Writing: RK Narayan ~ 'Books must be worth it'

It was in September 1988 that I had my only face-to-face encounter with Narayan. He was staying at his granddaughter’s residence in Chennai’s Thyagaraja Nagar area, where a room had been made comfortable enough for him to write in whenever he felt the urge.

On a memorable occasion, he was persuaded to take time off to autograph copies of his latest book, ‘A Writer’s Nightmare,’ at the Landmark bookstore in Nungambakkam. Through a long evening, he peered through his thick lenses, answering even the most obvious questions with good humour, occasionally sharing an impish smile as he tackled the long and winding queue of people seeking autographs at the store.

The next morning, I found Narayan relaxing in a crisp white shirt and veshti, the dhoti-like unstitched garment common in Tamil Nadu. Adjusting his hearing aid, he propped up his feet on a stool for comfort. He was in a good mood, though firmly resisting auto-analysis of his work, ever ready with off-the-cuff humour, constantly referring me to ‘My Days.’

“Do you know,” Narayan chuckled at the end of our hour-long encounter, “there’s a reviewer at the Indian Express newspaper who hates my work? He’s a brilliant man, but thinks I’m a puritan. He thinks I live in a make-believe world. He’s amazed that there’s no sex in my books. It happens to everyone, so why should I write about it? I might as well write about how we eat, about how food progresses from the mouth to the gullet…”

Narayan’s very ironic humour surfaced often during our conversation, of which I present excerpts off my tape-recorder to evoke a flavour of the man as he was in real life:

Did you find the going uphill when you decided to take up writing?

Terribly. Absolutely. It was all frustration and struggle for more than 15 years. But how could I know it was going to be difficult until I experienced it? (Pausing) Have I wanted to change professions midway? No, no, no.

In today’s competitive world, is writing a viable profession?

Not for everybody. Somehow, I have survived. In our days, there was more scope for reading, creative work, expression. Not in these days.

What do you see as the basic tools of a writer?

Well, keen observation and competence to phrase what you see. There must be pleasure in mere observation of people and things. I don’t mean deliberate observation, not taking notes. It is an instinct, not a conscious process. That’s important. And, if you have the language, you can write about it.

Do you work very hard at polishing your writing skills?

Always. I always do three or four rewrites, during which I throw out a great deal. There’s no such thing as inspiration gushing forth to become a book.

Have editors shaped your work much?

Not much. Only they have queries or doubts cleared. There may be slips which occur. I may not be very consistent with certain details, you know. They’ll point these out.

What, to you, is a writer’s social function?

Well, to provide books for reading (prolonged laughter). So that everybody’ll want to read, instead of gazing into space or watching television. But the books must be worth it. Not everything that is bound and written is a book. The reader must be captured. It depends on one’s style and material. You really can’t analyse it too much.

Have any writers captured you thus?

Well, I can’t think of many. Technically, I used to like Kipling. More recently, Somerset Maugham and Graham Greene. They have a sureness that attracts me.

Does your writing have much to do with memories?

Probably, I don’t know. But the whole business of writing is unconscious, even subconscious. Intuitive, not intellectual. Cerebral writing may be necessary, but not in a story. You get an almost organic substance in a story that is all subconscious. If one intellectualizes it, it turns into a formula. It is impossible to teach someone to write a play or a novel.

Have you read much Indian writing in English?

(Pausing to consider) No…

Do you feel that standards of English usage in India are falling?

Yes, the standard of English has gone down. As you probably notice, it is impossible to get around with English in places like Delhi. All over the country, there seems to have been a deliberate lowering of standards. The tussle over national languages has destroyed our zest for English. I sometimes receive letters which are ridiculous, you know. God knows what language they are written in!

Have you ever written in an Indian language?

No, though I do read Tamil. Is that a handicap? I’ve never felt it. I’ve never thought of it.

Are your characters, including Swami, autobiographical?

Yes, somewhat. In fact, all my books are autobiographical to some extent. I don’t take notes or keep a journal, but my writing goes on. Everything is stored in a retrieval system (tapping his forehead with a smile). I’m not a methodical man. Once I’ve written something, I forget what I’ve written.

Would you consider Swami an Indian parallel to Tom Sawyer or Huckleberry Finn?

It might be so because all children are the same. In childhood, there is universality, no distinction between an African child and an Indian child. Children have the same instincts, the same intuition, the same charm. Variations enter as childhood lapses and one gets into an advanced age.

