When Two Shillong Poets Met In Paris: My Evening With Karthika Nair

I interviewed Karthika Nair and Marilyn Hacker in 2024. At that time, I didn't understand how the universe had led me to both of them, especially Karthika, for a very meaningful reason. But I suppose time always waits for the right moment to reveal its magic.

Karthika has been living in Paris for 26 years, working as a French-Indian poet, dance producer, and curator whose life story is deeply inspiring. Her notable work, 'Until the Lions: Echoes from the Mahabharata' (2015), reflects her artistic depth. She is also India's only poet to have received a fiction award for a work of poetry.

Karthika was born with epidermolysis bullosa, a rare and chronic genetic condition. Growing up, she faced frequent illnesses and surgeries, often hospitalized and confined at home. During these challenging times, she found comfort in reading books that her parents lovingly provided.

Around age 16, she had a feeding tube inserted, which prevented her from attending college. Undeterred, she pursued a sociology degree through the Indira Gandhi National Open University (IGNOU).

Concerned about her emotional well-being, her parents enrolled her in a course at the Alliance Française in Thiruvananthapuram, where her family lived. It was during this time that she began writing articles for newspapers, expressing her inner world.

In 1997, she became a press attaché with Alliance Française, pausing her writing to focus on her responsibilities. Karthika shares that learning French profoundly changed her life, opening new horizons. She was awarded a scholarship from the Ministry of Culture to attend a short course in cultural policy in France, where she discovered her passion for arts management.

In 2000, she returned to France to pursue a post-master's degree in arts management and decided to stay in Paris, embracing new opportunities. Despite her limited French, she has been longing for her Shillong roots, and I have been running away from my turbulent years as a Bengali there.

The reluctance to accept that Shillong resides in my soul. The anger over the injustice of displacement and the deep conflict of hate versus complete involuntary surrender to the love for a place—where blue skies held double rainbows, butterflies flitted across my nose, and berries, plums, and oranges dangled from trees like gifts from divinity.

Why would anyone leave this paradise, your cousins, best friends, and the familiarity of the fireplace where our best ghost stories played on stormy nights, with the absence of electricity casting a haunting pall of militancy and ghosts vying for a share of their dream of a better life, filled with unfulfilled desires and sadness? We shivered at the hollow sounds of bamboo trees creaking in the howling wind, as my stories grew more intense.

The Hill Town That Never Left Us

Karthika and I decided to meet, unaware of our shared past. We met as two writers near a fountain, as she took me for a walk through the Jewish quarter of Paris.

We started talking, and I shared my formative years in Shillong. She paused, and her eyes lit up as she asked which school I attended. I wondered why, and she said she was a Loreto girl. We were schoolgirls separated by geography but connected through nostalgia for a place we both belonged to.

As we conversed, it felt surreal. In the heart of historic Paris, we became emotional about the narrow lanes we had left behind in a part of India cut off from the mainland, a place where women ruled.

We gradually exchanged memories of our idyllic hill station, the famous bakery, the bookshop, and the winding lanes filled with characters that gave the place its unique identity—places that didn't need an address to recognise the madness of misfits, artists, and storytellers shaping our lives.

We spoke endlessly, enjoying hot chocolate and reminiscing about the past. We remembered the grotto in school, where the rumour was that a nun had dug a tunnel to secretly visit her lover, a young priest at St. Edmunds Boys School. Unfortunately, boulders were placed against the secret pathway to her forbidden sin. We recalled the scandal of a minister’s daughter's pregnancy, which prevented her from leaving school for obvious reasons. 

Her departure from Shillong to Thiruvananthapuram during the insurgency, and my move to Delhi, our struggles to adapt to new schools, where most girls took pride in their morals and pretended to be disinterested in boys. As teenagers, their biggest achievement was excelling academically and being good goody-two-shoes. I couldn’t relate after experiencing the free matrilineal society of Shillong.

We remembered how, as Shillong girls, we had to adjust to new cities and towns. We reminisced about the glamour of Loreto girls. I admitted feeling ashamed of my quintessential Bengali name and wishing I were Martha or Maxine.

I’m not sure how we ended the evening, but as we walked toward the Louvre, she caught her train, and I stood there, marvelling at how beautifully everything had unfolded—bringing me back to a place I turn to in times of grief, searching for hope amid hopelessness.

From Pain To Possibility

Like me, Karthika finds solace in her writing. Her upcoming book, 'Electric Birds of Pothakudi' in India, was originally published in French.

In spring 2020, Sophie Giraud, publisher at Éditions Hélium—who also published Karthika’s first children’s book with Joëlle Jolivet in 2013, 'Le Tigre de Miel' (The Honey Hunter), set in the Sundarbans—joined her on this journey.

During this period, Karthika was diagnosed with carcinoma and underwent surgery, chemotherapy, and radiation during the Covid pandemic. To cope creatively with her distress, she produced a series of illustrated children’s books, all set in the Indian Subcontinent and focusing on ecological themes.

Karthika explained that she plunged into all the possibilities—there were many marvellous options—”I was moved when a dear childhood friend (whom I depicted as “Uncle Doony”) sent me a brief newspaper report about an incident in Pothakudi, Tamil Nadu, in summer 2020. 

The report described how the villagers decided to go without streetlights for 35 days because a pair of oriental magpie-robins, called vannathikuruvi in Tamil, built a nest in the circuit breaker controlling the street lamps. The residents feared snakes and thieves, but the younger villagers convinced them it was safe and an excellent chance for children to observe birds closely, something increasingly rare due to noise and distractions.”

She continued, “It was an inspiring report. I tried to learn more, and it was covered widely on TV, radio, and newspapers. The only details known were its location, Pothakudi, the supporting teenager, Karuppu Raja, and the community effort. The story in the book is based on the actual incident in Pothakudi, but it transforms into a fable-like world, illustrated by Joëlle Jolivet.”

The French edition was published in fall 2022 and won the 2023 Prix Félipé du livre jeunesse écologique, awarded by school children across France. It was also a finalist for the 2023 Jugendliteraturpreis, the Franco-German Children’s Literature Award.

Films d’Arlequin is developing an animated adaptation, and in January, choreographer Fouad Boussouf created a dance version scheduled for touring from November 2026. Meanwhile, the English and American editions were published last year by Tate Publishing.

In January, it was selected by USBBY for its 2026 Outstanding International Book List, highlighting global children's books.

As I spoke with Karthika Nair, I was transported from being a hopeful girl in Shillong’s school corridors to standing in Paris with an artist whose journey exemplifies grit, passion, and resilience, rare traits that inspire and uplift. 

Mohua Chinappa is a poet, author and runs two podcasts, The Mohua Show and The Literature Lounge. Views expressed by the author are their own.