Exploring familial tenderness and discord in author Krupa Ge’s book ‘Burns Boy’

Chennai-based author Krupa Ge’s latest novel Burns Boy (Context) finds many ways to slip in the city through its many fast-paced pages. Familiar bus routes like 5E, mentions of floral printed sarees from Garden Vareli, the allure of the Vandalur Zoo, and the city’s unrelenting heat, are characters, just as familiar as the ones in the book.

In this drama surrounding a boy admitted to a burns ward, a writer-mother, and a young impressionable sister, one is immersed and finds themselves hurrying to push past the 120-odd pages, wondering if all is truly going to be well in this family drama full of secrets, suspense, sequestering, and quiet solidarity.

“I’m not able to dream up a story in another place as clearly as I have been able to do it with Chennai in the background. I have taken the bus everywhere, and I used to go to university by the MRTS train. I am also trying to see how I can incorporate the city without it feeling like I am just writing about it and so I set out to recreate the feeling of being in a space. Be it Chennai today or in the 1990s. And even Manipal,” she says.

It is why her official book launch is happening in the city with a dramatised reading directed by her brother Balajee Ge, featuring artistes Mrithula Chetlur, Rajiv Rajaram, and Lakshmipriyaa on November 16 at Vinyl and Brew.

A picture of author Krupa Ge
| Photo Credit:
VINAY ARAVIND

Krupa, a former journalist, has already authored two books — What We Know About Her (Context), and Rivers Remember (Context), besides co-authoring Carnatic musician Sanjay Subrahmanyan’s autobiography On That Note(Westland Non-Fiction). Her latest, Burns Boy, she says, was a short story that has been brewing since 2015. “But the actual story came about only when I finished my first novel,” she says. In it, lies a tale of familial truths that we refuse to admit. Do we assign blame on a single parent, a child who knows a secret, or a boy, who is well, just a boy at the cusp of manhood? Through the book, the reader is confronted with one central truth — that parents are people too — impressive, and unimpressive alike.

“After a writing workshop with author Anita Nair, I realised that I had this story that was inside of me and that I needed to be done with it. While I am more comfortable writing about women, it was challenging to tell this story from a young man’s perspective. I forced myself to read outside my comfort zone to write this novel. At the end, my editor said that the boy’s character was far stronger than the rest. And it was the women’s voices that required reworking,” she says.

She adds that an earnest attempt was made to explore the tenderness between these complex relationships that mothers and sons, and mothers and daughters share independently. The author’s descriptions of birth and life postpartum are particularly vivid. Krupa says that she also wanted to show a woman attempting a living and supporting herself through art, in this case, writing. Is it perhaps because she is inspired by the writings of authors like Japanese writer Yōko Ogawa and Italian author Elena Ferrante?

Authors do not tell people how to read their books but if there is a takeaway, what would she like for it to be? “I think it would be to say that families are messed up but people are inadvertently happy and find a way to be in each other’s lives,” she says.

She knows this to be true in her own life. After all, her inbox now has family send her pictures of themselves from Higginbothms with the book in hand, and a proud smile on their faces.

A dramatised reading of Burns Boy will take place on November 16 at Vinyl and Brew at 4pm. This will be followed by a conversation between the author and photographer Vinay Aravind.