Chikkamma Tours (Pvt.) Ltd is a murder mystery set in Bengaluru.

When the owner of the bookshop above Chikkamma Tours gets stabbed to death in the building, grumpy, book-obsessed, wise-cracking Nilima jumps at the opportunity to play amateur detective.

With help from her boss Shwetha, whom she has a crush on, and Inspector Lamani, who is Nilima’s ex-girlfriend’s current girlfriend, Nilima investigates the murder, facing down angry bookshop employees, gangsters and sundry shady characters.

Unmana is one of “the pioneers in the genre of Indian bibliomysteries” and “Asia’s own Alexander McCall-Smith”. – Zac O’Yeah

“A cosy, suspenseful narrative that keeps you guessing…  a book that feels alive and vivid…  It’s a true testament to the author’s skill, especially for a debut novel, to make characters feel nuanced and relatable from the start… Its richly drawn descriptions, lively characters, and gripping mystery make it a novel that lingers in your mind.” – Scroll.in

Read an excerpt.

Buy a signed copy from a Mumbai bookstore

Buy from a Delhi bookstore (ships worldwide)

Buy from Amazon (only in India)

Storizen includes Chikkamma in its list of 9 LGBT Indian books: “Packed with sharp wit, warm charm, and a healthy dose of queer chaos, Unmana’s debut is a cozy mystery with teeth—and plenty of heart.”

Cities in Fiction interviews Unmana on having their “protagonists walk, commute, work, and eat their way through the city”, queerness, and books. An excerpt: “As I came out, I began to find myself surrounded by queer and gender non-conforming women… And it occurred to me that I hadn’t encountered any novels that featured characters like us: something seemed missing in the cultural portrayal of this moment in India… [The book reflects] the multiplicity of ways queer people find joy, comfort, friendship despite many constraints and much risk. I wanted to foreground this as opposed to the violence and discrimination every queer person encounters to some degree; the latter is present in the background, but never overwhelms the plot of the novel.”

On the podcast The Closet Writer Chronicles, Unmana talks about their writing process, why Chikkamma Tours took seven years to publication, and how Nilima is a classic noir detective a la Phillip Marlowe—except she’s a short, fat lesbian. Listen on Spotify, Amazon or Apple.

Unmana tells Hans India: “In a world that often devalues queer people, I felt it important to have a queer woman as the hero—to offer the comfort of knowing that she will triumph. Within that structure, however, I wanted my characters to feel real, with their own quirks, flaws, and lives beyond the murder plot.”

The New Indian Express says: “The novel has gained attention for its representation of several queer women characters in a story that doesn’t make identity or coming out the sole focus, but gives them space to be heroines and side characters in a mystery without pigeonholing them into the trope of a tortured villain.” 

The Hindustan Times says: “Hopefully, this is just the first instalment in a long-running series. The Chikkamma gang need to keep solving murders in many more future books.”

In the Free Press Journal: Unmana says, “I dared to think of these characters because I started by writing a scene and hadn’t planned to write a novel. At the time, I remember thinking I wanted characters who I hadn’t seen in fiction but who felt real to me, who acted and talked and looked like me and my friends. Once I decided to write a novel, I realised that I had a responsibility to take these characters seriously. Queer women have not solved fictional murders in Indian books before. I didn’t want my characters to be plot points or punch lines, I wanted them to feel like real people.”

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Testimonials: “writing as a living, creative, joyous activity”

It was a deeply transformative workshop. What an amazing session. – Ujjwala Kaushik

Unmana’s character development workshop was very detailed and helped in entering, thinking, writing through the complexity and layers of characters. It made the imagination of characters as human and grey feel as a real possibility. The emotions of the character and the writer writing them became alive in the workshop. With a range of literary resources and exercises, Unmana helped in understanding  the multiple ways in which characters could be written, approached and how to still find centre through them in different kinds of writing (fiction, stories, non-fiction, essays). Unmana’s workshops in general, feel less writing pressuring and more as writing as a living, creative, joyous activity. To find a facilitator who can help centre the self and ease off the pressure even slightly, are really ones to be sought for. – Gurpreet

I found the workshop to be very comprehensive in its scope. I especially liked the bit where you shared the kind of questions we should be able to answer wrt our characters. It added more gravity to the exercise of character development. I also found the last bit about how to write marginalised characters very thought provoking. Also, I loved the aesthetics of your presentation. – Ritika

So happy to have been a part of this cohort and looking forward to the next, there’s so much to learn from you and I can’t wait!  – Kishan Gusani