‘There are secret benefits to ageing that most women don’t let on’

Writer Shinie Antony’s latest book, The Girl Who Couldn’t Love, is intense and riveting, written with her inimitable wit. Pegged as a psychological thriller, it delves into the world of the protagonist, Rudrakshi or Roo, as she is known. The author tells writer Jahnavi Barua why Roo breaks all norms as her story unfolds.

Where does the genesis of this story lie? Did you seek to write a book about a crime or is this about a girl and her complicated, tangled life?

It is just this girl’s story. As a character she is like anybody else, sunny on the outside, harbouring a couple of secrets on the inside. All of us may not go through as many ups and downs as her, but we do push the unpleasant aside and move on with life. This can ambush and derail us when we least expect, rearing its ugly head in close relationships or interactions with others.

Roo/Rudrakshi is on the wrong side of 45, single and defiantly unconventional. Why did you choose to write about her?

There are secret benefits to ageing that most women don’t let on. All the hard-won sense of balance, of suddenly becoming more articulate and of being able to say, ‘this won’t do no’ comes only with a certain vintage. To me an older woman is much more interesting in terms of the societal biases she has faced and pooh-poohed, and a self-knowing which includes spiritual fixes and physical needs. One no longer cares what anyone thinks of them.

Many relationships are explored in this novel. Give us a sense of some of them.

All our primal and first relationships are at the core of the human condition. The more we meet people, the more we appreciate or rue their formative years. Unspoken histories soften or harden intra-personal stances. The spatial element in human linkages has much to do with what we were denied as kids.

The book is erotic. Was this organic to the plot or something incidental?

I have never written of a character so sexually confident before. It is to do with her age I think. She seeks validation of her looks with quick unions, but flits away as she doesn’t really trust men.

How did you come up with a title?

It is inspired by Shakespeare’s King Lear, who was famously dissatisfied by his daughter Cordelia’s expression of love.