Cultural collisions

He sees a great future for Indian writing in English. And perhaps his conviction that Indians writing in English are bound to do well "if only we were not too nasty in judging them", comes from the fact that he has already reached out and touched that edge. Shashi Tharoor, diplomat, writerand novelist all rolled into one, has once again proven his formidable talent with the launch of his new book Riot. It is about the great waves of communalism that lashed India in 1989. But there is a twist in the tale and the author, experimenting with what he calls a different style in narration, tells his story through various characters - each eventually in search of their own identity.

In the Capital for the launch of the book, Tharoor talks to SUCHITRA BEHAL about the book, its plot and what he feels writing is all about. Excerpts from the interview:

Why did you choose this theme (riots)? It is rather obvious that it is very contemporary and something that is happening everyday...

I HAVE always been concerned about the communal issue. In fact if you have read some of my non-fictional writing, in India from Midnight to Millennium for instance or some of my current writing in newspapers, I've been very concerned about the growing communalisation of our politics and increasingly of our civic discourse in this country. I wanted to do it in any case and it seemed a good time to tackle it through fiction.

You've chosen a very unusual way of presenting the situation. It is very interesting but why did you choose Priscilla Hart as the central character to bring out the communal tensions and cultural divides that this country faces at this particular moment?

In terms of creative imagination, two things had fused in my mind when I began this novel. First of all, an account a friend of mine, an IAS officer called Harsh Mander, had sent me of a riot that he had actually managed as a district magistrate. So I had for the first time a sense of the mechanics of how these things work. And secondly, an episode in South Africa in which an American girl who had gone to help an NGO was killed in racial disturbances by blacks who simply saw her as this foreign intruder. The two images sort of fused in my mind. A lot of what I am trying to explore in this novel involves collisions of various sorts. Collisions between individuals in terms of both love and hate; collisions between cultures - there is this collision of various sorts.

And in a riot what happens of course is the ultimate collision of violence. But violence which involves both peoples saying this is who we are and this is who we are not. This is what we hate about you and this is why were going to do this to you. And at the same time, at a very visceral level, people defining who they are and how they are not and also what they are prepared to live and die for. And it seemed to me that this series of collisions could best be represented through different perspectives and voices from as wide a range of experiences as possible.

Why a foreigner? Because very often we define ourselves in relation to others and because a foreigner comes with a certain level of both innocence and a lack of understanding that helps illuminate for those who are trying to read a story like this. The danger in this kind of fiction is both of taking too much for granted on the part of the reader or of being too explanatory. And in this particular format I thought I had succeeded in bridging that particular gap.

I've always believed that the very word "novel" implies giving something new each time and all my fictional writing, I hope, has revealed a strong conviction that how you tell a story is as important as the story itself. So in The Great Indian Novel you have one kind of experiment of the narrative form - mock mythological style. In Showbusiness you've a totally different kind of narrative with intercutting narratives and monologues, lines addressed to a protagonist, stories of movies and so on. Finally, here you've got a third experiment. I don't know what else remains to be tried. Maybe I should write a very conventional novel next time around.

The character of Lakshman for instance, whatever his feelings are and the way he goes along with Priscilla suggests a very conventional Indian man, in his relationships with women and the way in which he approaches the whole dilemma. Are you trying to say something through him too?

One of the wonderful things about fiction is that it leaves an ambiguity for readers to resolve in their own minds. And this novel classically does that in various ways, including in the central dilemma. But having said that, one of the main concerns of the novel is "who are we"? Who do we think we are? And that involves questions of identity in the political sense, the religious sense, the question of allegiance, the question what is that we are prisoners of? You know we are sometimes prisoners of constructions that we have made in our own mind. Sometimes we are prisoners of real or perceived social and political pressures, sometimes we are prisoners of visions of the past, of future. And this question goes to the root of what leads to the riot, to the root of what works and doesn't work in the romantic relationship.

Recently V.S. Naipaul has said in an interview that Indian writers lack a sense of history and write in a vacuum. Would you like to comment on this?

Well I haven't come across the original article yet but I would certainly say that that's an astonishing statement because so much of Indian fiction is immersed in history. Was he referring to Indians writing in English only or other languages too? Speaking for myself, The Great Indian Novel is nothing but a reinvention of the entire history of the 20th Century India. Showbusiness is a novel about one slice of Indian society, Bollywood, but there are extended historical metaphors, including one whole movie plot that is an allegory for the emergency. From what little I know of Indians writing in Indian languages, our writers seem to be frequently absorbed with history and myth in terms of the kind of stories that they write so I don't know who Naipaul was referring to. But I don't know how widely Naipaul has read these works as well... to me history is vital, it's fundamental to my writing and I think that is true of many other Indian writers.

Talking about Indians writing in English, do you think that a lot of them are writing more and more to suit western tastes?

First of all, whether Indian writing is a "big thing" depends on what you think is the big thing. Relatively speaking, I would say that we have been noticed, we're almost a bit of a curiosity, the fact that there are these voices coming out of the part of the world which traditionally hasn't had that much attention paid to it. We get review attention in the major publications, but we're still talking about a very small slice of readership that actually reads Indian writing in America. I can't speak for Britain, because I haven't lived there.

I think writers write because they have something to say. And whether this is appreciated by ten or ten thousand persons, ultimately their real audience is themselves.

Is it important for a writer to be "rooted" in one's own country and culture in order to produce a more authentic work? Or does "rootlessness", as with the expats, become an asset?

No, I don't think rootlessness is ever an asset. Distance is always a handicap. Sometimes it is true to say that one advantage of distance is that you can see the wood, and not just the trees. On the other hand you'd only appreciate the wood if you had a sense of what the trees are and that's where the rootlessness or rootedness is important. with reference to my own expatriation, the fact is that I grew up in this country and a lot of who I am has been shaped and formed by growing up here. And so I do feel very much that my roots are here. They are not necessarily the sense of rootedness that somebody who can claim to feel who has been standing in the ration queue, sitting in a broken DTC bus or battling for a gas connection, who feels the texture and the pulse of life daily in a way that somebody living away, as I currently am, can arguably not claim to feel. But as long as that basic rootedness is there then the rest of the writing comes.

I write about India because I care about India. I've not wanted to write about other places in the same way. At the same time I'd be foolish to write about India if I didn't feel I understood it, if I didn't feel instinctively that I was writing from a sense of roots and a sense of being anchored to this place and to the preoccupations of Indians.

Has my expatriation affected my writing? To some degree, yes. I've become more aware of foreign perspectives on India. The final thought on this that I should stress is that unlike some writers who have made their homes abroad, my immigration is the expatriation of circumstance.

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