The Scent of Pepper

The Scent of Pepper 

Author

Kavery Nambisan

About

The Scent of Pepper is a detailed fictional journey into the world of Kodavas. It gives a great picture of the Kodavas who are a fierce, proud, martial race and owners of vast coffee estates. It tells the story of the Kaleyanda clan who own vast expanses of coffee plantations in Coorg. Kavery Nambisan belongs to Coorg (Kodagu), a hilly district of Karnataka also known as Scotland of India, and the speaker of native language. For the first time, the small ethnic minority, the Coorgis, enter Indian English fiction in her second novel, The Scent of Pepper. The characters in the novel are very real as the author has picked up real life stories from Coorg which she heard from her grandmother and used them in the plot of her novel. The distinctive culture and religious practices of the people of Coorg are faithfully presented by the novelist by tracing the fortunes of Nanji, who enters the Kaleyanda clan as a young bride. Baliyanna, an England-educated veterinary doctor and a wealthy land owner belongs to Kaleyanda family. He marries the child widow Nanji who has married at the age of thirteen and became a widow at fourteen. The thin-faced girl of seventeen year old in a white sari has captured Baliyanna’s interest and his heart.