Still find it hard to reconcile with change in Bengaluru: Anita Nair

Anita Nair’s session titled Murder She Wrote was the first of three for the Lit for Life Dialogue 2025

“I could hear the thud-thud-thud of his Bullet,” says Bengaluru-based author Anita Nair. She was talking about Borei Gowda, the protagonist of her book Hot Stage at the Lit for Life Dialogue in the city on Friday evening.

Lit for Life Dialogue is a prelude to The Hindu Literature Fest scheduled to be held on January 18 and 19, 2025, in Chennai. Lit for Life Dialogue sessions, in both Hyderabad and Bengaluru, featured well-known authors and speakers interacting with audiences during concise segments.

Anita Nair’s session titled Murder She Wrote was the first of three for the evening and she was joined on stage by Jayapriya Vasudevan, head of the Jacaranda Literary Agency. Together, they not only discussed Hot Stage and how it evolved, but also how books and writing are a tool to express social mores.

Hot Stage is the third installment in Anita’s Inspector Gowda series and in talking about the protagonist, she reveals how he is very much a Bangalorean, shaped by the city we love and live in. And while she says she envisioned the character riding a bullet, “In my head, I just knew him as Gowda, and that setting the story in Bangalore would allow me to explore the city the way I wanted to. Gowda was going to be the person who was going to help me explore the city and in a way, he is the epitome of the city.”

Since the story is set in the year 2012, Jayapriya pointedly asked how Gowda reacts to Bengaluru’s altering landscape, including its changed name. Anita who moved to the city in 1989 and has been a witness to its transformation said, “The change in Bangalore is something that I still find hard to reconcile with. And in many ways, Gowda captures that perplexed feeling. In a manner of speaking, I use Gowda to talk about how the city has changed.”

Anita’s candid confession that she was never a fan of the crime genre in books was a surprise considering she not only wrote Cut Like Wound, the first of the Gowda series, but also followed it up with two others. Needless, to say it required thorough research and she shared her process, methods and choice of settling on a title, with the audience during the session.

Among other topics Anita addresses in Hot Stage is the depiction of the elderly in society, something she herself admits “is the last thing one would expect in a crime novel.” Set in our city and populated by people we know, Hot Stage is a work most people will be able to relate to and whether one has read the books or not, it would seem Borei Gowda will be out and about solving crimes in Bengaluru for a little longer.