Talking location with author Renita D’Silva – Udupi, India

25th October 2016

#Talking LocationWith….

In our series “Talking Location with….” we are pleased to invite author Renita D’Silva to our blog, who talks to us about growing up in Udupi, India and using her childhood experience to inform the setting for her novels. Over to Renita:

I grew up in Kallianpur, a picturesque coastal village near Udupi, in the South of India.

‘Write about what you know’ all the books on writing advise. And so I write about the India of my childhood: Swathes of velvet green fields billowing gracefully in the fragranced breeze. The pearly raindrops dotting them twinkling in the playful sunshine like the eyes of a woman in love. Hills undulating in the distance, mossy emerald interspersed with reddish brown. Women in multi-hued saris gossiping while munching paan, men hoisting their lungis as they go about their chores. The water in the stream giggling as it trips over stones. The smell of rain and churned earth. Children huddling on a veranda, sipping warm tea and eating spicy vadais smacking of oil and contentment, to the muted notes of the plaintive song of women planting paddy saplings in the fields below.

I set my stories in the India I grew up in, a land of disparities, of breath-taking beauty and toxic pollution, of din and ruckus contrasting with the agonised silence of women who are not heard, of people who are as kind as they are bigoted, of spicy food and spicier gossip, of paan-chewing matrons and arranged marriages, of girls who yearn to grow into the women they want to be but are restrained by a culture that levies boundaries on them.

In my stories, I attempt to contrast the cultures and attitudes in India and the UK and explore the mindset of an immigrant, the question of displacement, the notion of belonging and the idea of home.

Food played a pivotal role in my life, growing up. My grandmother was in charge of the kitchen and when we were little if she came to the living room my sister would point to the kitchen and say to her, ‘Go back to your house.’

Every night, we went to bed to the sounds of the hand grinder as she ground rice to a paste for dosas (rice pancakes) or idlis (steamed rice cakes) the next day. As soon as breakfast was over, she would start preparations for lunch, grating coconuts, chopping onions. After lunch, she would have a quick nap, then resume preparations for our evening snack and dinner. This was not just her, though. Everyone in the village was like that and they still are.

When we visit, everyone comes bearing gifts of food and invitations to breakfast, lunch, dinner. Where I grew up, food is the currency of love. So, it is no wonder, of course, that food plays a very important role in my books.

I know there are many books out there about India, but I wanted to write about my own personal slice of this land of contrasts, of searing humidity and furious monsoons, of the generous warmth of its people, who will welcome you in and share the rice they are about to eat even if they don’t have enough to go around.

My books are about the India I have lived and experienced and want to share, the India I know intimately: its amazing food, the pervasive aroma of spices and dirt, the pleasure of biting into a perfectly ripe mango, juice trickling down chins, the ruthless sun tinting faces gold, the noise, the chaos, the dust, the glorious mess of contradictions that is India.

Thank you to Renita for sharing insights into the locations in her books. You can access her books here.

You can follow Renita on Facebook, Twitter and via her website

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