Beaching of whales is an inexplicable phenomenon. For decades scientists have been studying whales but they continue to be baffled by this behaviour of the mammals. The September event was heartbreaking as some of the whales freed by rescuers, returned to the beach once more. Ultimately, a few were set free but they were only a tiny proportion of the pod. The remaining had either died or had to be euthanized as they were too weak to survive any more.
I was reminded of this sad event while reading The Secret Explorers and Lost Whales by SJ King. It is a fictional account of group of children who gather from around the world and embark upon different missions. They are the secret explorers who have their favourite areas of research — Connor ( oceanography), Tamiko ( dinosaurs / paleontology), Kiki ( machine and technoloy), Leah ( plants and animals / ecology), Ollie ( rainforests/ biologist), Roshni ( astronaut), Gustava ( history) and Cheng ( rocks and volcanoes / geomorphology). They are teamed up depending upon the mission. The Exploration Stations always picked the two members with the right skills and knowledge for the mission. They set off in their trustworthy Beagle, named after the ship used by Charles Darwin on hit missions. But the Beagle behaves like the Magic School Bus, a significantly successful landmark in contemporary children’s literature and edutainment.
This is the first in a series launched by Dorling Kindersley, Penguin Random House. The series has been conceived and written by SJ King. In The Lost Whales, marine life expert Connor and companion Roshni need to use Connor’s underwater expertise and her navigation skills to help save a pod of humpback whales that have lost their way. They set out in the Beagle to search for a way to steer the whales back on track, but encounter unexpected problems along the way, including a lost baby whale and a fleet of boats that could again send the whales off course.
The book is a delightful mix of storytelling and information. With great ease little details of oceanography such an explanation for red tide is offered in the book. There are descriptions of the whales as well as astonishment of the children upon hearing the humpback whales communicate. ( Listen to this BBC radio documentary that celebrates 50 years of bioacoustician and marine biologist Roger Payne’s extraordinary recording of humpback whales in 1967. It was released as an album in 1970 and went multi-platinum!) The thrill of an adventure coupled with a mission are beautifully told in this storybook. The last few pages are dedicated to outlining important facts of the ocean mentioned in the story and that could have been missed by a reader. These are very neatly presented as “Mission Notes”.
Slim little book that is packed with information and seems to be worth the price. Apart from being a phenomenal resource tool for children. Perhaps even inspirational for the choices they make in the future when deciding upon careers.
Now only if the fictional account of steering the whale pod to safety had been easy to replicate in real life, then perhaps the lives of 400 pilot whales beached in Tasmania could have been saved.
Dissent by renowned historian Prof. Romila Thapar has been published by Seagull Books. Prof. Thapar will be 89 this November.
Book blurb:
People have disagreed since time immemorial. They have argued or agreed to disagree, or eventually arrived at an agreement. But we live in times when any form of dissent in India is marked as anti-indian, suggesting that the very concept of dissent has been imported to India from the west—an argument made by those who visualize the Indian past as free of blemishes and therefore not requiring dissenting opinions. But, as Romila Thapar explores in this timely historical essay, dissent has a long history in the subcontinent, even if its forms have evolved through the centuries. Thapar looks at the articulation of dissent—focusing on non-violent forms—that which is so essential to all societies, and relates it to various moments of time and in varying contexts as part of the Indian historical experience. Beginning with Vedic times, she takes us from the second to the first millennium BC, to the emergence of groups that were jointly called the shramanas—the jainas, Buddhists, and ajivikas. Going forward in time she explores the views of the bhakti Santa and others of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries ad, and brings us to a major moment of dissent that helped to establish a free and democratic India: Mahatma Gandhism satyagraha. Throughout her argument she emphasises the use of the idiom of religion as reflecting social change, ending with the eventual politicization of religion in the present. She places in context the recent peaceful protests against caa and NPR in places such as br>shaheen Bagh, Delhi. Implicit in this is the question of whether or not the idiom of religion is necessary. Thapar maintains that dissent in our time must be audible, distinct, opposed to injustice and supportive of democratic rights. The articulation of dissent and debate through dialogue is what makes of it a movement that changes society for the better. Written by one of India’s best-known public intellectuals, voices of dissent: an essay has immense relevance. It is essential reading for anyone who contemplates not only the Indian past but also the direction in which the society and nation is headed.
Maggie O’Farrell’s Hamnet is about the death of Shakespeare’s son, Hamnet. A twin who died due to the plague. It is told from the grieving mother, twin sister and grandmother’s perspective. Shakespeare comes and goes through the novel but is never mentioned by name. Even though the novel is about the grieving family, it is utterly magnificent. I read it months ago. In fact as soon as the lockdown began in early April 2020. I could not put it down. It is an outstanding novel. I was delighted when it won the Women’s Prize for Fiction 2020 as it just seemed so perfect. It moved me so much that in all these months I have been unable to write about it on my blog. It is an emotional rollercoaster. Personally, I found it immensely healing to read during the pandemic. And then I heard an interview with pianist Vladmir Ashkenazy recorded in 1972 discussing Beethoven. Ashkenazy said, “It is no good to describe it. it always degrades music as great like this. You better leave it alone.” This is how I felt upon reading Hamnet. No point in describing it. Just experience it. Treasure it. Hold it dear.
