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 Her
home is sumptuously Indian-bronze objects, patchwork pillows, Kashmiri
rugs, Manjit Bawa paintings. But Meera Uberoi swaggers in, donning ash-grey
cargo pants, lighting a cigarette. She has just moved into the bright,
duplex Asiad Village flat in Delhi. Most of the morning has been spent
in the "garden"-about 1,000 potted plants across six balconies.
But staying at home is a new thing for her. All her life, she has been
an oddball "vagabonder" (vagabond-wanderer), "bumming around"
and "pen-pushing".
Uberoi's recent literary excursion, The Puffin Book of Classic Indian
Tales For Children, is a treasury of Indian myths and folklore. With the
book, Puffin India makes a comeback as the children's imprint of Penguin.
Uberoi's retelling of tradition-"I don't talk about children, I talk
to them"-has been based on cumbersome research. "If I have to
write on Durga," she says, "I return to the Puranic encyclopaedia."
Research, though, is not new for the "computer illiterate" Uberoi-she
still sends out handwritten manuscripts. For her first book, The Mahabharata,
she lugged heavy volumes and stayed five years in the mountains. The aphorisms
got her rave reviews and as a "spin-off", she wrote a book on
management, Leadership Secrets from the Mahabharata.
Despite three children's titles behind her, Uberoi hates being branded
a writer. She paints, writes haiku and cooks. Her next offering is The
Penguin Book of Gardening in India. But gardening is her first love. Nibbling
on a "BLT (bacon, lettuce, tomato) sandwich", she says, "It's
the one job I can do 365 days." When she came to Delhi 13 years ago-home
is Bangalore-she only knew how to write and about gardening. "I even
offered myself up as a gardener to the manager of the Taj hotels."
There are other things she loves recounting. Seeing her light up a cigarette,
a Sanskrit scholar had once remarked at a Mahabharata seminar: "She
smokes. What will she know about the Mahabharata?" Her retort: "He
was chewing tobacco. I was smoking it." Same thing.
-Methil Renuka
 
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CURRENT
ISSUE MARCH 18, 2002
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