Its not everyday you have a friend who writes for a living. Its not everyday that a writer friend publishes a book and you get one of the first autographed copies. I am talking about “The Purple Lotus and Other Stories” written by my friend Ratna Rao Shekar. I have known Ratna Rao Shekar for a little under eight years - more as an ardent book-lover and benign editor of “Wow Hyderabad” and “Housecalls”. While Wow has its instant appeal with the uber-cool of Hydurban, Housecalls is a deceptively lesser-known but over-appreciated magazine for Doctors but whose contents go beyond medical matters. After bringing out a coffee table book earlier “Journey without a map” which captures her best travel pieces from “Housecalls”, she is now the proud author of a much-awaited book, her debut book of short stories – THE PURPLE LOTUS. Though I read as much as one book of fiction as I read of eight books of non-fiction, I find the collection a good read- though it hems with adipose narrative at times.Thirteen stories in all, Ratna uses all of her travelling experiences to tell us tales of diverse folks making their own exploratory trips in Benares, Kerala, Sri Lanka, Kodaikanal, Darjeeling, New York, Singapore, Diu, Andaman and Italy.
If you love travel and the intersection of spaces between Personalised narrative, fiction and nostalgia, you will lap this book. Her style of writing, for those who read her stuff in Wow!Hyderabad and Housecalls is reflective, natural and honest. There is a bit of Naipaul-like prose – and Proust-like dabbling commentary on everything under the sun but centred on filial relations, literary love, careers, kindness and writerly raptures. Having published stories and articles in leading magazines and newspapers, I knew Ratna Rao had the material of many books. Here she gives her rich, unbiased observations on things as they were on matters from loving and death to spirituality and materialism to the emptiness as well as fulfillment that fills most lives. How happy each is in their world and how uniquely unhappy or messier others get – you are given snapshots of both in first and second accounts. The book is a decent debut of short stories that you will eventually connect with in the multiple characters – of writers, spiritualists, dancers, engineers, artistes, doctors, teeny-boppers, sahasrapoornima-seen grandmothers, even tribals. Of course, you may not like every story for the prisms through which the writer characterizes the players but it is quite a quality effort for a writer to publish her first book of short-stories – Ratna’s book bears her own stamp, and with a belief in world-view in a voice that’s her own. Somerset Maugham has given only one solid piece of wisdom for any aspiring writer – Write what you know. Ratna Rao projects her knowledge of things literary and of human nature very well. “Purple Lotus” acquaints you well with a journalist-writer who has never shied from writing passionately and honestly about. For those who know her, there are few stories which are autobiographical and revealing and definitely a tribute to some of her closed ones who nurtured and mentored her. The book is published by Mapinlit (www.mapinpub.com) with an elegant cover and truly international-class printing standards (who else, but Pragati Printing can do it). Congratulations!
If you love travel and the intersection of spaces between Personalised narrative, fiction and nostalgia, you will lap this book. Her style of writing, for those who read her stuff in Wow!Hyderabad and Housecalls is reflective, natural and honest. There is a bit of Naipaul-like prose – and Proust-like dabbling commentary on everything under the sun but centred on filial relations, literary love, careers, kindness and writerly raptures. Having published stories and articles in leading magazines and newspapers, I knew Ratna Rao had the material of many books. Here she gives her rich, unbiased observations on things as they were on matters from loving and death to spirituality and materialism to the emptiness as well as fulfillment that fills most lives. How happy each is in their world and how uniquely unhappy or messier others get – you are given snapshots of both in first and second accounts. The book is a decent debut of short stories that you will eventually connect with in the multiple characters – of writers, spiritualists, dancers, engineers, artistes, doctors, teeny-boppers, sahasrapoornima-seen grandmothers, even tribals. Of course, you may not like every story for the prisms through which the writer characterizes the players but it is quite a quality effort for a writer to publish her first book of short-stories – Ratna’s book bears her own stamp, and with a belief in world-view in a voice that’s her own. Somerset Maugham has given only one solid piece of wisdom for any aspiring writer – Write what you know. Ratna Rao projects her knowledge of things literary and of human nature very well. “Purple Lotus” acquaints you well with a journalist-writer who has never shied from writing passionately and honestly about. For those who know her, there are few stories which are autobiographical and revealing and definitely a tribute to some of her closed ones who nurtured and mentored her. The book is published by Mapinlit (www.mapinpub.com) with an elegant cover and truly international-class printing standards (who else, but Pragati Printing can do it). Congratulations!
