Publisher and editor Nandita Aggarwal (1964-2022): Colleagues, writers remember a warm human being

The day my long standing editor, mentor and beloved friend, Nandita Aggarwal passed away miles away from me, in a private hospital in the national capital on the rain-washed, last day of June, I was supposed to pick up my sister from her school, in the city of my birth, Kolkata. The news reached me via a flurry of Whatsapp messages the minute I switched my mobile phone back on. The previous two nights had been difficult.

Nandita had battled for her life.

‘Pray for her peace,’ my father advised solemnly.

I don’t quite know if I really did.

I prayed that Nandita would live. That she’d turn back time. Reverse the ravages of the terminal illness that was to swallow her, in the end. I was selfish, and perhaps even childish, as I folded my hands and sat, tear stained, before my Buddha corner in my dark bedroom and literally begged for Nandita’s life.

‘Please, please…let Nandita be free from pain…let me see her again, in August…’ I wept inconsolably.

I was late in picking up Geru from school that afternoon. As soon as our glances intersected, I broke down, literally collapsing to my knees. ‘I lost my boss,’ was all I could mumble, my shoulders caving in.

Geru was five when my first novel, Faraway Music, was published by Hachette. She would refer to Nandita, who was then with Hachette, as ‘Boss,’ and often ferried my mobile to me as I sat rewriting or reading proofs, her tiny eyes lighting up as she pointed at the illuminated phone screen.

‘Boss phone koreche (boss has called),’ she would always say, a slow smile spreading over her thin lips.

That is how I still have Nandita’s number saved on my phone – even after her professional address shifted, as did mine. As I went on to write more books. As we grew from professional acquaintances working on my debut novel to close friends to soul family to women who saw each other – clearly, courageously, compassionately.

I dream of Nandita, on the night of her passing, sleep finally caressing my swollen eyelids. In a starched off-white silk Fab India kurta, a coffee mug in her right hand, her face lit by the early morning light, her lengthy fingers slowly unlocking a garage of sorts.

‘Hey Sreemoyee!’ she looks back, just then, in my direction, her right arm outstretched.

I lean in.

There is a moment or so of silence. So deep, so desirous, that it allows us to disappear into its depths. I want to say something. So much.

I cannot. And so I wait, and watch.

Nandita places the coffee mug on a low turquoise stool and then steps forward and picks a large glass jar. Wordlessly, and one by one, she sets free newly-born butterflies. Some of them flutter their wings with difficulty, lingering on her arm for minutes before picking up speed and flying away. Some leave the instant she allows them. Some stay on, inside. Not moving. Unprepared.

That is the extent of my dream.

That is how Nandita found a lot of us.

I spoke to some of her friends – colleagues, writers, publishers – to whom she was the wind beneath their wings, guiding them through their first, and further, publications, with just as much deep intelligence as the care and empathy of the Nandita in my dream.

‘A special eye’

Publisher Karthika VK, Nandita’s colleague at HarperCollins, someone who worked closely with her in the years 2007-2009, points at her incisive talent as a mentor. ‘Nandita had a special eye for new writers and what would work as a commercially successful book, being able to spot a gem from amongst the pile of proposals, even, unsolicited manuscripts,’ she said.

Citing the work of 2013 Pulitzer Award winning poet Vijay Seshadri as one of the many manuscripts Nandita had insisted on acquiring, Karthika said, ‘She nursed a deep love for poetry and literary fiction and it was on her insistence that we acquired the rights from Vijay’s US publisher. She signed on Mukul Deva’s 2008 thriller Lashkar. Advaita Kala’s fast-paced chick-lit, Almost Single, was hers. She was also Tarun Tejpal’s first editor. Someone he trusted implicitly for her sound editorial advice.’

‘Writers trusted her vision, her views and she then went on to work with them on their second, and often, third books as a long-term editor,’ Karthika added. ‘Younger colleagues, who trained under her tutelage, received clear instructions from her and with her clear mind, she soon became a figure they could go to.’

Karthika passed the phone to her present-day colleague Minakshi Thakur. ‘When I joined HarperCollins in 2007,’ Thakur said, ‘Karthika’s father had just passed away and she was on leave and I remember feeling very lost. Every day, Nandita would take me to a new place to eat in Connaught Place, where our office was located. And while she was so senior – and our relationship could be daunting – I soon felt at ease. ‘

Thakur continued, ‘I learnt a lot from her about the structural editing process. In fact, Nandita had this peculiar habit of actually taking printouts of the entire manuscript and physically rearranging them into separate piles and then deciding which parts fit in where and what didn’t. It was the first time I had seen someone do this not on a machine.’

The irresponsible giggler

Madhulika Liddle, best known for her books featuring the 17th century Mughal detective Muzaffar Jang, reminisces wistfully about Nandita’s meticulous work as an editor. ‘My debut novel, The Englishman’s Cameo, was one of the first books to be published by Hachette India,’ she said. ‘I was, frankly, quite lost and with no idea of how the entire process of publication happened. While Nandita wasn’t my first level editor (Shivmeet Deol was), she was very involved in the later stages of cleaning up the book and getting it ready, as well as getting me ready, helping me understand the ins and outs of editorial activity on a book. What worked and what didn’t, how and why certain changes might make a difference.’

Their accounts remind me of my own writing journey with Nandita. We worked on three of my five novels, which included Sita’s Curse: The Language of Desire. I immediately recognised Nandita’s deep understanding of writing from my experiences of watching her carry those books to publication.