Here is an utterly stunning passage from the concluding pages that made my heart sing with hope and joy given the horrendous pandemic we are living through:
Gardens don’t stand still: they are always in flux. The apple trees stretch out their limbs until their crowns reach higher than the wall. The pear trees fruit the first year, but not the second, then again the third. The marigolds unfold their bright petals, unfailingly every year, and the bee leave their skeps to skim over the carpet of blooms, dipping into and out of the petals. The lavender bushes in the knot garden grow leggy and woody, but Agnes will not pull them up; she cuts them back, saving the stems, her hands heavy with fragrance.
Maggie O’Farrell holding aloft Bessie, the Women’s Prize for Fiction trophy
On Tuesday 15 Sept 2020, Ken Follett’s publisher PanMacmillan held a virtual press conference, in association with the Foreign Press Association (FPA), to launch The Evening and the Morning. The virtual press conference was held on Zoom and moderated by the Director of the FPA, Deborah Bonetti.
I was one of the fortunate few who attended the event and I am so glad I did! The intention was to show a short film that Ken Follett had made giving a background to his interest in Kingsbridge, cathedrals, the desire to be historically accurate as far as possible, etc. Unfortunately the film refused to work due to a technical fault. So Ken Follett immediately stepped in with an impromptu and an excellent lecture on “Where do you get your ideas?” He answered it beautifully by saying it is not a bad question and that readers often provide the answer themselves. Then he spent the next ten minutes discussing it, weaving it around The Evening and the Morning. It was magical to hear a hugely successful author, who has purportedly sold 170 million copies of his books till date, talk about his writing craft, how to write historical fiction, why he writes such big fat stories that range between 300,000 to 400,000 words etc. It was a fantastic experience participating in the conference. Alas, neither the movie nor the recording of the press conference can be easily uploaded. I wish it was!
Nevertheless, the novel begins well. I have not finished reading it at the time of writing this novel as it is a doorstopper of a novel and needs to be read slowly. But from the little I have read, it is a promising read. Also as Ken Follett mentioned in the press conference that he would rather write novels that can be read slowly and savoured over time.
Press Release:
From the bestselling author Ken Follett, The Evening and the Morning is a historical epic that will end where The Pillars of the Earth begins.
A TIME OF CONFLICT It is 997 CE, the end of the Dark Ages, and England faces attacks from the Welsh in the west and the Vikings in the east. Life is hard, and those with power wield it harshly, bending justice according to their will – often in conflict with the king. With his grip on the country fragile and with no clear rule of law, chaos and bloodshed reign.
THREE LIVES INTERTWINED Into this uncertain world three people come to the fore: a young boatbuilder, who dreams of a better future when a devastating Viking raid shatters the life that he and the woman he loves hoped for; a Norman noblewoman, who follows her beloved husband across the sea to a new land only to find her life there shockingly different; and a capable monk at Shiring Abbey, who dreams of transforming his humble abbey into a centre of learning admired throughout Europe.
THE DAWN OF A NEW AGE Now, with England at the dawn of the Middle Ages, these three people will each come into dangerous conflict with a ruthless bishop, who will do anything to increase his wealth and power, in an epic tale of ambition and rivalry, death and birth, and love and hate.
Thirty years ago we were introduced to Kingsbridge in The Pillars of the Earth, and now in this masterful prequel international bestseller, Ken Follett will take us on a journey into a rich past, which will end where his masterpiece begins.
