Laxmi Hariharan does not disappoint. She is the writer and creator of fictional book character Ruby Iyer.
Let’s find out if Ruby is Laxmi’s alter ego. She told us,
“Ruby Iyer is her own person. She leads and I follow. She is strong-willed and spontaneous. But, often she doesn’t know what she really wants. So, she makes the wrong choices and pays for them too.”
Especially in the week after a controversial film dealing with a vicious crime that killed an innocent woman aired, the idea of a Ruby Iyer feels pertinent.
Laxmi explained.
“I started my career in Bombay as a journalist, and each day of my working life, the commuting was a nightmare. Not a single day would go by without my being brushed against or commented on by a passer-by. So, when a photojournalist was raped in Bombay in broad daylight a few years ago, it really made me angry. I wished for a strong figure, someone who would stand up to those making life so difficult for ordinary girls. Ruby Iyer was born of that anger. I wrote Ruby initially as a weekly web-series and from day one people responded to her. It’s what spurred me on to write her complete story in The Many Lives of Ruby Iyer. I was helpless. Ruby is not. She is an angry young girl who stands up for herself, and does not worry about the consequences.”
Laxmi described her book.
“The book is a white-knuckle ride through a disintegrating Bombay, as a terrifying encounter propels our heroine from her everyday commute into a battle for her own survival and the survival of the city she loves.
It’s about eighteen-year-old Ruby Iyer, who runs away from home only to meet with an accident on the platform of a Bombay train station. Recovering, she finds she has changed. As she is trying to figure out what’s happening to her, her best friend is kidnapped. So Ruby Iyer teams up with a mysterious cop-gone-rogue Vikram Roy, and together they journey through a crumbling Bombay city, to face-off with the mastermind behind the kidnapping, who is also intent on destroying the city. Will Ruby and Vikram save Bombay and Ruby’s friend? And what about their growing feelings for each other?”
Laxmi never said “Mumbai” instead of “Bombay, but she told us why.
“When I write, I tap into my memories of being a teenager, and I grew up in a city called Bombay. So the book is set in Bombay.
I read a lot of fiction set in a futuristic New York or Chicago or indeed London. It made me wonder why no such stories were set in Asian cities? It was natural for me to use Bombay as a backdrop. The city is urban, contradictory and unforgiving—the perfect setting for a kick-ass character like Ruby.
Laxmi’s creation is so popular, she said, that it is an obvious jump to moving pictures next.
“Ruby Iyer both as a book and/or a movie will appeal to people around the world. The themes in the book are universal – they’re about coming of age, about figuring out your place in this world, about following your heart and acting on what you believe in. It’s also about the dark space that teenagers inhibit. Where they are at the mercy of their parents and teachers.
Where society dictates they learn to behave in a certain way. But really all they want to do is just ... be.”
So it must a logical step for Laxmi to be writing more books on Ruby? Yes, clearly.
“Right now I am writing the sequel – The Second Life of Ruby Iyer. I also have a prequel out, the Ruby Iyer Diaries. Ruby wrote her dairies, almost daily, from the age of ten, till she left home at sixteen-and-a-half. It is from here that I picked out scenes from her early life.”
Laxmi Hariharan is a rare writer in that she is a marketer too- she knows how to sell.
“I am both an author and a marketer. So there were two of us writing The Many Lives of Ruby Iyer:
1) The author caught up in creating this hot-headed character that had a mind of her own.
2) And the communicator in me who kept trying to understand what Ruby Iyer stood for. I kept asking myself - why would anyone read Ruby’s story? What would make them recommend the book? A tough question, but one I needed to answer to have my work stand out.”
Clearly, she’s succeeded.
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Ruby Iyer both as a book and/or a movie will appeal to people around the world.
