Something Black In The Lentils centres around the five year old marriage of Rajiv Ranganathan, a journalist, and Nisha Menon, a software engineer, both products of the ambiguous cultural miasma of contemporary upper middle class urban India. Their relationship is overtly and covertly impacted upon by the relationship between Rajiv’s parents, Barbara (Babs) Higginbotham, a motherless Englishwoman born and brought up on the tea plantations of Munnar, Kerala, where her father, the late Mr. Henry Higginbotham lived and worked as an expatriate tea planter, and Ranganathan (Nathan) a middle class Tamilian brahmin struggling to come terms with his Mylapore (the bastion of Madras brahminism) origins and his Lake District leanings. Rajiv is 'disinherited' by Babs, for reasons he annot even begin to comprehend. The story revolves around Babs' only legacy to Rajiv - a set of letters exchanged between Babs, Nathan and their friends Tina and Robert, when during the late 1960s, Babs had, for what she believed were compelling reasons, walked out on Nathan.  Babs’ and Nathan’s relationship is described mostly through an exchange of letters between the four friends. Rajiv and Nisha read the letters one by one and find themselves moving angrily away from each other, more so because Rajiv is convinced of the existence of a missing letter.

The sudden entry of two missing letters and the events that follow Rajiv's desperate search for the cause of his being disinherited, play havoc in Rajiv and Nisha's life, culminating in a dramatic revelation that is as shocking as is painful.

 

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ABOUT VIJAY NAGASWAMI

Dr. Vijay Nagaswami was born in Sindri, India, in 1958. He qualified as a psychiatrist from the Madras Medical College, Madras, in 1984 and has since obtained wide experience in several sectors related to the field of mental health. He has worked in the non-governmental organisation sector with the rehabilitation of persons disabled by severe mental disorders; in the business sector in human resources development; and in the private sector as a marital and individual psychotherapist. He has traveled extensively in Western Europe, North America and South East Asia, presenting research papers in a variety of national and international forums and undertaking assignments for international agencies including the World Health Organisation and the International Labour Organisation. His first published work is a self-help book published by Penguin titled "Courtship and Marriage: A guide for Indian couples). Also he writes for several popular publications (newspapers and magazines) on subjects of behavioural interest.  Something Black in The Lentils is his first novel, and he believes, not his last. He presently lives in Madras with Usha, his wife of twenty years, and works as a psychotherapist, relationships consultant and a writer.

Phone: + 91 - 44 - 26615547
Fax      : + 91 - 44 - 42857754
E-mail : vnagaswami@vsnl.com