The memoir by Australian writer Christopher Raja called Into the Suburbs is about his family migrating from Calcutta to Melbourne when Raja was a child. It is an interesting immigrant’s story as he documents his parents struggle to adapt and fit into this new country, a country they had moved to fulfil their dreams. Instead they find that having left perfectly decent professions in India, they were working at odd hours, in factories and in shifts, as long as they earned some income and managed to pay their bills. Slowly and steadily they achieve what they set out to do — get a home, get jobs and educate their son. Large portions of the novel revolve around the boy trying to find a way of fitting in as well, first in the state run school and then the posh private institution where his father is part of the faculty. It is a curious book. As he says in this interview with Yarra Libraries, Christopher Raja was not sure whether to classify it as a novel or a memoir. But it is reading between the lines that makes this book fascinating. On the face of it, Raja is writing a memoir that documents what it means to be an Asian immigrant. He experiences racism and physical bullying that was unheard of in Calcutta. And then there are really the unsaid things in the novel such as the exploration of different kinds of masculinity. The children on the playground or in schools trying to assert themselves as they reach adolescence. Then the young adults and the elders having their own way of accommodating each other. Ultimately it is the complicated relationship that Christopher Raja has with his dad, David, that is very illuminating about how masculinities can really play out. David Raja wanted the best for his son, to provide for him in a manner that he felt he had missed out. Christopher Raja’s paternal grandmother died within days of giving birth to her son, David. It left his paternal grandfather devastated and fairly hostile to the newborn son. The onus was upon David’s elder siblings particularly his eldest sister to care for him. Ultimately David decides to emigrate to Australia but realises the challenges it poses. His son witnesses it all silently but at times clashes with his father. One fine day when his father leaves never to return, Christopher Raja is bewildered. His mother comes across as a strong woman who expresses his displeasure often enough but is also clear that she needs to support her husband. Although there are certain decisions such as wanting to return to Calcutta regularly that are never explained. Why does she travel alone? Why does she never take her family with her? Yet after her husband’s unexpected death she buckles down and manages to clear their debts including paying the mortgage. For want of a better word, the writing style is monotone. He narrates what he has experienced. It is impossible to tell which of the sections are fictionalised but it works. Perhaps it is a survival tactic similar to that of found in the testimonies of trauma victims. In order to distance themselves from the horrific moment of trauma such as a rape or a war crime or any form of physical violence, the victim’s testimony immediately becomes third person as if the body is incapable of processing this assault on the individual themselves. It is a distancing mechanism. Similarly with Into the Suburbs Christopher Raja opts to tell his story in a voice that is calm, cool, moderate, bordering on the dull which seems to be purely a safety mechanism. The trauma of experiencing racism and related violence, whether implicitly or explicitly, while navigating daily life in Australia as an immigrant activates latent suvival techniques that unbeknowest to the author come to the fore. It is apparent to a reader who is distanced from the experience but can empathise with the challenges documented. This monotone narration also ensures that the book never leaves you. For weeks after having read the book, it still haunts one.
While the McAvennies played with new bikes and enjoyed a visit from Big Jamesy, Shuggie sat by her feet like a quiet shadow. He watched without talking while she drank from the bottomless tea mug. She told him bad stories of his father again, picking up the tale like it was a book she had only set to the side for a year. By the time the six o’clock news was finished she was sitting on her bed slurring into the phone to Jinty McClinchy. Shuggie slid quietly along the hallway and sat with his back pressed against her bedroom door. From there he could listen through the chipboard and could follow the bell curve of her worsening mood. He wondered how long it would be till she passed out, till he could have a rest. ( p. 304)
By the time the ceilidh band was in full swing he knew she would not be coming home. The revellers start to hug one another and break into song. He felt like a baby to miss his mother. It wasn’t fair, the way everyone could up and leave as they pleased. ( p. 309)
Douglas Stuart’s debut novel Shuggie Bain has had a dream beginning as an author. It has been longlisted for the Booker Prize 2020. It is labelled as a novel but Douglas Stuart makes it clear that a large part of it is based on his life as well. So it is not exactly a memoir as he has used fiction to write about his childhood. He discusses it beautifully in this conversation recorded with Damian Barr during the Edinburgh Book Festival 2020. Both the authors have written “memoirs”. While Damian Barr is clear that his Maggie & Me is a memoir, Douglas Stuart is equally clear that large portions of Shuggie Bain are based on his life including the detail about the alcoholic mother but it remains a work of fiction.
Damian Barr and Douglas Stuart in conversation, 26 Aug, Edinburgh Book Festival 2020
Shuggie Bain is the story of young Shuggie Bain who watches his alocholic mother, Agnes, destroy her life and family. It is a sad, sad tale. It is also extraordinary how Shuggie Bain manages to retain some kind of empathy and affection for his mother throughout the narrative. Shuggie is the son of a Protestant father and a Catholic mother. So with his parents marriage across sectarian lines is sufficient cause for being alienated by society but he is also bullied in school. His father, Shug Bain, is a taxi driver and a philanderer. He is completely irresponsible and soon leaves his family for another. Shuggie Bain is also the youngest of his siblings who is left at a very young age to be in charge of their ailing mother. He takes care of her, her medication, her food, he manages the household finances etc. He even has to manage the many men who drift in and out of his mother’s life. It is a brutal and violent world but he undertakes his responsibilies uncomplainingly. He seeks his older brother’s assistance but the awful truth is that their mother will never recover and her children need to move on with their lives. His brother Leek leaves.
