Of love, lust & more

Manpriya Singh

What started as an effort to paint a rose-filtered world without a speck of negativity, turned into a literary endeavour with redefined idea of idyllic itself. “A perfect and satisfied state of existence need not come without challenges and struggles. In fact, the challenges too themselves need not be overcome a certain specific way,” Chandigarh-based author Suditi Jindal introduces her second book The Adulteress and all that led up to it, which also includes her first book, where she, “talks about compromise, whereas in this I talk about revolution and even then it is seamless.”

The protagonist Arunima lives a life of luxury with all the checks in the right boxes, yet there’s lingering feeling of not having enough. A chance encounter with an old flame brings back the memories of old self, a go-getter girl...the experience, though carnal, is yet spiritual. “I introduce the issues, but by the end of the book, all the issues start resolving. Even if I have shown struggles here, there is no negativity,” shares the 38-year-old mother of two and married for 14 years now.

While the book took never-ending drafts, her reference points and inspiration remained the writings of her literary idols — Mary Baker Eddy, followed by Osho and even Kamla Kapur.

Charitable bent of mind

In between playing a mother to two and writing, her own academy, The Learning Curve Academy, takes up a lot of time. This is a platform through which she imparts knowledge and skills of English language to the underprivileged students.

Debut diaries

Her first book, Grow Up Moon, is a journey of two best friends; while one goes onto have a love marriage, the other one settles for an arranged marriage. “There’s nothing really that connects the two books, save for a female protagonist.” She adds, “Grow Up Moon talked about challenges of a married life; a few key questions that every woman has asked herself at some point of time in marriage.”

Bolder take

“I am in the middle of writing two short stories right now; the first one might be developed into a third book while the fourth, I have penned down for later,” she shares letting out about one of them in bits and pieces. “One of them is about love between two women, but that is for a little later when I am convinced of being able to do justice to such a sensitive subject.” Till then, it is The Adulteress.

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