It was originally supposed to be a book about flowers in the Himalayas, your home for the last 25 years. But called by the hills It involves, well, mountains – it contains many images from your world in Ranikhet. You begin with your first visit to the dilapidated cottage where you eventually moved in with your husband in 2000. Over the course of this short book, we are introduced to many characters. There is your housekeeper Ama, whom you call “the Ancient One”, with whom you engage in what can only be described as flower warfare. There is your neighbor Amit who shares books, plant cuttings, advice and gin with you. You have dogs – especially Jerry, your “magical dog. Fantasy turned fact” who appeared in your life shortly after you wrote about your similar pet. earthspinner (2021). There’s the lemon tree that doesn’t bear fruit, there’s the baboons… It’s a very thoughtful, reflective book and one with a definite narrative arc. How did you plot it out, how did you decide who to include and how much, how did it all come together?
When I started the book I thought I would only write about flowers. but but. A line from Kiran Desai’s wonderful new book (Sonia and Sunny’s loneliness (2025)) describes how my plans changed: “This was India… You can try to write a small story but it is inevitably linked to a bigger story. Its meaning can never be contained.”
Once I realized my scope was going to be larger, it evolved naturally – the ones associated with the plants in my garden entered the book first. Yesterday, I was reading an essay by Emma Freud, in which she traces the genealogy of a gifted begonia cutting – from a cutting to its origin, spanning time and space, many lives and many sectors – before she discovers that the original plant belonged to her great-grandfather Sigmund Freud. That’s how the people in my book got into it.
The narrative arc emerged slowly for me – it came to me after the first draft was done, and I was talking to my agent Claire Alexander about it and she said bluntly, “It’s all about the dogs, right?” When I got a chance to work on the second draft, I focused on that.
The book is full of your artwork. It has colorful pictures of trees, mountains, your dogs, landscapes and lots of flowers. And it comes with six postcards featuring your paintings and two floral bookmarks in an envelope on the back. You have written about the artist Claire Leighton four hedges – which includes drawings of her garden – which served as a model for this book. But tell us more about your art and how it came into existence. Were any of the paintings created specifically for the book? What was involved in the creation of this absolutely brilliant book?
Over the years I started painting with oxide on my ceramic pieces or I would paint doors, cabinets: I painted things. I stopped doing watercolours. That changed when I went on a writing residency where one of the other writers, Sophie Herxheimer, was working on a graphic novel. She is a trained artist, and wherever she goes, she takes out a brush and starts drawing. With that, I started painting again – mostly of my surroundings. When I got back home, I continued. I also began experimenting with pastel and gouache and joined a rapid portrait-painting group online. My mother has always painted and many of my cousins also paint – we actually have a very important and supportive family painting group where we exchange notes and pictures.
Only two paintings were created specifically for the book. The rest were all painted over time, without any other intention than to create a painting.
The book was produced in close collaboration with everyone at my Indian publisher, Hachette. They were full of ideas and they nailed the production values. We had a lot of fun with the book, and I think it shows!
As you write, the early sections of the book are about living in the endless forest and making a little garden out of it that is one with the forest. It all seemed quite supernatural indeed – waking up in the middle of the night with moonlight on your face, birdsong of “uncanny beauty” echoing in the forests… dogs joining the howls of foxes, “a heart-wrenching sound that was not a scream or a cry but a song of longing, the call of one wild creature to another.” You started writing fiction after moving to Ranikhet – and I think each of your novels has been described as lyrical or thought-provoking or simply beautiful. sleeping on jupiter (2015) was longlisted for the Booker, All the lives we never lived (2018) won the Sahitya Akademi and was selected for several literary awards. How much of your environment – in the sense of the rhythms of the Himalayas – finds its way into the writing?
Would my language be substantially different if I never lived here? I don’t know. I think how a particular writer’s sentences and paragraphs fall has almost everything to do with their reading; And his understanding of architecture in a piece of writing, with music in his mind. Also, every writer has to change his prose according to the demands of the story. whether it’s the child inside sleeping on jupiter Or a middle-aged woman in the 1930s writing a letter to her friend, as Gayatri does All the lives we never livedI have to find the right voice for each one individually.
You write about taking copies of one of your novels to a hotel near your home. “I showed the manager the name of his hotel – it was in the novel, as were many other Ranikhet sites. Look, the book also has a hand-painted map of the town – okay, not 100 percent accurate, but close enough. Tourists were sure to buy it. Would he sell it? To encourage him, I said he sold locally made jam from his hotel, and there was an entire jam factory in my book,” you write. He took a copy, which did not sell – despite the paper band having “Bestseller! Local Author! 25% Off” written on it – because he had it safely locked in a drawer. Which novel was this? Is your work really still that little known in the city where you live? Surely, some journalist or reader must have come inquiring about you at one point or another!
The honest truth is that literary fiction in English has a very small readership, especially here. My new book about this city, it’s non-fiction, so there’s a lot of interest in it, but so far fortunately, people respect privacy and don’t come inside.
How was your life before coming to Ranikhet in 2000?
Rukun and I both worked at OUP before 2000. I was the acquisitions editor for Literature and Ecology, a job I loved, and I lived a fairly standard editorial life – work, friends, author meetings, book events, some travel, often a trip to Ranikhet. No dog because we were at work all day, and there were pots on the veranda in which I grew some plants.
What is your writing process? How does writing fit into your life, the hard physical labor of living in the mountains, the leisure and beauty there, and the pottery you make and the publishing house, Permanent Black, which you run with your husband Rukun Advani?
It is a universally accepted truth that if you live in a hill station, you will always be on holidays! But when two people are running a publishing house, there is not much leisure, no matter how beautiful the surroundings. I enjoy all the work I do – design work for Permanent Black, looking after its website etc; So, it doesn’t feel like suffering but it can be overwhelming at times. Writing happens amidst a lot of daily hustle and bustle and activities and if I’m working on a book, I become obsessed with it. I’ve always written – even before I knew how to really write, as a kid, I had notebooks full of nonsense. I don’t think I’ve ever been without it, and never will be.
You have mentioned several books about the Himalayas and nature in general. What advice would you give to readers of this book – writers about mountains, wild animals, birds, flowers or just being in nature – read on?
You can start with Stefan Alter to become a mountainSince this is an excellent book by a contemporary author. And there are many more: Jamaica Kincaid among the flowersAbout his travels in Nepal; Frank Smythe’s valley of flowers; Chandi Prasad Bhatt’s benign resistance. There are two beautiful volumes on trees and flowers which I would recommend to anyone: Sita Reddy has edited a volume route called Ars Botanica, The Weight of a Petal; Divya Mudappa and TR Shankar Raman have also given excellent portrayals Pillars of Life: Magnificent Trees of the Western Ghats.
I am currently reading Neha Sinha’s new book wild capitalIt’s a real lesson about the birds, trees, plant life hidden in plain sight in Delhi and how being attentive and open to nature can lead to surprising discoveries in the most unexpected places.
Saudamini Jain is an independent journalist. She lives in New Delhi.