We love the characters in your books for their foibles their whimsicality. Are these typical of Indian life?

Almost all. I don’t know any other life. I can only write of a society which I know intimately, that is south Indian life. It probably appeals to readers anywhere in the world, even in Finland or Bulgaria, where my books are popular. A universal quality is most important.

Do your books sell well? In India or abroad?

You know, I am a publisher of my own books in India (Indian Thought Publications in Mysore). All of them keep moving all through the year. Each edition of 3,000 or 5,000 copies has to be reprinted every three or four months. I don’t know who reads them, but they keep moving (peals of laughter). See, hardcover editions and first editions sell better abroad, but paperback sales are good here… (Thoughtfully) I would myself prefer a paperback.

Do you enjoy meeting your readers?

No… because they say the same things. I don’t like to be made conscious of what I’ve written.

Does it require great discipline to be a writer?

There must be some regularity. I can’t think of any rigid formula for a writer. I don’t know of one. I carry on because I never think of it. But, when a novel is in progress, you try to write a certain quantity each day. I used to be able to write 2,000 words in a couple of hours. Now, I write more slowly.

As a writer progresses, does his writing get cleverer, but not necessarily better?

Well, it depends. There can be no generalization in this profession at all. Each writer makes his own discoveries and has his own way of communicating these.

You’ve retold ‘The Ramayana’ and ‘The Mahabharata’ in your own words. What impelled you to?

Because that was the great climate in which our culture developed. They are symbolic and philosophical. Even as mere stories, they are so good. Marvellous. I couldn’t help writing them. It was part of a writer’s
discipline.

Were you dissatisfied with the existing translations? Did the versions on TV have an impact on you?

I wasn’t much impressed by them. I don’t know Sanskrit myself, so I had a pundit read them out to me day by day. There is a literal, word for word, translation of The Ramayana, The Mahabharata, Bhagavatam, and everything by one Sen, a Bengali. Clumsy, but useful. I went through that.

There is so much in these epics, but not the stupid Ramayana you see on TV. This has trick shots, arrows flying and Hanuman leaping. I find it nauseating. It destroys all our own impressions of the language, and the characters have these heavy, portly figures (chuckling) that we can’t accept. They’ve used all Gujarati or Sindhi actors, who’ve been brought up on vanaspati.

Very relevantly, somebody asked recently, “For 14 years Rama and Lakshman were in exile in the forest, so how come they’re shown clean-shaven every day?” (Laughing) They grow their hair long alright, but at least they could have shown some shadows here (taps cheek). They look like Wiltech blade ads, no?

Were you content with the translation of your work on TV, especially the Swami series?

They’ve done a fairly good job. I’d give them 80 per cent on that. First class.

  
You’ve been to the US several times. Were you teaching there?

Well, the first time I was there on a Rockefeller travel grant. Afterwards, some universities called me to visit for three, four, six months ~ Berkeley, Michigan, Kansas… No teaching. I was just a writer in residence.

What did that involve?

Well, you just grace the campus with your presence. You must be available to faculty members and students who want to meet you (smiling), and you can attend any lecture, any assembly. Leaves you pretty free, you know.

Have these visits, in any way, affected your writing?

No, why should they? I’m myself wherever I am. I’m not so very sensitive to surroundings. I keep to myself. I’m very strong.

I thought interaction with other writers might influence you…

Not necessarily. Writers are very insular when they meet. They talk of agents and contracts and so on and so forth…

Don’t they ever talk of writing?

Rarely.

How would you judge your success as a writer ~ in terms of literary acclaim, popular adulation or monetary success?

Brilliant ~ in all three ways you have mentioned. (Eyes twinkling) But it was not always so. It took years to build up.

If you hadn’t been a writer, what would you have wanted to be?

I wanted to be an engine driver originally and, then, I thought I might join medical college when I passed out of high school…

Writing: Rana Dasgupta on 'Tokyo Cancelled'

(Note: This interview was published in 2005)


Rana Dasgupta believes in fairytales. And the lure of oral lore. Isn't that unusual for the U.K.-born, Cambridge-schooled former marketing consultant, with degrees in French literature from Oxford and media studies from Wisconsin?

He believes in the buzz of business. And in creating a literature of globalisation through contemporary myths and fairy tales that explore the way our continents and cities have coalesced through our communication, our globetrotting lifestyles. That was the incentive for his debut novel Tokyo Cancelled (HarperCollins, Rs. 395), which led to an interface with readers at Landmark store.

