Sheila Kumar’s childhood was filled with the humour and irony of Georgette Heyer’s novels. Can anything else be a better way to nurture one’s writing skill than this? She says, “I think the kindling was in place from way back. I come from a family that reads voraciously. My maternal grandmother introduced me to Georgette Heyer and Leslie Charteris. I was writing stories for my school magazine when I was in the fifth grade at St Felix, Pune, including rather unoriginal stories about a detective named Macburger.” Coming a long way from there, she has now reached the turbulent romantic tale of Samar Pratap Singh and Nina Sabharwal in No Strings Attached.
Her latest offering evolves through the complex atmosphere of the present day newsroom in Bengaluru. “No Strings Attached is my love song to print media, long may it live! This love story has twin pivots as the backdrop: life in a newspaper office, as well as life in Bengaluru,” says Sheila.
“It was a long-term dream to write a true-blue romance. Not a psychological, fantasy or paranormal romance; not even a sufi romance or a rom-com or anything else from what I now know to be a jaw-dropping long list. Basically what I am offering is an interesting love story told in an intelligent manner; a story that will entertain as well as inform,” she indicates on how No Strings Attached differs from the other novels of this genre.
Development of characters through a blend of witty, humourous situations and complex relationships can be the distinctive writing style of Sheila. She reveals the mental preparation she had to do for the development of her characters. “Would it sound facetious if I said these characters just walk themselves into my stories? Ammini Amma in my first book Kith and Kin was a composite of several Malayali women of substance I have known over the years. In No Strings Attached, I have this Rajput man as the hero and this exotic mixed-blood girl as the heroine, and for the life of me, I don’t know how that happened. I’m an instinctive writer so I just wrote up what seemed fine.”
In No Strings Attached, we come across different shades of Bengaluru. “My family came here in the early 70’s. Obviously, that was another Bengaluru, at least in the Cantonment: a time of innocent, quiet lanes, fragrance of freshly baked bread, much greenery and perennial cool breezes. That town has now transmogrified into a city and with it has come all the attendant assets and liabilities of city life. As an army brat first and an army wife later, I have lived in places across the length and breadth of the country. But there really is no place like Bangalore. Put simply, I heart Bangalore.”
From a staff reporter to a freelance journalist and now a novelist too, Sheila is conquering heights as a solo warrior to achieve her dreams. “It has been quite a few hats donned through the years, and all of it has involved words in some form or the other. Of course, it took time for me to get to the position of a writer, via advertising, journalism and manuscript editing. But I got here eventually. It has been one grand ride,” she looks back pleasantly to her quest for the love of writing.