Shuggie Bain took Douglas Stuart more than ten years to write. The first draft was over 900 pages long. But Douglas Stuart chose to write it whenever he had the opportunity. He was determined to use fiction to help him face some of the pain he had experienced in his childhood. Yet there are moments in the book where the descriptions of an impoverished neighbourhood, the people drifting about, the gatherings of the women in each other’s home and the many details that are used to create the various images of Agnes are visually powerful. They are hard to be rid off even after closing the book. Perhaps Douglas Stuart’s training in the visual arts helped him develop an eye for detailing the literary landscape. Given that he acknowledges some parts of Shuggie Bain are based on his childhood, many of the details are probably crystal clear in his mind’s-eye. More so since he has lived in New York City and probably retains a memory, almost as if wrapped in amber, about past experiences. Having said that the descriptions in every line whether it is of the women poring over the catalogues, or trying on the new bras, or Agnes dancing drunk, or the various cans of soup being piled in the cupboard, or the children in the street poking at a lump in the gutter etc are visually very striking. The texture of the story is enhanced by the Scottish dialect. It takes a while getting used to but once the rhythm is understood, then so is the story. Something about the story is very reminiscent of what Irish literature was in the fin de siecle of the twentieth century. The closest parallel to Shuggie Bain seems to be Frank McCourt’s Angela’s Ashes. Understandably Shuggie Bain has created quite a stir on the global literary landscape.
In this fascinating video by journalist Shekhar Gupta on the recent controversy of Bloomsbury India retracting its contract for Delhi Riots 2020 Mr Gupta made a reference to the very first book that generated a controversy and unfortunately resulted in the murder of the publisher, Shri Rajpal. He was the founder of the eminent Hindi publishing firm, Rajpal & Sons. It was founded in Lahore but after Independence in 1947, the firm was resurrected in Delhi by the late Shri Rajpal’s sons, Vishwanath and Dinanath Malhotra.
Pranav Johri shared the following citation that the International Publishers Association had posthumously awarded his great grandfather Shri Rajpal. It is called “IPA Special Award Dare to Publish”.
Coincidentally earlier this week I saw a video that Meera Johri recorded. It is a fabulous talk remembering her father, Mr Vishwanath Malhotra ( 1920 – 2013) and his contribution to the world of Hindi publishing. It was his centenary on 27 July 2020. It is an extraordinary talk for not only does it commemorate a legendary publisher but it also gives a bird’s-eye vew of Hindi literature over the decades. Some of the stalwarts of Hindi literary world were published by Rajpal & Sons and those backlists continue to remain alive. Mr Vishwanath Malhotra was responsible for not only keeping Rajpal & Sons functioning after 1947, but he was also responsible for the establishment of Hind Pocket Books and later Orient Paperbacks. He founded Hind Pocket Books with his younger brother, Dinanath Malhotra ( D. N. Malhotra), another legendary publisher. Due to the immense foresight of the two brothers, they decided to split their assets in their lifetimes and not leave messy legacies for their heirs. So D. N. Malhotra managed Hind Pocket Books. It was ultimately sold to Penguin Random House India in 2016. Mr Vishwanath Malhotra managed Rajpal & Sons and Orient Paperbacks and these firms were later inherited by his heirs.
To commemorate the legendary publisher, Rajpal & Sons is kickstarting a year long celebration by organising events. For now these will be online given the unusual circumstances the Covid19 pandemic has imposed upon everyone. Later this evening, the publishers are organising a session where eminent poets from India and Pakistan will be reciting their poetry. It will be LIVE on the Rajpal & Sons Facebook page and later a recording of the session will be available as well.
This is what Meera Johri says “Rajpal & Sons was established in Lahore by my grandfather. Though in 1947 my father had to leave Lahore, but all his life he retained great love for Lahore. So that’s one reason to do this mushaira of shayars from across the border. Secondly our publishing house was the pioneer in making available Urdu shayari in devnagri script, and this series on Urdu shayari continues to sell well even six decades after its introduction.
Meera Johri
And last year we launched a new series called “Sarhad ke Aar Paar ki Shayari” . Each book features one shayar each from Pakistan and India, because we believe that while borders may physically distance and demarcate us , our language and literature is a shared heritage which must not be divided. So really it’s a celebration of our shared heritage.”
Rajpal & Sons has been in existence for more than a hundred years. They have a formidable backlist but their frontlist continues to grow. They adapt with the times. They won the first Romain Rolland Prize instituted by the French Institute of India to award a translation into an Indian regional language from French. The firm won it for Main Gumshuda– a translation of Rue des boutiques obscures by Patrick Modiano. It was translated into Hindi by Monica Singh.
The hallmark of a good publishing house is that they do not necessarily rest on their laurels but adapt with the times. More so with the changing reading appetites of their readers. Rajpal & Sons is doing exactly that!
Six titles have been shortlisted for the International Booker Prize 2020. The prize was instituted as a celebration of the art of translations. These are:
The Enlightenment of the Greengage Tree by Shokoofeh Azar (Farsi-Iran), translated by Anonymous, published by Europa Editions.
The Adventures of China Iron by Gabriela Cabezón Cámara (Spanish-Argentina), translated by Iona Macintyre and Fiona Mackintosh, published by Charco Press.
Tyll by Daniel Kehlmann (Germany-German), translated by Ross Benjamin, published by Quercus.
