Vaishali Vijaykumar By Express News Service CHENNAI: Seven years back, a young girl fled from Bengaluru to the US. She now has no choice but to return to visit her beloved grandmother, who is on her deathbed. While this may be quite natural for any granddaughter to do, the protagonist unravels truths that she’s been trying to forget all these years, back in her hometown. The Alchemy of Secrets penned by Priya Balasubramanian revolves around Mira, the young girl, and Ajji, her grandmother. In her debut novel, the author untangles the threads of love, jealousy, political ambition, friendship and family. Mira returns to a Bengaluru that isn’t the same anymore and she has a plethora of secrets to discover — right from her mother’s death to how the city has become even more polarised by religion. “One day, when I was driving back home from work, I happened to notice a young girl holding on to the little finger of an old woman in a white sari. The sight instantly gave me the idea for the plot. I laced it with my childhood memories of growing up in Bengaluru as I was also homesick after living away from home for many years,” said Priya who was in the city recently at Tryst Cafe in Express Avenue for the book launch. Priya graduated from Christian Medical College, Vellore. She’s a gastroenterologist and transplant hepatologist in Sacramento, California. She started writing the book in bits and pieces, 12 years ago. “I grew as a person as much as I did as an author. Every time I walked past a bookstore in Bengaluru, I’d picture my book there. Bengaluru is synonymous with nostalgia for me. In this book, Mira too enjoys simple pleasures like celebrating the Ganesha festival with friends as I did,” said Priya. Priya is working on two projects simultaneously. One is a collection of short stories inspired by characters that were in the periphery in The Alchemy of Secrets, and the other is a novel on an Indian-American’s experience in California. ‘The Alchemy of Secrets’ is priced at Rs 399 and is available on Amazon.

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