’Love is eventually about trust, the ability to let go’
Reading was how she travelled the world as a child, Sundari Venkatraman, 60, says. She never imagined she’d one day write books too. But in December 1999, two weeks after quitting her job as personal assistant to a school principal, she went for a walk. “I was a frustrated and bored housewife. I needed a purpose. During that walk, a story came gushing like water into my mind. I started writing. I wrote 15 pages of my first book The Malhotra Bride in one go. The boredom and frustration disappeared. I finished three books in six months. Meghna and Madras Affair were the other two,” she says.
She approached publishers, 40 in all, but found no takers. “Most of them looked down on the romance genre. Which surprised me, because romance novels are really popular worldwide.” As she waited for her big break, she began to write for a living too, as a freelance blogger, lifestyle writer and copy editor.
In February 2014, Venkatraman discovered Amazon’s Kindle Direct Publishing platform, where authors and publishers can independently publish their books directly to the Kindle Store in a revenue-sharing agreement. Venkatraman posted what were now four unpublished romance novels. They found takers, which was a thrill, even if her first cheque was for royalties was a mere Rs 400.
In 2015, a fifth book, The Madras Affair, found a mainstream publisher in Readomania. Another thrill, she says, “because every author dreams of that”. But then she realised that the publishing deal meant she couldn’t publish anything else for six months before or after.
“I wanted to write more!” says Venkatraman. After one year with a publisher, she was sure it wasn’t what she wanted. She went solo again and, by 2017, had 17 books out, and was earning up to Rs 80,000 in a good month.
Her romance novels are distinctly Indian. The plots are often set in small towns, and involve parents, grandparents, uncles and aunts, scores of cousins. Every book comes with the message, she says, “that one can live with self-respect; that women have a right to claim their place in the world.”
She writes steamy scenes and is proud of them. “I feel romance is eventually about deep friendship, trust and the ability to let go.”
She currently publishes six to eight books a year, all via Kindle Direct, all with messages of strength and survival. In Ryan Finds a Bride (2021), the female protagonist Varshini faces challenges because she is dark-skinned and not rich. In Shaan Gets Hitched (2021), the heroine is a victim of child abuse and overcomes that trauma to find love.
New plots keep coming to her, Venkatraman says. Now that her two children are grown, she has more time too. “In the beginning, no one understood the importance of my writing or what it means to me. I used to write in the middle of the night. Then I made it clear that I need my time and space. It helps that I can write in the middle of chaos.”