Hurricane Season by Fernanda Melchor (Spanish-Mexico), translated by Sophie Hughes, Published by Fitzcarraldo Editions
The Memory Police by Yoko Ogawa (Japanese-Japan), translated by Stephen Snyder, published by Harvill Secker
The Discomfort of Evening by Marieke Lucas Rijneveld (Dutch-Netherlands), translated by Michele Hutchison, published by Faber & Faber
26 August 2020 is when the winner will be revealed.
Lists of any kind are just that a list. They are not necessarily exhaustive but representative. In the case of literary prize lists, there are many factors at play. It is not only highlighting exceptional literary talent that is worth having on one’s radar but also the immense variety of writing styles, stories, playing with the form, etc. It is a pleasure to assess the range in a shortlist of six titles. They sweep across geographies, folklore, magic realism, genres, and time periods. It is quite a heady experience.
Tyll by Daniel Kehlmann is historical fiction, set during the Thirty Years War. The central character is the legendary German trickster Tyll Ulenspiegel about whom many folktales exist in Germany. According to legend he is a German character dating back to the Medieval times but was turned into a Protestant hero at the time of the Dutch War of Independence. It is upon these elements that Kehlmann basis his novel Tyll. There is the classic story of Tyll, running away from home after his father, an avid reader, was accused of practising sorcery by the Protestants. While on the run he discovers his talent for dance, jugglery, walking on a tightrope and being a travelling entertainer who knows how to tell a good story. Tyll is created like a traditional story with a beginning, middle and end. But much in keeping with the personality of its protagonist, the chapters can be juggled about to create a narrative of their own. The account of Tyll travelling around the region performing, creating his own style of mayhem, against the backdrop of the war is chaotic but it has its charming moments when there are furious and deeply insightful conversations about the merits of the two languages and their literature — English and German. And this preoccupation with language becomes apparent when reading Daniel Kehlmann’s speech in praise of his then translator Carol Brown Janeway. There are moments in the novel when the horrors of the war are impossible to speak of and it is in such instances that the author relies upon magic realism to weave in folkloric elements. Surprisingly they do not seem disruptive. Far from it. The reader accepts these imaginative details easily. It is beautifully done. At many levels Tyll deserves to be recognised for not only its literary merit, but its literary craftsmanship.
Memory Police by Yoko Ogawa will probably be considered by many as a favourite to win. More so because this scifi tale is eerily prescient in imagining many of our realities of today. Odd is it not given that the Japanese novel was published in 1994 and translated into English recently. It belongs to the early writings of Ogawa who has a massive fan following. Many will want her to win but the novel has the markings of a fairly new writer which she was then having begun writing in 1988. In all likelihood her fiction of today and more than 50 books later must be very different. But Memory Police stands out for it’s very scary parallels to what many nations are experiencing today. It is grim to read. But then again that is the hallmark of classical scifi, to be able to nudge the boundaries of relaity sufficiently to talk about that which is plausible, even if it seems to be in an imagined realm. So while reading about these horrors is discomforting, there are tiny technical details within the plot that do not sit easy with me. For instance the very basic premise of making memories disappear. Long term memories vanish with a few individuals retaining them and they are eventually hunted down but what is the rationale for the characters recalling their lives of the previous days and months? This selective memory is inexplicable. Also having recently finished watching 100+ episodes of Person of Interest on Netflix, the machine who is at the heart of this AI story has its memory scrubbed clean every day at midnight. It is a fascinating story. Perhaps it is unfair to compare a story written in 1994 and a TV series written in 2013-16 but “Memory” and “Time” will continue to fascinate writers and scifi writers are known to think beyond.
The other four books on the shortlist are equally interesting. Original fiction with some such as The Enlightenment of the Greengage Tree relying on magic realism as well to tell a story. But in all probability it is Hurricane Season that will be a close contender with Tyll for the Booker crown tomorrow. It is an extraordinarily immersive story told in these long, breathless sentences, describing the death of a woman in a village. A woman who was known to many but also shunned and lived on the fringes of society for the peculiar space she occupied. She was accused of being a witch. The novel begins with her murder and then from there it develops. It is a story that needs to be read out aloud for the true impact to be felt. There are so many details in it that can only be visualised while reading the story out aloud. Again, this story like Tyll stands out for its literary craftsmanship and the manner in which it has carried forward beautifully from the language of origin to the destination langauge. The Adventures of China Iron and The Discomfort of Evening deserve a place on the shortlist for their experimentation. The new literary talent deserves to be recognised but is it worthy of the top prize — doubt it.
The Supreme Court of India has given a tremendous boost to the rights of women in families, holding that daughters cannot be deprived of their right of equality. In a judgement earlier this week, the Supreme Court ruled that daughters will have equal coparcenary (joint heirship) rights in joint Hindu family property even if the father died before the Hindu Succession (Amendment) Act, 2005.
The struggle of women in India to have independent identities and to rise above patriarchy runs deep, but the status of women fighting for their rights is not often represented in literature. However, a seminal bestselling book of 2014 raised the issue of patriarchy and the fight of a single mother to establish her identity in the face of power, money, deceit, and treachery. Ratna Vira’s debut novel, Daughter By Court Order, is the story of a woman fighting for her right to be recognised as a daughter. This is a must read and it explores with sensitivity and frankness the real issues that women in India deal with.
