Hyderabadi nostalgia comes alive here
A determined mother emotionally blackmailing her NRI son into marrying the right sort of desi girl and a live-in girlfriend following a reluctant groom all the way to India… Author Sadiqa Peerbhoy talks about the joyride of her first book, Marry Go Round, which addresses the nostalgia of Old Hyderabadi culture in a funny and emotional manner.
How would you describe your latest book?
The publishers called it a romantic comedy but I don’t quite think like that. I think it goes deeper into the context of a whole city. The way Hyderabad is today and how large sections of the people are the old Nawabi types who are completely displaced in today’s world and yet cling on to old values. This behaviour is kind of sad yet comic which the youngsters today don’t find very relevant, so basically it is the clash between the two.
From advertising to writing, how did the transition take place?
In advertising I was doing a different form of writing which was brief. I also started writing columns for different newspapers because that’s where I could write what I wanted to write. The transition happened gradually.
You wrote the first draft of the book in seven days. How did you manage that?
In advertising you write on a deadline. I have a lot of books which I have started and not finished. I am too critical about my writing, so I realized that the only way I could finish a book was to finish it without analysing. That’s what I did in seven days because I said to myself ‘if you don’t finish it in seven days you are not going to finish it’. Also the humour angle kept me going. I was laughing while I was writing it so it did not bore me. The columns that I wrote were topical humour so it was natural that my first book also had to be funny.
Going by the cover by the book, your characters are relatable yet quite dramatic, especially the mother — Sartaj Jahan. How closely do you relate to her?
She is a composite of so many people I have known. Little bit of mother, my grandmother or an aunt. To me it is very real because I have come across so many people like that. In fiction you have to exaggerate a little, otherwise there is no humour. I relate to her and by the end of the writing process, I quite liked her as well as a person. She is a rascal but she is still nice.
Is your next book a funny one too?
My upcoming book Ghost of the Barrot House is quite serious. It is based on the Bombay riots after the Babri Masjid incident; a homogeneous city which was polarised during that time. I have placed my story in the midst of this violence.
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