Shreekumar Varma has a legacy to carry on. Varma left the palace in Travancore when he was four years old, so he hardly has any memories of the royal living.
Lament of Mohini, however, is a story of five generations of an aristocratic Kerala family. The story is set in a town of Varma's imagination. Yes, the story is based on his observations, experiences...
"As a little boy I would regale people with my own stories. I loved making my own stories but sadly took it up professionally quite late."
"Nothing is boundless, not even imagination. For the writer, the subject is his framework, for the artist the canvas is his space boundary..."
Varma doesn't need an `environment' before he embarks on his writing journey though "Waiting for a perfect setting and frame of mind, you'll never be able to pen a word. It's the mind which has to enter the world which you have created, not your body."
He believes that writing is an extension of self. "Agatha Christie once remarked that if she wasn't writing all those murder mysteries she would be committing murders herself. I do believe that the choice of one's writing mirrors the person. The first novel is a reflection of the author."
Shreekumar Varma presented the first edition
of his debut novel Lament of Mohini to the
Mahalsa temple at Ponda. He speaks to
BEVINDA COLLACO of his book and
the writing of it
Varma was a definite let-down. Especially a
grand son of Sethu Lakshmi Bayi, the last maharani of Travancore.
Forget about turning up with gaily caparisoned elephant, howdah
and outriders, the quiet pleasant looking man who smiled
apologetically while I gulped down my lunch looked like he
could be absolutely at home in a monastery.
Calm eyes, high forehead and pleasant well-modulated voice; there was no in-your-face attitude, no allusions to his royal roots. He sat down before me aware that I knew zilch about him, his novel or of the principality of Travancore. He came to our office in pouring rain after he presented his soon to be launched novel, Lament of Mohini to the Mahalsa temple, at Ponda. Way back in 1996 when Varma worked out his first few chapters of Mohini, he visited the Mahalsa temple at Ponda. He mentioned his book and learned that the deity Mohini, the female avatar of Lord Vishnu, was also housed at Mahalsa. Shreekumar Varma made a pledge then, that if his novel ever got published he would present the first printed copy to the Mahalsa temple.
The rest is history and through some strange coincidence, the day he visited the temple a special puja was being performed to Mohini.
His royal lineage was not half as exciting to a lowly feature writer like me, as the novel he has written. A published novelist is a blue-blood among writers. A Penguin published novelist at that too. Varma did his M Phil in English Literature and after a diploma in Journalism, he worked in the Indian Express, Mumbai. After that he has been editor, publisher, printer and lecturer in English and Journalism. He has written a children's book, The Royal Rebel, he has designed and broadcast radio programmes and has also written two award winning plays..........
EXCERPTS: Relaxing on a couch in Robert Clements' (of Bob's Banter in The Daily) house in the suburbs Shreekumar Varma, author of Lament of Mohini opened up his writer's mind and held forth on why he loves telling stories. Descendant of the legendary painter Raja Ravi Varma and grandson of the last ruling maharani of Travancore,