Gitanjali Kolanad was involved in the practice, performance, and teaching of bharata natyam for close to forty years. Hershort story collection Sleeping with Movie Stars, published by Penguin India, was long-listed for the Frank O’Connor Prize. She has written numerous articles on aspects of Indian dance for well-known Indian publications. She co-founded IMPACT, which teaches and promotes Indian martial art forms.
Girl Made of Gold is Gitanjali Kolanad’s debut novel, published by Juggernaut Books. It is historical fiction set in Thanjavur in the 1920s. It revolves around the mysterious disappearance of a young devadasi called Kanaka and, as if in her place, a statue of a woman in pure gold mysteriously appears in the temple to which she was to be dedicated. Many villagers assume tht Kanaka has turned into the girl made of gold. Others are determined to search for her. It is a novel that certainly leaves an impact. Even award-winning author Chitra Bannerjee Divakurni was moved to say ‘Girl Made of Gold is an exquisitely written novel, bejewlled with authentic cultural details and characters who take up permanent residence in the reader’s heart. This story of love, loss and discovery will keep you turning the pages until the astonishing end.’
Now the author is completing her second novel, set in Tanjore in the 1930s.
Q1. How long did it take to write Girl Made of Gold? Which was the initial idea in the plot that gripped you and developed into a story?
The initial idea is exactly as I tell in my Afterword: I had a few friends visiting from the UK staying with me in my flat in Madras, so I’d invited VAK Ranga Rao to meet them. He’s a great raconteur, simply full of stories, especially given his multi-faceted life experience, born into a royal family, being a dancer, music critic, film afficionado, well-read, well-travelled. He told us all this story that a devadasi had told him: a girl of her own illustrious family had turned herself into a gold statue in order to escape the attentions of a man. That story raised so many questions – why didn’t she want the man to become her patron? What was so awful about him, or about her situation that she would want to escape from it by means of such a drastic step? And if you don’t believe in girls turning themselves into gold statues, then what really did happen to the young devadasi? That story, from the moment I heard it I knew it was going to occupy my thoughts for a long time. I remember that I actually felt a shiver down my spine.
Then I discovered that such stories of devadasis are in the stalapuranas of many temples – when a man takes a devadasi’s half-chewed paan into his mouth, he becomes a great poet; when a king has a devadasi’s long beautiful hair shaved off, it grows back overnight. Within that world, a devadasi turning into a gold statue is accepted.
Q2. How many drafts did you need to create before completion?
Getting to even one full draft that I could hand to someone else to read was a long laborious process. Clearly, I didn’t have any idea what I was doing. By the time I actually completed my first draft, I’d been researching and writing bits and pieces of the novel for more than five years. But finally, I had managed to get the characters alive in my mind, and I could then record their actions and sentiments almost effortlessly. Or at least, with real enjoyment rather than struggle. So I didn’t need to completely rewrite many sections. The first draft felt like a huge achievement, to get the words onto the page so you can see what’s wrong, what needs editing, what needs to be filled out. It still took a year from the first draft to the finished version that is in print.
Q3. What is the writing schedule you follow?
You have to remember that I didn’t know what I was doing when I started writing. I was a dancer. What does a dancer do? Well, we warm up, do some basic exercises, and that’s what I try to do as part of a daily practice. I write every day for no purpose whatsoever. I don’t care if it’s good, bad or indifferent, it’s just for the feel of my pen moving across the page. I have established rituals of practice that work for me, just as I did as a dancer. I write in long hand, the early stages are never on a computer. The pen has to be just right – black ink, fountain pen, cheap, so I don’t cry if I lose it, since I carry it with me everywhere. The paper has to be just right – squared paper in an A5-sized spiral notebook so it can fit in my bag. I can get very attached to a particular notebook and then if the company stops making it, it’s a tragedy – I worry that I’ll never be able to write again. It has happened to me several times over the years, so now when I find a good notebook I buy ten. No Moleskins or anything expensive – I have to feel that I can write pages and pages of the most utter nonsense without fear of wasting money.
Then, when there’s a germ of a story, I have to let myself be consumed by it, I need time with no fixed appointments of any kind. Then I’ll write intensely and with great focus for hours and hours, early in the morning, late at night, until the story is done. At some point I will feel it settle into a still vague but somewhat coherent shape. At that point I go on the computer and start transcribing my notes. After that all the writing is a process of rewriting, editing, word choice, much more analytical and conscious because the unconscious, creative work has already been done. During this second stage I go back to behaving like a human being, bathing, brushing my teeth, doing chores. I can drop into and out of this part of the process and go back to meeting the world’s demands.
Q4. Do you develop backstories for your characters? I ask as at times it seems as if you are very familiar with the characters, almost as if you are clear about their movement, their emotions, their inner thoughts. Much like you would expect a dancer to internalise a story in order to give it a strong expression.
