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Photo: K. Murali Kumar

Bedside tales Anita Nair

It is a book that holds you with its simplicity, the writing is lucid, pleasing and enjoyable. Anita Nair, the author of “Goodnight and God Bless”, sets into motion a reading pattern. She talks about the peculiarity of bedtime habits.

“All of us have our own bedtime rituals. And in that final moment before eyes close is that penultimate act which ushers in sleep. A swirl of cognac.

A last smoke. Nasal drops. A swash of balm on the forehead. A sleeping pill. A prayer. A radio switched on…And I have my malted milk,” Anita goes on.

She also describes her own bedside scene, “…an assortment of books and things. I dip and delve as the whim takes me. A book of poetry, a door-stopper multi-generational saga, a classic and a random pick.

A lip balm, a pen, scraps of paper stapled and a bottle of Eltroxin to stir my sluggish pituitary gland so that it may stir my thoughts.” Published by Penguin, the book is in a chronological order, and though the idea was born in late 2006 the structural part was thought up when the author was laid up in bed for over two months with a slipped disc. That might also be the reason for the title of the book.

“I think the book’s tone and life force emerged from being unable to do anything else but this…. I needed to amuse myself…and there is a certain change of perspective when one discovers how truly helpless it could be to be confined to bed…a certain detachment happens that allows one to look within without cringing from the truth…or facing it in the eye.”

Anita Nair is a generous woman who was born wise, only the awareness about it came with, probably, the realisation of a wisdom tooth and she started writing — writing fairly vigorously. And that comes through in the book.

She is a woman who easily forgives, but does not forget. Along with writing come the family and the friends, and the little mundane pleasures of life.

Says Anita, “…life has taught me one thing, it is not to take myself seriously.

My writing, yes, but everything else that comes with it thereafter is not worth it if I can’t have what is important to me…my family, my home, my moments of pleasure in the little things.”

Life has also taught her to steer clear of “chasing chimeras for nothing will ever compare to the moments of grace that your life is studded with now.”

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