Anita Nair's Creative Works

Nair has written novels, short stories, children’s novels, a book of poems, collected myths and fables of India and the World. She has written articles and edited others’ articles. These creative works reveal Anita Nair’s versatility. Her creations include: Satyr of the Subway & Eleven Other Stories (1997),  Malabar Mind (1997), The Better Man (2000),   Ladies Coupé (2001), Puffin Book of World Myths and Legends (2004), Mistress (2005), Adventures of Nonu, the Skating Squirrel (2006),  Living Next Door To Alise (2007), Goodnight and God Bless (2008), Magical Indian Myths (2008), Lessons In Forgetting (2010).

Satyr of The Subway: Urban Tales was first published in 1997 but re-revised in 2006, where the writer has revisited her characters or situations long after she first visited them. It consists of twelve stories, each worked around a dramatically different situation ranging from the mundane to the bizarre. It traverses the entire gamut of human emotion, penetrating in their insight into male-female relationships and seriously funny in their take on the futility of expectations-from life or from lovers. (Back cover).

Malabar Mind, Anita Nair’s debut collection of poems, explores the real and the corporeal, landscapes and mindscapes with a rare fluidity of ease. From the quirky symbol of toddy shops in Malabar - a full bottle of toddy crowned with a red hibiscus - to the stressed drone of television newscasters during war time, from the apathy of non-stick frying pans to the quiet content of cows chewing cud, Anita Nair rakes through the everyday, seizing an unusual moment. And then she turns them into metaphors that cast a glow, suffusing ordinary things with extraordinary dimensions, capturing the strength and resilience of life.  It is like a poem in parts, rich with rhyme, rhythm and alliteration. (anitanair.net)

 A Better Man is Anita Nair’s debut novel which is an excellent effort. It is a novel written by a woman with a man’s sensibility, a man’s perspective. It is a realistic description of the violence and conflict lying underneath the deceptively calm surface of village life. It is a straightforward tale set in a village in Kerala. It is perhaps the only novel written by a woman which is not about an Indian woman. (Naik, 2001).  Nigam writing for India Today declares The Better Man is the journey of a soul, the story of a retired government officer Mukundan Nair, who returns to his Kerala village. But this means coming face to face with his dead past, millions of grey shadows and ghosts of his dead mother and ancestors haunting and tormenting him. (Nigam, 2000). Anita Nair has proved her mettle by fathoming the deepest recesses of man’s psyche and depicting it realistically. It is a psychological novel which discusses the emotional strains and traumas undergone by the characters. In this context I term it a psychological novel.  Nair’s fiction conveys her vision of life: change is always possible; hope never dies; and happiness can be found. You just have to look for it and when you find it, take chances even if by doing so, the rest of the world might turn against you. The Better Man describes every individual’s attempt to better himself.

Ladies Coupe Anita Nair’s second novel has the main action taking place in a coupe/compartment reserved for women. It is a novel in five parts with each chapter laying bare the dark patch the woman has traversed to come to terms with her life, finding her life force and failings as she does so. Nair’s message is implicit with the viewpoint that when life hands out bitter lemon, it is in your hands to make it lemonade. As Davaseeli argues “There is a strong message of hope through change.” She portrays women who stay within the orbit of social ties and protest against injustice (Davaseeli, 2008).  Vasanthakumari asserts “All these lives form a kind of mirror in which Akhila sees her reflection made whole, she is clear about grasping the happiness she has a right to. Akhila was struck by the condition of individual lives.” (Vasanthakumari, 2008).   

Mistress, Anita Nair’s third novel, explores the depth of human relationships while in a parallel strand unravels the knot that marriage has become in the society. Mistress can be very demanding even when it is art (35). Mistress is the story of Koman’s art Kathakali and his life. It also includes the triangle, Radha, husband Shyam and travel writer Chris who arrives in Kerala to write about the famous Kathakali dancer Koman. Chris draws into his vortex of charm, not only Koman but Radha too. Radha’s unhappy yet trundling on marriage lies in shambles and any hope of making it work is lost forever when she moves away mentally and physically from her husband and embraces Chris, in whom “order and chaos exist together...”(9).. The narration in a stream of consciousness technique, moves back and forth unfolding the ins and outs of the personality of Radha and Shyam, laying them bare before our eyes, while introducing us to various characters who helped shape the personality of Koman.

Lessons in Forgetting, Anita Nair’s fourth novel is a beautifully told story of redemption, forgiveness and second chances. When we first see Meera, she is a carefully groomed corporate wife with a successful career as a writer of cookbooks. Then one day her husband fails to come home after a party and she becomes responsible not just for her children but her mother and grandmother, and the running of Lilac House, their rambling old family home in Bangalore. Enter Professor J.A. Krishnamurthy, or JAK, a renowned cyclone studies expert, on a very different trajectory in life. In a bedroom in his house lies his nineteen-year-old daughter Smriti, left comatose after a vicious attack on her while she was on holiday at a beachside town. A wall of silence and fear surrounds the incident—the grieving father is helped neither by the local police, nor by her boyfriend in his search for the truth. Through a series of coincidences, Meera and JAK find their lives turning and twisting together, with the unpredictability and sheer inevitability of a cyclone. And as the days pass, fresh beginnings appear where there seemed to be only endings. Crafted to echo the stages of a cyclone, Lessons in Forgetting is a heartwarming story of redemption, forgiveness and second chances. (anitanair.net)

Goodnight & God Bless spans a literary career of a decade. This wise and witty book offers an ironic take on nearly everything, drawing from the experiences of the author as a woman, mother, daughter, wife and writer. Peppered with deliciously amusing quotes, footnotes and other erudite diversions, mostly unnecessary and unabashedly trivia, it is the perfect book to keep by the bedside, to dip and delve into anytime. (anitanair.net) Anita Nair’s informal autobiography contains all her life’s smaller and bigger moments. On the surface this seems like a hilarious thought, as she takes us through some of her experiences. These range from humorous anecdotes of being introduced as some one’s ex-wife, to possessing common quirks and qualities with others with a common surname ‘Nair’. Anita writes of someone, “‘Cherian’s books called, beckoned and gestured quite rudely’ explicit of its overflowing sexual content just like sex comforters of red-light areas.” She has a way with words, the knack of wrapping up whole imagery in a few pithy words. The caring way and the care with which she has arranged the chapters, varied topics to pique one’s interest, footnotes to satisfy one’s curiosity, and her idea that books written in with metaphor adds on extra element of everydayness, makes her book special.

Anita Nair delineates roles men and women play, and at the same time sends out the message that they can rise above their roles (like an artist can rise above himself and be a character) and be their natural self instead of toeing the line that society has drawn for them. Though her novels seem to lean towards women’s problems, discussing women’s roles in society, she writes with both male and female perspective and transcends the boundaries of what is supposed as female fiction.