Dasgupta, of Bengali-English parentage, arrived in New Delhi in late 2000 to have a shy at writing. At 34, the soft-spoken, intense author now calls the Indian capital home. Acknowledging his debt to medieval literature such as Chaucer's The Canterbury Tales and Boccaccio's Decameron, Dasgupta introduces us to 13 strangers who tell each other stories to survive a long night at an airport because their Tokyo flight is delayed. Stories that share pulses from Kafka and Marquez, Borges and Calvino, Grimm and A.K. Ramanujan, a fabulous literary tour de force.

How does he achieve this? Through tales such as the New York-based one of Robert De Niro's son, conceived in a laundromat, who finds his ladylove transformed into a store on Madison Avenue. What's startling is that this is Dasgupta's adaption of A.K. Ramanujan's interpretation of the folktale, The Flowering Tree. He renders it as universal, non-didactic and utterly contemporary.

In an exclusive interview at Landmark, Dasgupta sheds light on his life as a writer, straddling cultures and continents. Here are excerpts from our conversation:

Why did you decide to redefine yourself as a writer?

I've always been interested in the clash of genres. I used to write stories about my friends — with their names and quirks — but as Arthurian legends. But you can't gain self-confidence as a writer through school and college stuff. It's a real duty...

Were these individual stories that you yoked together?

I wrote the first story as a birthday present for my girlfriend. I was excited by the idea of looking at a contemporary city through fairytale language. I thought of a contemporary mythology through which we could investigate the geography of globalisation. Every tale works both in a straightforward way, and in an ironical one. I wondered: why are folktales not an accepted form of exchange of wisdom in our society? Why have they died out?

You don't really identify who narrates each tale. Was that deliberate?

Very much so. This book is not interested in the politics of identity. I wanted the possibility to be alive that the French story is told by someone who's never been to Paris. In a political way, this book is about what the human imagination is capable of. About the possibility of human beings embracing people very different from themselves.

Did Delhi contribute to your writing? Or did you feel dislocated after years in the west?

I moved to Delhi from New York. Your senses are hyper aware when you've moved to a new place, wherever it is. It was inspiring. Fantastic conversations! In an Indian city, life is out on the streets. You see people in intense moments of their lives. In the west, most of those moments are hidden from you.

How did you get the flavour of each capital city right?

I travelled to nearly all of them. I read local newspapers in French, German and English. I didn't go to Lagos, but I read its local English newspapers online. Full of crazy stuff, this whole world of crime. I looked at maps, spoke to people, walked around. In Istanbul, I had local friends who were experts on city stories.

Were you experimenting with narrative forms within your novel?

The New York story borrows hugely from American movies, and has a Hollywood ending. Really sardonic. The Tokyo story is like a business contract. The last one, set in Buenos Aires, is a tribute to the films of Luis Bunuel...

I believe you're halfway into your second book. What sets it apart?

In Tokyo Cancelled, I felt I was limited by my knowledge of the world, by my ability to write. The new novel is more ambitious with regard to its human terrain, centred on one character, who's a hundred years old and lives in Bulgaria. It's more challenging in terms of what it demands of me as a human being. It's aiming for a more profound poetics of life.

(The Hindu Metroplus, 2005)

Writing: Anita Nair's 'The Better Man'

(Note: This interview appeared in the Hindustan Times in 2000)

Let’s look at the near future, to begin with. That’s when Bangalore-based Anita Nair’s first novel, The Better Man, makes its debut as a hardback in the Picador USA select list for Spring 2000. Her predecessors in this exclusive literary company include Quarantine by Jim Crace, And When Did You Last See Your Father? by Blake Morrison, and Difficulties of a Bridegroom by Ted Hughes.

Penguin Books India launched 34-year-old Nair’s book in Bangalore on January 18, to a chorus of praise from the local literati. She is the only Indian writer based in India to be on the Picador USA list.

The Better Man unfolds in the imaginary town of Kaikurissi in the Malabar area that Anita Nair has always loved. Her bonding with northern Kerala is almost atavistic. The locale spells idyllic summer vacations at her grandparents’ house at Shoranur, her two years at a Kerala college and memories of her parents and brother, now based there.

