Bibliofile

There’s a closer link between food and writing than you may have guessed. Many writers, especially women writers, confess to a compulsive eating disorder all the time they are working on a book. Manju Kapur, for instance, munched her way relentlessly through her first book, Difficult Daughters, until she discovered a way to satiate this incomprehensible oral urge by drinking fruit juice instead of eating her way through the next one. It worked—her second book is now with her publishers, Penguin India, and Manju Kapur is as slim as ever.

Anita Rau Badami, Canadian author of Tamarind Mem and A Hero’s Walk, likes chewing on her nails while she works. And with the deadline drawing near for her third book (she’s almost done with the first draft), she has hardly any nails left to chew. Except the thumbs. "I am saving those for the climax," she jokes. When asked why she doesn’t chew on a pencil instead of her nails, Badami answers with deep conviction: "It’s not the same."

Another veteran Indian English writer confessed in a weak moment that what she really likes to chew while she’s writing is a cigar. But having young and supposedly impressionable teenaged children, she retires to the bathroom whenever the Muse—and the urge—strike.