'Pillow Talk': a new narrative for Indian SA romance

HERITAGE matters. It gives us identity, flavour, rhythm. But when it becomes the only way to explain our romantic lives, it flattens us into a stereotype.

- NIVASHNI NAIR SUKDHEV

NIVASHNI Nair Sukdhev recently launched her book, Pillow Talk

(Supplied)

Too often, Indian characters in books and film are boxed into a single storyline: the dutiful daughter draped in a sari, dating under her parents’ watchful eyes until marriage is arranged or approved. With my new novel Pillow Talk, published by Jonathan Ball Publishers, I wanted to flip the script.

I am the author of a South African romance novel that features Indian characters in a fictional town in KwaZulu-Natal. I wrote this book because I love writing and romance, but I also love truth, and the truth is that modern South African Indians live far more complicated, exciting and ordinary lives than the clichés suggest.

Pillow Talk follows Shona Shah, a bridal designer who lives alone in a small KZN town and shares a “no-strings attached” relationship with her childhood friend Senthil Aiyer.