As a professional journalist for 45 years, Gita Abraham has had a versatile career. She was Senior Assistant Editor of Hindustan Times, New Delhi, Associate Copy Editor of India Today and Associate Professor, Asian College of Journalism, Chennai, besides being the Feature Editor of The City TAB, India’s first community newspaper in Bangalore for 15 years, from 1977.
Having widely travelled all over India, various Asian countries and North America, she has picked up kernels of truth in lifestyles, character traits, geographical details and landscapes. She paints them into the fictional narrative. Her story ideas come from the business of everyday living.
In her collection of short stories, Avial and in this novel, the characters have endearing flaws, sometimes filling us with awe and sometimes frustrating us with their self-doubts.
In Daughter of the Blue Hills, she showcases a specific South-Indian culture mixed with British heritage while speaking to an international audience. The lingua franca of the region, its quirks, folklore and the social and cultural upheavals of those times are masterfully blended into the narrative and they effectively draw the reader into the frame.