When someone hears the word ‘Wall’, it makes a person to think about secrecy or something hidden, which is not accessible to the world. I think it was this reason which made Sowmya Aji use this as the title of her second book. Sowmya Aji who could call herself more than a journalist says about herself, ‘ I’m a dreamer and closet idealist by habit’ but this closet opens in her writing. On the Sunday afternoon of Bangalore Literature festival, contrary to the perceived, Bangalore was juggling and moving with enthusiasm to hear this senior journalist turned writer and also Miss Tabbu Dinesh Rao.
The session revolved around her writing. The first book she wrote was called Delirium which revolved around an extra-marital affair of a cricketer with a journalist. While the first book’s setting was a city, the second book is set in a village in Karnataka. But this doesn’t mean that Sowmya’s treatment of her character changes totally. The underlying narrative in both the books was around women and their treatment of the situations one faces because often people don’t talk about the mind and the thought process of women.
The story’s protagonist Anaiah is mysterious. People of the village believed that she has come from the other side of this forbidden wall which was protected by four generations of woman of a particular family. But what was striking for Miss.Tabbu Dinesh Rao was the fact that the book dealt with sexuality and that too about women.
Young women in Aji’s book deals with the activity of exploring ‘Kama’ or sexuality. This also runs through the parallels of Feminism. Women trying to find and concern themselves with sexuality means the word has been circulated and soon it will be absorbed. Another question which interested our moderator was that the names of the characters in the novel are very similar to the names of politicians of Karnataka. When asked if this was deliberate or not, our benevolent speaker said that this must be a pure coincidence because earlier such names were very common. Topics like visible patriarchy, women and the power were also discussed in the QnA session.
About the Author – Kalpita is a Bachelor in English Literature. Her ultimate goal is to fulfill the romantic notion
of changing the world for better and she is pursuing MA in Development from Azim Premji University, Bangalore. She currently writes for Bookstalkist.