She too made a choice

BANGALORE: About 20 years ago, when Lakshmi Menon, while attempting to write a short story, ended up sensing a profusion of words that she couldn’t contain in a few skeletal chapters. The dam of exuberance burst and she started writing her first English novel. “My husband suggested that I make it a novel,” recalls the author who came to Bangalore after her marriage. But when her husband passed away, it turned her world around. She had to focus on her career and two young daughters and she put her story on hold for 20 years until the city got to see her completed work on Saturday. “I took up the task of completing the book after my retirement a few years ago. My two daughters are married and have settled down and I have a lot of time in my hands,” says Lakshmi. The Second Choice, captures the story of two young people, Pavithra and Venu, who get into a second marriage at a time when remarriage was  not the norm in the country. Put across in an easy to grasp diction, she delves into the subject of remarriage, love and sacrifice. Lakshmi who began writing in Malayalam abides by what the literary greats from Kerala uphold – that everybody should be able to read a book. “Writers like M T Vasudevan Nair, Vaikom Muhammad Basheer and Thakazhi Sivasankara Pillai believed that a story should be simple enough to be read by anyone,” she points out. “But yes, I know that there will be critics. But everybody needn’t think the same way. My daughter read the book before I published it and asked me to change a couple of things to suit the present day,” she adds. It is to be recalled that her novel, Veendum Yatra in Malayalam was serialised in a Malayalam weekly in 1989. She has also written short stories in both Malayalam and English, apart from children’s books. “I watch my one-and-a-half-year -old grandson and imagine what he thinks sometimes. That’s how I write books for children. But working on a serious novel and a children’s book cannot happen in tandem,” she explains.  Lakshmi is currently working on a children’s book and a travelogue.