New Delhi: London-based novelist Jaishree Misra, who had stirred a hornet's nest with her last bestseller Rani, a fictionalized account of the warrior queen of Jhansi, treads new ground in her latest novel Secrets & Lies.
While Rani - the story of the rebel queen of Jhansi and her secret love affair with a British agent Richard Ellis - was banned in Uttar Pradesh and the writer's effigy burnt in protest, Secrets & Lies is about school-day friendship and suspense.
"I try to be consciously different in all my books. Since I have written about weddings, divorces, bereavement and human relationships and fictionalised history, I thought friendship would be a nice subject to write on with a bit of twist," said Jaishree.
Secret & Lies, the first of a three-book deal Jaishree has with Harper Collins-India, was released by Minister of State for External Affairs Shashi Tharoor in the Capital on Tuesday.
It has already sold more than 8,000 copies in Britain. Secrets & Lies is Jaishree's fifth book, all of which are bestsellers.
"The book is about four school friends - Anita, Zeba, Bubbles and Sam - whose friendship, forged in a posh Delhi girls' school, spans over 20 years. Intelligent, beautiful and secretive, the four come together for a school reunion to confront a terrible secret that has haunted them all their lives - friend Lily D'Souza's mysterious death on the night of the school prom," Jaishree said.
"I am very close to my school friends and try to stay in touch. I enjoyed writing this book. It brought my school days alive. But it is a shade dark - there are at least three deaths in the book which help carry the story forward," said a former BBC journalist, Jaishree.
She now works as a film and video examiner at the British Board of Film Classification.
Jaishree's life is as dramatic as her books. Born in a traditional family in Delhi, she fell in love as a teenager in school but was directed into an arranged marriage. The marriage was a disaster and her daughter was mentally challenged. She wanted a better life and applied for foreign scholarships.
In the course of time, Jaishree met her childhood sweetheart, who was still unmarried. She filed for divorce, re-married and managed to get custody of her daughter. She moved to London in 1990.
A University of Kerala graduate, she has two degrees from the University of London.
"I took to writing in 1999," said Jaishree. "Basically, I was working as a radio journalist in BBC, but they put me on the early morning shift. Since, she (my daughter) was young, she needed me. I gave up my job and started to write a memoir because I was bored. It became my first book, Ancient Promises. Then events overtook me," she explained.
Journalism has helped Jaishree evolve as a writer. "Though I was a broadcast journalist, BBC trained me to write. I learnt how to be brief, concise, fast and to meet deadlines."
Though she has written five books, Rani continues to draw the maximum attention.
"I guess the fact that I live in south of London, where Charles Dickens lived, got me on to historical fiction. I grew into the local history and when I decided to write a historical fiction, it had to be India. Historical fictions give you more sense of the place than real history," she added.
In the context of the ban on her book Rani in Uttar Pradesh, the writer said that she hates being muzzled. "I certainly don't believe that one can have unqualified freedom of expression, but offence is a very individual emotion that cannot be legislated against. What offends me may not offend another. But people unfortunately are too easily offended in India. I think printed words should remain above protests. A writer should feel relatively free to write what he or she wants to."
Jaishree said, "Bundelkhand was simmering with tension when Rani was released in 2008 and the local politicians used it as a tool to divert attention from the issue."
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