Children’s book author Arefa Tehsin on 'The Witch in the Peepul Tree' being translated into Sinhalese, and more

Children’s book author Arefa Tehsin’s The Witch in the Peepul Tree will be translated into Sinhala. We caught up with the author who juggles time between India and Sri Lanka to discuss this news

Last December, on the sidelines of Bookaroo’s Baroda edition, when this writer caught up with Arefa Tehsin, children’s book author, she was particularly thrilled about the news that her recent work of fiction for grown-ups, The Witch in the Peepul Tree (HarperCollins) was going to be translated into Sinhala. This fiction title will be translated by DN Dickwella, who is an author of fiction and non-fiction, a political analyst and a specialist in geopolitics. As a publication of Subavi Publishers — an award-winning publishing house that specialises in translations in Sri Lanka — Tehsin’s work will now reach Sri Lanka’s Sinhalese readers.

The part-period, part-mystery novel set in 1950s Udaipur, is centred on a murder around Makar Sankranti in 1950, and follows the events that happen with a zamindar, a middleman, a Bohra Muslim widow, a Bhil tribal, an attractive, untouchable teenager and a police inspector.

Edited excerpts from the interview:

MID-DAY: Was there a trigger to write this book?
AREFA TEHSIN: I usually write for children and young adults, and mainly on wildlife. There was a point of time when I’d have looked in the mirror and told myself “readers should not know what to expect from this author.” The triggers were my partner Aditya’s suggestion that I write a novel for adults, the blissful isolation of the first wave of COVID-19, and a yearning for the family and city that is slowly vanishing as I knew them. 

MD: Were some of the characters inspired from real-life experiences?
AT: Yes, though the story is completely a crop of my imagination, most of the characters are inspired from or are an amalgamation of real life people. Dada bhai is drawn from my grandfather whom everyone called Bapu, the monopoly holder of arms and ammunition business in pre-independence Mewar. He did a lot of work for tribal upliftment later as the Vice Mayor and acting Mayor of Udaipur. Mena Bai is inspired from my grandmother Khurshid Banu who was disabled; she was without a leg, but was instrumental in the women’s education movement in Rajasthan. She was the Vice President of the All India Women’s Conference (Rajasthan chapter) of which Maharani Gayatri Devi was the president. Badi bi was a child widow who ran my grandparents’ household, and so on. 

Not just the characters, when I began writing, I realised I had to do as much research for period fiction as you have to do for a non-fiction book. There was no material on that era of Udaipur available to refer to. I extensively fed on the historical memory of my family and friends; I especially picked the brains of my uncle Riaz A Tehsin, a repository of knowledge of that era, to understand every little detail about the food, housing, colonies, roads, customs, clothes, occupations, community relations, idiosyncrasies and what-have-you. 

MD: What does the Sinhalese translation mean for this book?
AT: To draw a parallel to what Gertrude Stein had said — India is my country and Colombo is my hometown. Since I am based out of Sri Lanka, this is really special for me. The witch/jeevti dakkan on the peepul tree signifies the baggage that we carry through our lives that exist only in our collective imagination, be it of caste, creed, gender or social conformity. I hope it will resonate with the Sinhalese readers too, considering the social and cultural similarities and the volatile period of the mid-20th century, when our republics were in the process of being newly minted. 

Available Leading bookstores and e-stores 
Cost Rs 399

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