What was your life like before your author started pulling your strings?
After an arranged marriage, I’d just moved to Bangalore to live with my new husband, Ramu. I was setting into domestic life and learning all about the things good wives are supposed to do and not do (from my mother-in-law, who is quite traditional). But once my author started writing me into a murder mystery, things evolved quite rapidly. I found my niche in crime detection, and now my husband is one of my biggest supporters. So it’s a good thing I parachuted into my author’s head one day in 2007 and demanded she write about me! (She’s a bit slow – it took her 14 years to get me into the first book, but I’m glad to see she’s picked up speed since then and will get me into one book each year from now on).
What’s the one trait you like most about yourself?
I like my height. I’m taller than most Indian women around me, and even though my cousins called me a beanpole and mother fretted about how tall I was growing, and how hard it would be to find a husband for someone with my height – I like the few extra inches!
What do you like least about yourself?
I’m clumsy and can break almost anything around me without trying! Now that I’m a detective, I feel I should be more careful not to leave traces of my presence when I snoop around, but it’s not easy!
What is the strangest thing your author has had you do or had happen to you? When she sent me into a brothel, I was horrified at first – but also fascinated by the women I met there, who were so unlike anyone I’d ever encountered before. But very quickly, I started to admire the strong women I met there who then became my closest friends, so it’s all worked out well in the end.
Do you argue with your author? If so, what do you argue about?
No, so far, we haven’t argued on anything major. I’ve trained her well. She usually listens to me
What is your greatest fear?
That my mother-in-law will insist I must have a baby soon, stop studying and give up detection. I know that’s not likely to happen – Ramu will back me up – but I still get afraid of this each time she mutters that too much studying makes a woman’s brains go soft.
What makes you happy?
Swimming, working on mathematics problems, and driving my husband’s beloved Ford car and whizzing around Bangalore.
If you could rewrite a part of your story, what would it be? Why?
I wish I didn’t live in a time when women were married so early and could have completed my graduation and started to teach before I got married.
Of the other characters in your book, which one bugs you the most? Why?
I really dislike our obnoxious neighbor, lawyer Subramaniam Swamy. He grovels to the British in a most disgusting manner, and I hate the dismissive way in which he treats his wife, expecting her to cook, clean and slave away for him without a word of acknowledgement. When his gardener, cook and driver wanted to join a call for a mass strike to ask the British to leave our country, he sacked them. He needs a good lesson in manners. I hope I get the chance to tell him what I think of him one day!
Of the other characters in your book, which one would you love to trade places with? Why?
I’d love to exchange places with my husband, Ramu, for a few hours. Not permanently – I like being myself, very much – but I often wonder how it feels to be a man, to walk freely, swing your arms and legs as you like, and talk to people you find interesting – even strangers – and most of all, to be free to study and learn – without the restrictions that society places on women. I live in the cosmopolitan city of Bangalore in 1921, and we’re not in some medieval provincial backwaters, as my friend Mrs. Reddy points out – but a man’s life seems more free, and filled with promise. Once I learn how life seems to him, I’d want to switch back, though. Men’s clothes are too boring, and I like my saris and my new tailored swimming costume too much to give it up to wear a drab black and white suit.
Tell us a little something about your author. Where can readers find her website/blog?
Harini Nagendra is a professor of ecology from India, and a well-known public speaker and writer on issues of nature and sustainability. She is internationally recognized for her scholarship on sustainability and has written a number of award-winning nonfiction books. For some reason (maybe it’s a mid-life crisis?) she’s now started to work on historical mysteries. The Bangalore Detectives Club is her debut crime novel. Harini lives in Bangalore with her family, in a home filled with maps. She loves trees, mysteries, and traditional recipes. You can read more about her work at her website.
What's next for you?
In Murder Under the Blood Red Moon, I reluctantly agree to investigating an embezzlement to please my picky mother-in-law, and then stumble upon something much worse. 1920s colonial Bangalore is turning out to be a much more dangerous place than I thought when I agreed to marry Ramu and move to the city!
The Kaveri and Ramu Series, Book 1
The Bangalore Detectives Club is the first in a charming, joyful crime series set in 1920s Bangalore, featuring sari-wearing detective Kaveri and her husband Ramu.
When clever, headstrong Kaveri moves to Bangalore to marry handsome young doctor Ramu, she's resigns herself to a quiet life. But that all changes the night of the party at the Century Club, where she escapes to the garden for some peace and quiet—and instead spots an uninvited guest in the shadows. Half an hour later, the party turns into a murder scene.
When a vulnerable woman is connected to the crime, Kaveri becomes determined to save her and launches a private investigation to find the killer, tracing his steps from an illustrious brothel to an Englishman's mansion. She soon finds that sleuthing in a sari isn't as hard as it seems when you have a talent for mathematics, a head for logic, and a doctor for a husband…
And she's going to need them all as the case leads her deeper into a hotbed of danger, sedition, and intrigue in Bangalore's darkest alleyways.
Bonus: A set of recipes for a quick, delicious south Indian meal at the end of the book!
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