I don’t think of it as ‘back story’, because during the time when I’m writing in long hand, I have no idea whatsoever as to what will be useful and what not. So yes, there is a great deal that turns out to be back story, but it is at a much later stage of the writing process where decisions like that are made and I come to know what goes into the story and what remains in the notebook, what needs to be foregrounded and what is there simply to make the character real for me. It’s very true that it’s like bringing a padam to life in dance, thank you for noting that. I develop a feel for the nayika as young or mature, as quick to anger, or always calm, as the kind of woman who hides her tears, or one who weeps openly, by embodying her again and again in practice. That’s how I come to know her very well, from the inside out, as it were. That’s the only method I know to make the facial expressions cohere into a nayika that has life on stage.
Q5. Devadasis occupy an unusual space in society. Social rules accord them respect and status while giving them social mobility as well. It is a complicated relationship but as you have shown in the novel, it also makes the devadasis very vulnerable. Why did you choose the devadasi storyline as the basis of your novel?
I didn’t choose that storyline so much as it entered and planted itself in me. But I was fertile ground for that kind of seed, because the repertoire of bharata natyam that I’d been immersed in for so long, was the devadasi’s bodily experience. I’d already learned padams like the one which says, ‘Why should I be afraid of anyone’s gossiping/ with a great man like him as my lover?’ or ‘Where is the nose ring you promised me?’ or ‘That cunning woman has trapped him/he won’t come back to me’. The songs suggest a world of jealousy, illicit relationships and intrigue – what could be a better inspiration for a novel?
Q6. In Girl Made of Gold there is a lot of brutality, a murder and the violent patriarchal attitude of the men towards to their women. Was it hard to write these portions of the story?
When I was working on the novel in London, newspaper stories about the rape and murder of the young girl, only eight years old, in Kashmir, were everywhere, and at unexpected moments, a sudden image of her suffering would come out of nowhere to blindside me, and I could do nothing but weep. What are verbal descriptions compared to real life cruelty? So yes, it is difficult to write of pain and violence, but at the same time, once it’s on the page, there is some semblance of relief. Those scenes of brutality in my novel are written from my own experience, or the experiences of women I spoke to. Which woman in India, or in any other country for that matter, has never been molested? I’d really like to meet her. I was molested when I studied dance in Madras, not as violently as in my novel, but it certainly gave me a point of entry into the scene. And when I went to Gokak to talk to the devadasi women there, they described with extreme frankness the horror of being forced as young girls to have sex with much older men. It’s no fun for the girl, I can tell you. And yet she would often fall in love with the man. I was always conscious that emotional truth is often messy and difficult and complicated.
Q7. Was it easy to transit from a being professional Bharatnatyam dancer to a novelist? What were the pros and cons?
I can’t regret being a bharatanatyam dancer, even though I never had much of a career. Being a dancer requires such discipline – what you eat, when you go to bed, how you sleep, all the care that is required – no high heeled shoes for example, no make-up daily, so that my skin could recover from the stage make-up. And since I wasn’t ever a well-known dancer, my performances were few and far apart, yet I still had to stay in practice, because the deterioration is so quick – miss two or three days and then take twice that long to get back to the same level. I was lucky: my two gurus Nana Kasar and Kalanidhi Narayan made the process of practicing the end in itself; they taught me to give up performance as a goal, and instead make daily practice an end in itself. This is a lesson I took with me into writing.
I felt very lucky to be a dancer when I saw the struggle my friend the painter Vasuddha Thozur had to store her work. A space had to be found to keep her beautiful paintings, while my work left no residue, stopped weighing on me the minute I was finished with it. I loved that feeling of not being tied down by what I’d already done. And the masterpieces weren’t hung on the wall, they were within me – ragamalika varnum, a Jayadeva ashtapadi, a thillana in Mohana raga, they became part of my cellular structure. On the other hand, when I stopped dancing, I had nothing much to show for decades of work. A dance piece that no one was interested in when I first performed it, can’t find a more sympathetic audience in the next generation, as books sometimes do. So that’s the big difference – a book has a life separate from the writer, while the dance and the dancer are indivisible.
Q8. In a Bharatanatyam performance, the onus is upon the dancer to tell a story from multiple perspectives. In a riveting dance performance the multiple characters stand out. In some senses, it holds true for a novelist as well. What was your experience in writing the novel, telling a story using words as opposed to being a dancer telling a story using visual expressions and hands to emote?
The experience of dancing is so immediate and flowing that is it is hard to describe exactly what’s happening in those moments of eyes, fingers, arms, legs, torso, moving in stylized ways. Not only that, an analytical approach to what’s going on can inhibit the process, and for me, the attempt has always been to silence that part of my consciousness that watches and comments, usually critically, on what I’m doing. That movement in and out of characters is an embodied melting of consciousness like a stream around rocks, and no surprise, the word for that state is ‘flow’. It’s very exciting but also risky, and what it means is that sometimes, it’s not going to be a riveting performance at all.