Mukundan, a retired government servant who is the unlikely hero of the novel, returns reluctantly to his ancestral home. Can he cope with the cauldron of emotions within him? He does, with a little help from friends like One-screw-loose Bhasi, a painter of walls who doubles as a herbal healer. Will Mukundan dare to walk out of the shadow of his overbearing father? Or to fall in love with the married schoolteacher Anjana? Can he deal with the conniving Power House Ramakrishnan? Is Mukundan man enough to be trusted by those who give him their hearts? That’s the novel in a nutshell.

Anita Nair is a mistress of minutiae. She details every plant and pedestrian footprint, every clay urn and uruli in Kaikurussi, all the banter at the village tea shop. The blood of her characters courses through the reader’s veins, the heat and dust of their milieu is palpable, her plot has the reassuring rhythm of real life.

Colours streak through her dazzling imagery, devoid of pyrotechnics. For Nair paints in her spare time. The conversations she etches are cadenced with everyday notes. For her inner ear is trained by Carnatic vocal lessons during her growing years in Chennai, and the piano she’s learning to play today. Her nuanced prose is disciplined by her other life, as a part-time creative director at Mass Advertising in Bangalore.

Anita Nair published her first collection of short stories Satyr Of The Subway And Eleven Other Stories in 1997. Gentleman magazine described it as “writing by a woman who is only secondarily concerned with her gender and the like.” Her literary world, then and now, scans its protagonists off the dust tracks of existence.

R K Narayan is an icon to her, for “he gives little things great meanings.” And she was moved by British fiction writer Paul Bailey, who once said “if 20 readers understood what he’s written, that was good enough.” Nair adds, “That made sense to me. It gave me the courage to write the way I want to.”

Nair confesses that she jots down character summaries, personality quirks and significant sentences in a little notebook that accompanies her everywhere. She first drafts her prose on an A-4 size notebook “because of a bad shoulder”, and later fine tunes it on her computer. 

 

On her mantlepiece, in a living room rich with Kerala artefacts, is a blue postcard from the community reading room of her parents’ village, congratulating their native daughter on her achievement. “I just find it very quaint, being recognised as a respectable member of the community,” she giggles. 

Here are excerpts from a conversation with her the day after the release of her book in Bangalore: 

When you set this novel in Kerala, did you escape to a world that was partly real, partly imaginary?

I love to be in Kerala, but I’ll never be able to live there. So, I created an imaginary village that I would escape to every day. Even now, I go to Kerala often. My husband’s a Malayalee, so he’s got family there. I’m not writing about an alien place. For me, right now if I were to write about Bangalore, I wouldn’t be able to. For some strange reason, my family’s heavily into folklore. They all have very visual imaginations, so everything is spelt out very clearly.

Was there a major turning point as you worked on The Better Man since 1996?

Well, One-screw-loose Bhasi didn’t exist until I was halfway through the book. After the short story collection, when I went back to the novel, it just didn’t seem right. Am I just chronicling a village, I asked myself. Big deal! (Laughs) At that point, I was working with an ayurvedic client. I thought: maybe I should use this stuff, it’s interesting. Then this character emerged. I went back and wrote the first chapter. Then, I had to weave him into all the other chapters.

All your characters are ordinary people, leading everyday lives.

I’ve never believed in heroic heroes. We only look at people when they achieve something. I know people who’re extraordinary, but who lead quiet lives. So, whatever I write is not going to be about larger-than-life characters. Probably they would have quirks that would make them misfits, but they’d be ordinary people. When I was growing up, I used to think my dad was very boring because he didn’t do anything unusual. He worked in the tank factory outside Madras.

My mom’s side has this bohemian, creative streak. All my uncles were painting, or living abroad. After a while, I realised that my father was, ultimately, what a human being should be when you look beyond the external manifestations.

Do you see Kaikurissi growing into a constant in your future works?

Oh, yes, I have this trilogy planned. (Giggling) I finished this book and thought: I still have so much more to write about this village. If it’s not this village, it will be the next village. But that area, that lifestyle, that culture.

Do you feel disadvantaged, writing about small-town India in a non-traditional language?

You know, I wish I could write in Malayalam. It lends itself so easily to lyricism. There’s great scope for description. But I can’t, so the next best thing to do is to write in English. I speak Malayalam fluently, read it, but I can’t write it.

How does it feel to be in distinguished company in the Picador family?

I admire Blake Morrison very much. I’m so glad I read And When Did You Last See Your Father? only now. Because there are some parts of it that are so much like my book that if I’d read it earlier, I wouldn’t have written my book at all. And I like Jim Crace. Ted Hughes, I don’t know, though I liked whatever I read of Birthday Letters.