Make No Bones

As author-producer Twinkle Khanna’s much-awaited first novel hits stands, writer Moni Mohsin catches up with Mrs Funnybones to discuss inspiration, unusual heroes, and the importance of being an oddball.

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I met Twinkle Khanna a few years ago in Mumbai at a literary festival. Told I’d be in conversation with her on stage, I was, to tell the truth, wary. We’d been teamed together because we were both, to use a favourite phrase in desi newspeak, ‘lady columnists’, and we both wrote funny. Her first book, Mrs Funnybones, based on her wildly popular column, had just been published, and had promptly leapt to pole position on bestseller lists everywhere. I’d read and relished her bold, sassy columns, but knowing she was Bollywood royalty, I was also bracing myself for some serious attitude. But she disarmed me. She was chatty, bouncy, alert, curious, fun and entirely unaffected. Within minutes of meeting, we were chatting about kids, manicures, husbands, blow-drys, weight issues, countries and oh yes, writing. So, when I was asked to read the opening chapters of her first novel, Pyjamas Are Forgiving (Juggernaut; out in September), and interview her, I was all too willing.

Pyjamas Are Forgiving is set in an austere Ayurvedic health spa, where the female protagonist, a 40-something divorcee, goes to find a cure for her insomnia, and promptly bumps into her smug ex and his skinny, silly wife. But there is nothing austere about the book—it has all the hallmarks of Twinkle’s writing: wit, sass, self-deprecation and large-heartedness. It is also an interesting meditation on what it means to be a professionally successful middle-aged woman, unhitched and childless, in a society that defines women purely as mothers and wives. In short, it’s a treat.