In my writing, I try to do the same thing, get into that state of flow, but with the advantage that once the words are on the page that critical faculty can be exercised to get rid of whatever isn’t working.
Q9. Did you at any time find that the characters were in control of the story rather than you or were you always sure how the plot would develop?
It’s a strange kind of magic the way the characters take on a life of their own – many writers have made the phenomena central to their fiction, as in Jorge Luis Borges story ‘The Other’, where there is a confusion between the character and the author, or in Peter Carey’s novel, ‘My Life as a Fake’ where the character tries to kill his creator. Those are doppelganger stories, but the experience is the same even when the character is very different from the author. All of us who love reading know that feeling, otherwise why visit Baker St. to see where Sherlock Holmes lived? And if the characters in other people’s books can be so alive, then it’s no surprise that one’s own characters take on a life of their own and do exactly as they please. The plot develops out of their behaviour, and I have to wait for them to do something, and watch and listen, and write it down, rather than move them around like pawns on a chessboard, or puppets. That’s why it’s so time consuming! Characters are very stubborn and don’t take kindly to hints from the author, at least in my experience.
Q10. What were the challenges in writing historical fiction? What did the research for this novel entail? What are the examples of historical fiction that appeal to you?
The challenge of historical fiction is to be true to as many facts as you can ferret out about the times you’re writing about, and it’s very difficult to figure out very simple things – like when did people in a small village in South India start having clocks on their walls, or watches on their wrists? How would people talk about time if there wasn’t a clock? Or when cars were introduced to India, how did they get gas? There were no petrol stations. I read about a rich man who’d sit in his car and have it pushed along the street by his servants. Try as I might, I couldn’t work that wonderful little detail into Girl Made of Gold. Maybe into the next one. Little things like that make it both treacherous and great fun to write about a time period that is outside one’s own experience.
I tried to read newspapers and magazines written in exactly the times I was writing about, as well as novelists who were contemporary then. I read the District Manuals for Tanjore, Puddukottai and the Madras Presidency for the relevant years, at the British Library, and I actually went to the District Collector’s Office in Tanjore, and they let me sit at a desk, while a clerk brought me boxes of papers which I could read, actual letters about the daily affairs – droughts, harvests, crimes, the weather. I lived in an agraharam near Tanjore, and spoke to old people who remembered the period. I could do research forever if I let myself, because there is endless information that can be unearthed.
I read ‘War and Peace’ when I was a student at Kalakshetra in the early 1970s, when there was literally nothing else to do and books from the Russian Cultural Centre were cheap; I skipped over the history at first, but then I’d have to go back and read those parts too, out of boredom with staring at the walls of my room in the hostel.The voice of the geisha Sayuri in ‘Memoirs of a Geisha’ held me in its thrall, I was completely transported into a different culture, values and time period that became vivid and real. I’m also an avid reader of the Judge Dee murder mysteries, set in the Tang dynasty, by Robert van Gulik. Hillary Mantel has made historical fiction newly popular, but the period, place and people she writes about are simply not of interest to me, so I haven’t read anything by her, though I’ve been very inspired by her fearlessness in going against prevailing versions of history.
Q11. A mesmerising aspect of your storytelling in the novel are the sentences. I had to put the book down many times as I kept getting the sense that you were trying to replicate a dance performance in the manner in which the words were strung. Did you play with the structure of the sentences consciously?
Thank you for saying that. Whenever I get stuck I use structure as a force to make something happen. So if everything on the page is tedious, I use the rhythms of the dance korvais as a constraint: That – dit – tha num – num – num – di. Afterwards, I don’t necessarily keep that pattern in the finished sentence, but at least it gets my pen moving, and maybe some of that rhythm has left a trace in the finished novel.
Also, the most famous analogy about the bharata natyam performance, the margam, is that it’s structured as a temple. Balasaraswathi said that alaripu is like entering the temple; by the time the padams are danced, one has reached the dark interior of the sanctum sanctorum. That mapping of dance onto temple stayed with me, and I brought it to mind while I wrote the novel, it was a potent image, so if some resonance of that has struck you, I’m very gratified.
Q12. Nowadays the trend is to get stories adapted to film but do you think Girl Made of Gold can be adapted into a dance performance?
Can I confess that I would love to see the Netflix series of Girl Made of Gold? I can imagine a girl like the beautiful 14-year-old Aparna Sen in Satyjit Ray’s ‘Teen Kanya’ playing Kanaka. Someone, please, make this happen.
The dance performance would have a very different shape and purpose than the novel. For example, if it was done like a Kalakshetra dance drama l don’t think it would work. But of course there is a way to do it, concentrating on communicating not plot but emotion – so much of the emotion is drawn directly from the padams and javalis of the bharata natyam repertoire anyway. Let those songs tell the story of desire and its power, not in a linear narrative, but in a more impressionistic and multidisciplinary layered story-telling. That’s probably how I would do it.
