I would love my readers to learn from the novel how each of us, men and women, Western or Eastern, face forces of all kinds that try to limit us, define and repress us. As individuals, we must rise up against these forces.

Accused of tarnishing the reputation of 'a good man', she battled forces that tried to clip her wings…and author, Samina Ali, overthrew the shackles of society to find her voice. Verve catches up with the feisty US-based writer whose debut novel, Madras On Rainy Days, focussed on sensitive women's and communal issues.

Hyderabad-born Samina Ali migrated with her parents to America when she was six months old. Growing up, she spent half of each year in India, where she also attended school. In 1993, she graduated summa cum laude from the University of Minnesota, Twin Cities, with a Bachelor of Arts in English Literature. She also received an M.F.A. from the University of Oregon.

Her debut novel, Madras On Rainy Days, is an evocative expression of issues that are universal to women. It delineates the struggles and the complexities that are faced in restrictive societies. Ali has written for such publications as Self and Child Magazines, The New York Times and the San Francisco Chronicle.

Through the course of the novel, its protagonist, Layla, battles issues with her own Indo-American identity, an unhappy marriage and an extremely dominating society. Hina Oomer-Ahmed chats with the California-based writer, to discover a strong woman who has survived a traumatic marriage and expressed herself, after nearly a decade of being silenced by outside forces.

What kind of responses have you received from readers in the US and India?

The novel has been well received, both in India and in America. But I have been surprised that most people don't largely focus on it as being about Muslim issues. Readers have concentrated instead on the arranged marriage aspect, the communal riots between Hindus and Muslims that I portray and, of course, on the themes of sexuality and homosexuality. In essence, the novel is about people rising beyond familial, cultural and religious limits placed upon them to define themselves.

Reviews suggest that readers have enjoyed your vivid and detailed descriptions of life in Hyderabad. Why did you think it was important to do so?

Living in the US and writing for a Western audience, I knew it was important to capture Hyderabadi culture as fluently as possible, in order to make it come alive in the Western mind. I needed to capture the truth and not fall into the common literary trap of turning it into something exotic. Spiritually, it was easy for me to write about the city and its culture because I was born and partly raised in Hyderabad.

How did the idea for this novel come about?

When I was 19, I had returned to Hyderabad from the US and had an arranged marriage with a Muslim man. Like Sameer in the novel, my husband turned out to be gay. We, too, never consummated the marriage. Unlike Sameer and Layla's marriage, which ends within months, mine lasted for more than two years and I sponsored my husband's green card to the US. It was only after we came here that he 'came out' to me.

How did you deal with his disclosure?

After almost two years of marriage, he moved out of our home and began calling me on the phone and talking to me in a woman's voice, saying that he would prefer to be with another man. At 21, that experience was horrible and terrifying. What made it worse was that no one believed what was happening to me. My parents and the Muslim community in which I was raised in Minneapolis, asked me to prove that my husband wasn't having sex with me. How can a woman establish that her husband isn't having sex with her? When I couldn't, they said I was lying about my husband being gay in order to divorce him. They accused me of tarnishing the reputation of a 'perfectly good man' because, they said, I was secretly having an affair with a white man. Of course, none of this was true. It was stated with the intention of keeping me locked in my marriage, my wings clipped. I was able to finally leave him by turning to the Immigration and Naturalisation Service for help.

What do you think people learn from Layla's story?

Layla's story is a journey from possession to self-possession. She begins the novel in a place where she is controlled by her environment: her parents tell her who she is and how to behave, her culture tells her how to dress and act, her religion tells her what to believe. By the end of the novel, where she finally distinguishes between these outside forces and her own true being. She knows what she wants and she can act upon that impulse.

And Sameer?

Like Layla, Sameer, too, is controlled. If he came out and rejected these expectations of him and declared his homosexuality, he himself would be rejected. His family would cast him out, his religion would say he is a sinner, his society would say he must live with the hijras, so to speak. There is no space for even a man to express himself. I would love my readers to learn from the novel how each of us, men and women, Western or Eastern, face forces of all kinds that try to limit us, define and repress us. As individuals, what we must do to prove our humanity, is to rise up against these forces, and become more powerful than them.

Layla's story is one of an emancipated woman constricted within a traditional framework of society. Do you think there is a way out of this?

In the novel, I have attempted to show that women, especially Muslim women in the West, must begin to reclaim their power through education. Find out what Islam really says about being a woman, find out what your rights really are, find out how far you can reach. Don't let a small percentage of men who are trying to maintain power through any means, including subjugating women, tell you who you are and what your rights are. For most women living in Islamic countries, the freedom of expression can sometimes come with a heavy price. In America, however, we can really use the freedom we have here, to make a positive change.

Have you always been a writer? How did it all start?

I used to be a business major in college. But, I always wrote on the side. But really shy, I didn't tell anyone. I'd write in my room late into the night and then throw the stories away.

Do you think it is possible to find a balance between a liberal western upbringing and a conservative Indian society?

I absolutely believe this to be true. Since I left my parents' home, I have had to navigate what it means to be hybrid and I think we are truly in a wonderful position to embrace both sides of ourselves. What does it mean any more to be Indian, even in India, where the West has so successfully penetrated? In the same way, what does it mean to be American of Indian origin, when we desis are unable to forget our roots? By accepting certain elements of both cultures and traditions, those straddling the two nations are in the unique place of defining themselves in unique ways.

Any plans for writing another book?

I am writing two books, one of which is another novel and the second is a non-fiction book, a spiritual work about what it means to me to be a Muslim woman in the US, post 9/11.