Advertising executive turned bestselling writer, Anuja Chauhan, whose first novel, Zoya Factor (2008) catapulted her to dizzying fame, wrote on social media, hours after Nandita’s death: ‘Stunned at the passing of my OG editor the gorgeous, smart-as-a-whip, bright-eyed and clear-voiced Nandita Aggarwal. We met for the first time on a surreal, sunshiny day in the October of 2007, in the old India Today/HarperCollins offices in Connaught Place. She heard my breathless pitch, winced at my word count (a bloated one lakh, thirty eight thousand and seven) took the bulky manuscript off my clammy hands, and smilingly promised to call me, “in roughly about three month’s time”. I landed in Bombay to shoot a Lays ad three days later and switched on my phone to find a message from her. “So I’m reading your manuscript and I’m only halfway through, but I think we should publish it,” and almost died of happiness.’

‘Nandita got the word count down to just a little over a lakh, mostly just by removing “capacious” from all descriptions of bags, and “rapacious” from many descriptions of the male gaze,” Chauhan added. ‘We had our disagreements of course, but they were minor and the irresponsible giggling always more than compensated.’

Later, Chauhan continued on a call, ‘When I met Nandita, I was struck by her hairstyle, of course. A very distinctive Lady Diana sort of haircut and how cool she was – sans any airs or ego. My submission was a staggering 1,38,007 words and Nandita took off almost 40,000 words, advising me that parts of my first book could make it to a second and a third book, which they in fact, did. ’

Sudha Sadanand, former editor and at present President, Editorial Affairs, India Ahead News, who worked with Nandita at Penguin back in 1989-90, points to Nandita’s own sardonic sense of humour. ‘Publishing was a different space back then,’ she said. ‘The world was a very different place also. Nandita and I were young, married, women professionals with young children at home, and we shared a great camaraderie, bonding over books and writers and family happenings, sans any feelings of competition or upmanship.

‘Once,’ Sadanand continued, ‘I wore a false choti to work. Nandita, being her brutally honest self, quizzed me on how it was possible for my hair to have grown overnight. She ended up pulling it off in full public view, calling me a cheap filmi heroine. Those days, the boss would call you into their cabin to inform you of your appraisal. After I came out, and Nandita and I looked at one another, I asked her how she had done. She said the hike would permit her to buy a churan ka packet.

‘Boss phone koreche’

Her account reminds me of my earliest and most vivid memory of Nandita. I had been waiting at the reception of the sprawling Hachette office before I was ushered into her bookshelf-lined cabin. She rose to her feet to greet me and we shook hands. We were wearing identical Anokhi kurtas. Hers, longer in length than mine. I broke into a nervous grin. Nandita ordered coffee. Then she smiled, saying, I could compliment you on having great taste. Except you’d have to do the same, Sreemoyee.

Writer Manjul Bajaj looks back on Nandita’s humane approach to editing, ‘I first met Nandita in 2009,’ she said. ‘The Hachette office had just opened in Gurgaon, right across the road from where I live. I saw that as something of a sign from the universe, as I’d just finished writing my first novel. I sent it off to Hachette.’

‘Following up on the fate of my submission several months later, I called Nandita after getting her number from an author friend,’ Bajaj continued. ‘Nandita didn’t think it was their kind of book (a tragic love story in a rural setting), but agreed to meet and give me feedback. When I reached her office at the agreed time, I found her deeply engrossed in reading my manuscript. She was midway through it, excited about it, eager to reach the end. She liked it very much after all. And Come, Before Evening Falls happened.’

Nandita went on to sign Bajaj for her collection of short stories, Another Man’s Wife. ‘As an editor, she really helped shape the collection and take it several notches up from where it began,’ Bajaj said. ‘When she realised that the title story drew upon my experiences as a grassroots worker in tribal South Gujarat, she insisted I rework it into a larger story, bringing in all my thoughts and understanding of the power dynamics of the area and my love for the myths and folklore of the region. I had something of an imposter system, like who was I to tell the deeper story of tribal exploitation. Thanks to Nandita, I did write it. A 10-15-page story grew to novella length. Of all my writing, that is the story most special to me till date.’

Bridging the gap seamlessly between the professional and the personal, Nandita represented the human face of the publishing industry, helping many writers find their feet and following. The US-based Anuradha Kumar emphasises on ‘wanting to keep in touch with Nandita.’

‘She stood by me and believed me at a very difficult and dark time,’ said Kumar. ‘She was kindness and empathy itself. While the memory of that dark time still haunts me, I recover at the thought of Nandita’s kindness, her anger at what she perceived at the unfairness that had come my way, and that gives me the courage to go on.’

‘She said yes to my work of literary fiction (a cross genre work, really): It Takes a Murder,’ Kumar said. ‘She called me up on January 13, 2011 in Singapore, soon after I had moved there with my family. It’s only my Hachette editors who have called me with news like this and Nandita calling me was something special.’

My last outing with Nandita was in 2019, when Bloomsbury published Cut: The Death and Life of a Theatre Activist. The book was adapted into a play by Abhilash Pillai and performed at the National School of Drama. On the evening of its premiere, Nandita stood by my side and squeezed my arm while the lights dimmed.

My memoir is dedicated to my ‘Boss.’

‘Boss phone koreche...’

Sreemoyee Piu Kundu is the author of Sita’s Curse and Status Single, among other books. She is a columnist on sexuality and gender, and Community Founder, Status Single, a community for urban, single women.