: Anupama Mohan delves into her debut novel and the legacy of Tamizh #IndiaNEWS #Lifestyle <br>Not surprisingly, her debut novel Where Mayflies Live Forever (Picador) is as much a suspenseful

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Anupama Mohan delves into her debut novel and the legacy of Tamizh #IndiaNEWS #Lifestyle
<br>Not surprisingly, her debut novel Where Mayflies Live Forever (Picador) is as much a suspenseful mystery as it is a story about one womans self-discovery in the natural world, with a disillusioned but probing, and ultimately triumphant, heart completed during a residency in Kerala at the height of the pandemic.
Written in fiery yet sublime prose and rendered with extraordinary power, Mayflies is an absorbing exploration of violence and trauma, choice and identity, and the journey to find oneself in the wild.
As the only child of immigrant parents in Delhi, I was solitary for long stretches of time and turned to books. Reading, thinking, and writing were, therefore, a big part of my adolescent and then adult life, Mohan, an Associate Professor at IIT Jodhpurs School of Liberal Arts, told IANS in an interview.
I was born in New Delhi and spent my early formative years in Karol Bagh, a vibrant community of people from all states in India. As a result, I grew up around Punjabi, Urdu, Gujarati, Marathi, Tamizh, Malayalam (my mother tongue), Hindi, and English, making for a rich tapestry of sounds and words and images from my very childhood on.
It was also a colony of refugees both from the 1947 Partition and then, during my childhood, the 1984 Sikh riots, so I grew up surrounded by old men and women whose stories of lost homelands mingled with the nostalgic remembrances of my parents Kerala, Mohan added.
She went to school at the lovely St. Thomas School on Mandir Marg, its gulmohar tree-lined avenue a powerful memory of the natural beauty of Delhi in the 1980s and 1990s.
Then, she went to Jesus and Mary College for her undergraduate and postgraduate degrees in English Literature, eventually moving in 2004 to the University of Toronto in Canada for a PhD in English literature.
I think my love of writing creatively and critically coalesced early and I continue to write and publish poetry, short stories, and now, my first novel, along with my academic writings, which, of course, one has to do as part of ones research commitment to the University (and now Institute) that one works in, Mohan said.
Tracing some of the highlights of her life abroad and her decision to return to India, Mohan said: In 2010 when I graduated from the PhD program in U of Toronto, the economic recession of 2008 had begun its chokehold on jobs and career opportunities for humanities graduates, in particular.
In that year, I was the only one in my cohort to secure a tenure-track position at University of Nevada Reno in the United States, so off I went in 2010 to the deserts of Nevada where the oasis of Reno was to be my first academic home.
I worked and stayed in Reno for three years when I decided, with my spouse, to return to India to accept a position at the newly-resurgent Presidency University (erstwhile Presidency College) in Kolkata.

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