Anita Nair on crime novel, cops and Old Monk

Reading a crime novel is a bit of a challenge for author Anita Nair. The moment she gets interested in it, she goes to the last page to see how it ends. '' What's the point in reading a crime book if you know the end? So I could never read crime,'' confessed Nair who has two crime thrillers to her credit.

In conversation with writer Radhika Chadha, in what formed part of the 'Speaking of the City Series', Nair recalled the extensive legwork she did for her crime novels Cut Like Wound and Chain of Custody, both of which are set in Bengaluru. '' I went to several police stations. Everywhere they gave me the same tea and the same brand of cake,'' said Nair. A few days later, she realised she wasn't getting anywhere.

Finally, she met a police officer at Koshy's restaurant in Bengaluru who admitted to using third degree. ''It doesn't mean beating up. It is just a question of asking a person the same thing again and again till they break. Mental battering,'' says Nair. She gathered a lot of information from him which she later used in her writing.

Nair always thought cops drank whiskey. Then she had a chat with a waiter at Koshy's restaurant and figured out that cops in Bengaluru prefer Old Monk. Her research entailed extensive investigation on child trafficking and prostitution. ''During festival season, some of those girls who are pushed into flesh trade cannot even put their clothes back on—they have one customer after another,'' says Nair. She also took a walk along the alleys of Shivajinagar in Bengaluru at midnight, and watched a postmortem being performed.

Nair doesn't have a solution for the problems plaguing the city. However, that doesn't stop her from raising her voice. ''Inspector Gowda was my mouthpiece to talk about stuff that worried or concerned me,'' she says.

'Speaking of the City Series' is a monthly curated talk sponsored by Bengaluru's world famous semi-deluxe writing programme at Shoonya Centre of Art and Semantic Practices at Lalbagh Road in Bengaluru. The 'Speaking of the City' series features talks by eminent personalities who have worked in Bengaluru. The first talk in the series was with Ramachandra Guha.