Dancing to life’s raga & rhythm

Her twitter bio reads “A fiction novelist in my twenties,” but when you get talking to 26-year-old Arya Rajam you would notice she has this air of confidence that comes from an established author. A debutant author, the daughter of danseuse Anita Ratnam and someone who looks ravishing as she walks past you, Arya gets talking to us about her novel Blood, Sweat and Tears.

“It was quite a daunting task and I took close to three years to finish the book,” begins Arya. A Chennaiite, she seems closely connected to the city and admits that it will always be her first love.

Growing up in the city, she remembers reading quite a lot of books and falling in love with the heroes. “I love reading and I have happy memories of my early reading days. Be it Nancy Drew, Enid Blyton and J.K. Rowling reading was my favourite past-time,” she says.

Naturally, after finishing her degree at Stella Maris, she packed her bags to learn the basics in creative writing in US. About her journey as an author, she explains, “I knew I wanted to be a writer some day and it was a conscious journey that I undertook to learn the craft better. When I started working on the novel, I wrote close to four drafts until I was satisfied.”

Her book, Blood, Sweat and Tears traces the life of a Russian ballerina and is set in two different cities, Moscow and Chennai. Being the daughter of a dancer, we ask her whether the dance element was a deliberate choice and she affirms, “Not at all, it just came with the flow. I understood the difficulties of being a dancer from my mom, other than that it was pure coincidence.”

Talking about her protagonist Zaria she says, “She is half-Indian and half-Russian with a multicultural upbringing; apart from her tale as a dancer, it also involves how she battles the cultural differences.”

Travelling to Moscow for research she says, “I fell in love with the place, it has so much culture and the people seem very connected to their history. Once I was there, I felt satisfied and delighted that I chose Moscow along with Chennai.”

This pretty lass reveals that she has already started her second book, “It has been a year since I started work on my second book, but I do not want to spill the beans on what it is about. However, I assure you it is going to be different from my first one.”