says.

According to the author, the 38-day period happened in an organic fashion.

“In fact, Shivaji Nagar where most of the novel is set becomes a huge hub of activity during Ramzan and St. Mary’s Day. I wanted to structure the novel within these two festivals and hence the 38-day period.”

“Cut Like Wound”, says Nair, is also a literary noir. “On the one hand, it has all the stylistic elements of the literary novel. And on the other hand, it is completely governed by the hallmark of noir writing. Unlike ‘The Better Man’, ‘Ladies Coupe’, ‘Mistress’ or ‘Lessons in Forgetting’, ‘Cut Like Wound’ is told in a linear fashion.

“It is also a novel that explores the lives of people but in an unambiguous manner. Perhaps the most essential difference from my other novels is that ‘Cut Like Wound’ offers social commentary unlike anything I have written before. While the novel is driven by the characters and the plot, for the first time I have brought in the city as a character too”

The idea of the novel came when Nair was on a book tour in Rome May 2010 that a scene occurred to her.

“Once I wrote the first scene out I knew that it couldn’t be literary fiction of the sort I had written until then. Since I had never ever written a genre novel before, I was very unsure how to move forward. And then another image swam into my mind, that of Inspector Gowda – of a flawed man but redeemed by his belief in justice,” she says.

“In many ways he doesnt have the freedom to be the man he wants to be because he is still quite a traditional man at heart – a family man. Like all of us he is still searching to understand himself and this search is not easy as his job demands an exactness and precision from him. Add to this the corruption in the system and Gowda has very little option but to fight or just float.
“And his life is a battle between one state or the other. And suddenly I knew exactly what this book was going to be all about. It would be literary noir and would trawl the underbelly of the city and have a complex police inspector as its hero,” says Nair.

Her “Lessons in Forgetting” has been made into a movie. So did she have a similar plan for later adaptation while writing “Cut like Wound”?

“I don’t ever think of film adaptations when I work on my novels. However, I have been repeatedly told that there is a great visual imagery in my writing and hence it lends itself naturally to movie adaptations,” she says.

Chennai: Kuchipudi maestro Vempati Chinna Satyam passed away here at his house of age-related illness.

He is a winner of Kalidasa Prize. The country had honoured him for his contributions to kutchipudi with Padmabhushan in 1956.

Roger Garaudy, a French philosopher, politician and author of over 50 books, has died at the age of 98.

Over the course of his life, Roger Garaudy surprised the world with his sudden and radical changes of heart. Born as a Catholic, he later became a zealous atheist and member of the French Communist party before converting to Islam in 1982.

During World War II, Mr Garaudy joined the French Resistance movement, despite justifying Hitler’s anti-Semitic policies.

In 1998, Roger Garaudy was tried by the French court for denying Holocaust in one of his books.

Poet Akkitham Achuthan Namboothiri receiving the Tagore Literature Award from Union Minister for Corporate Affairs Veerappa Moily in Kochi on Tuesday

Veteran poet Akkitham Achuthan Namboothiri had his first poem, Tagore, published in a little magazine when he was just an 11-year-old. It seems he won an award for that debut published work 75 years later, as the humanist poet received the Tagore Literature Award instituted by Samsung and the Central Sahitya Akademi at a ceremony here on Tuesday.

“This recognition is for my first poem,” he said after receiving the award from Union Minister for Corporate Affairs M. Veerappa Moily and recited the English rendering of the short poem.

Besides Akkitham, who was selected for the award for his anthology of poems, Anthimahakaalan in Malayalam, six more writers —Amitav Ghosh for Sea of Poppies (English); Sheela Kolambkar for Geera (Konkani); Jagdish Prasad Mandal for Gaamak Jingi (Maithili); N. Kunjamohan Singh for Eina Kenge Kenba Natte (Manipuri); Indramani Darnal for Krishna Krishna (Nepali) and Arjan Hasid for Na Ien Na (Sindhi) — won the award for works published between 2007 and 2009. Speaking on the occasion, Janpith awardee ONV Kurup said that the universal humanism of Tagore poetry was all the more relevant today.

A multi-faceted personality who rose to be the champion of the freedom and love, Gurudev Tagore was a saint-poet of modern India and belonged to the Arsha Kavi tradition that traced its roots back to Valmiki, he said.

Sahitya Akademi secretary Agrahara Krishna Murthy and Samsung South West Asia President and CEO B.D. Park spoke.

Warsaw: Even as Hindus fight a proposed ban on the Russian translation of the Bhagavad Gita, in Catholic-dominated Poland the sacred scipture has for the first time been translated into the Polish language from its original Sanskrit text.

The translation has been done by a Polish lady, who has done her PhD in Sanskrit. Though there is a translation of the Gita in Polish, it was translated from English in the beginning of the 20th century.

The present translation has been done by Anna Racinska, who has spent almost a decade in Varanasi to master the nuances of Sanskrit. A late bloomer, Racinska is in her 60s and completed her doctorate from the Oriental Institute of Warsaw University two years ago.

Racinska, a mother of four grown-up children, took interest in Sanskrit on the prompting of her husband. Today in their home, all the children and parents speak Sanskrit fluently, and they converse normally in Sanskrit. It may seem odd to outsiders, but it is normal routine in their home.

These days the youngest sibling has adopted an Indian name, Yoganand, and he lives in Varanasi. He and his mother were learning Sanskrit together for many years. Another son, Phillip, is doing his doctorate in Sanskrit and has visited India more than 12 times. These children collect their own money to go to India and they give private lessons in Hindi and Sanskrit in Warsaw. Such is their commitment and passion for Sanskrit.

‘Her dedication and her labour of love have done wonders. It is a great achievement for Anna Racinska that she remained unknown for many years, and then all of a sudden she has obliged us in Poland with a great translation of a great book,’ said Janusz Krzyzowski, a leading Indologist and president of the Indo-Polish Cultural Committee.

‘We really feel proud of Racinska’s monumental work. No doubt her selflessness is visible in the way she has fulfilled her long-cherished wish at this stage of her life. But she deserves our praise and we feel proud of her achievement. We sincerely hope she will produce some more outstanding research books for the coming generations,’ said Monika Kapila Mohta, Indian ambassador to Poland.
The Bhagavad Gita, often called the ‘perennial philosophy’, is already available in over 50 languages.