Divya Kumar

DGP (Law and Order) Letika Saran, the girl from the hills, talks about her journey to the peak in the plains. DIVYA KUMAR listens in

Photo: R. Ravindran

Trailblazer Letika Saran

A fan of detective novels. A child of the hills. A dog-lover. A concerned mother.

The world knows Letika Saran as the super-achieving cop — she became Chennai’s first woman Commissioner of Police in 2006, and now, at the age of 57, has become the first woman Director-General of Police in Tamil Nadu (and only the second woman to hold that post in the country).

But, half an hour spent with the trim, diminutive lady in her enormous office on Kamarajar Salai, and you get a glimpse into the world of Letika Saran, the woman. You find out that her heart still lies in the hills of Munnar, where she spent her carefree childhood. You find out that she’s currently worried about a mix-up in her daughter Uthara’s return ticket to Perth (she’s a student research scientist there).

You find out that her favourite way to unwind is with her four dogs (two long-haired dachshunds and two recently-acquired pups). And that she still loves reading the detective novels that were part of the reason why she wanted to join the police force in the first place.

“I was always fond of detective novels, and I liked the idea of the police,” she says simply, of her decision to join the Indian Police Service (IPS) after her undergraduate degree at the Women’s Christian College. “I’ve worked in investigation for over 15 years and always found it interesting; so, I’ve never looked back on that decision as anything but the correct one.”

The transition from college girl to cop wasn’t ‘unduly difficult’, she says in her precise way: “Even the physical aspects of training weren’t difficult, as gymnastics was part of our daily routine at my boarding school in Kodaikanal.”

But the hard road truly began from her first posting. “I was one of only two women in the field at my level, and it was like working in a goldfish bowl, with the eye of the public and the department on you,” she says. “You had to constantly prove yourself — not just as Letika Saran but as a woman police officer. Failure wasn’t an option.”

And so, the girl from the hills began to blaze a trail in the plains. But even today, when you speak of Munnar, Letika’s eyes soften. “When you’ve lived in the hills, you identify so closely with the place — even if you haven’t had the time to go back in years,” she says in her clear, flute-like voice. “There’s something familiar about the hills which, perhaps, isn’t there in any other place.”

Still, over the years, Chennai has become home, mostly because, she says ruefully, it’s home for her daughter. “She was born and brought up here and calls it home — so, we don’t have a choice,” she laughs, adding: “As anyone who’s lived here for a long time knows, Chennai is a city that grows on you, and my husband and I really don’t look at living anywhere else.”

Our interview is interspersed with a series of phone calls over her daughter’s ticket mix-up, and super-cop Letika sounds endearingly like any concerned mom as she hangs up and shakes her head: “Here’s the kid not even prepared to travel today, and she’s being told she’s got to be on the flight…”

Juggling her job and family hasn’t always been easy on Letika, but in her no-fuss way, she tells me she was fortunate in having postings that allowed her to be with her daughter when she was very young. “It also helped that she knew exactly how things would be; she was independent right from the beginning,” she says, pride evident.

Today, Letika Saran exudes an air of no-regrets contentment with her life. There isn’t perhaps as much time as she might like for travel — back to the hill stations of her youth, for example — but there are always detective novels to read (“they’re ideal for when you don’t want serious reading”), her dogs which recently doubled in number, and, of course, the passion that has guided her throughout her career.

“From the time that I joined, I always wanted to prove myself as somebody who is competent and capable, who could do the job and get the job done,” she says. “That’s still remains my goal today.”

Celebrated writer Sivasankari speaks to DIVYA KUMAR on her four-volume masterpiece on India’s literary heritage and her love for social causes

PHOTO: R. RAVINDRAN

It’s been 16 years since celebrated Tamil author Sivasankari wrote a piece of fiction. Those years have been spent in a sort of literary tapas for the cause of regional Indian writing, otherwise known as Knit India Through Literature, her monumental four-volume work on the literary heritage of each of India’s 18 official languages.

The fourth and final volume of Knit India was completed recently (it was launched last month), and the author is in a philosophical mood when we meet one drowsy afternoon at her home in a pretty cul-de-sac of Adyar.

“I have mixed feelings – I’m deeply satisfied to have given back something so solid to my country and to the literary field, but also exhausted after all these years of travel and absolute concentration on this task,” she says. “I always think of it as a yagna that took 16 years.”

Not writing fiction during the entire period was a conscious decision – she wanted no distractions – even though there remained some very definite themes she wanted to explore through her writing. In typical Sivasankari style, these themes are very real, socially relevant and meant to inform even as she entertains (“masala-coating”, she calls it). For instance, she says, she’s wanted to address what women go through during menopause.

“No one has touched upon the subject in an in-depth way; there remains a stigma attached to it,” she says forthrightly. “People are so naïve in dealing with it – even women don’t understand what they’re going through, let alone their families and their husbands.”

Of course, social stigmas have never stopped Sivansankari from tackling issues. She famously addressed drug addiction in the 1980s, and subjects such as artificial insemination and surrogate motherhood back in the 1970s, years before they came to be discussed in the mainstream. “As a writer, one is always looking ahead to the problems that can arise,” says the author of 30 novels and over 150 short stories. “It’s like sitting on the 20th storey of a building and looking into the distance.”

However, fans will have to wait a little longer for the next Sivasankari story. The 66-year-old plans to spend the next six months setting her personal life in order – moving into an apartment and giving away or getting rid of a bulk of her belongings, whether it’s her 400 pattu podavais, the roomful of mementoes received during her illustrious career, or the three rooms of books, papers and correspondence accumulated for Knit India.

“I have to be practical; I’m getting older and since my mother passed away, I’m living alone,” she says, a tinge of pathos colouring the pragmatism. “Who am I going to pass this all on to? If I had children or grandchildren, it would be different.”

Her strong philosophical leanings come to the fore again as she likens this time in her life to the third stage of Hindu dharma, vanaprasta, prior tosanyasa or renunciation. “This process is teaching me to be non-sentimental about my belongings,” she says. “When giving is forced on you, you regret it; if it’s a conscious choice, you enjoy it.”

Not that Sivasankari is new to the art of giving and of social service (she hates that term, she says vehemently; anything one does for the betterment of society is one’s duty and not a special service). For instance, she reveals that she has been conducting 10 weddings anonymously at her temple for the last six years – her aim is to complete at least 100 weddings in the upcoming years. “I want to do as much as I can in my lifetime, with whatever funds I have,” she says.

She pauses for a moment and we simply sit and listen to the birds chirping outside in the sun-dappled garden. “When I die, I want people to say what a wonderful human being Sivasankari was, and incidentally, she was a good writer as well,” she says finally. “That’s my wish.”

KNITTING INDIA

Sivasankari’s massive literary project Knit India Through Literature consists of four volumes of hardback books:

Volume 1 on the languages of the South (from Kerala, Karnataka, Andhra Pradesh and Tamil Nadu)

Volume 2 on the languages of the East (from Assam, Bengal, Manipur, Nepal and Orissa)

Volume 3 on the languages of the West (Konkani, Marathi, Gujarati, and Sindhi)

Volume 4 on the languages of the North (Kashmiri, Punjabi, Urdu, Hindi and Sanskrit)

Each book consists of travelogues of the states covered, interviews with leading writers of each language, a representative selection and an overview of the literature of each region.