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Literary Review
'Interiority... is about survival, hope'
In an understated and discerning manner, SUSAN VISVANATHAN'S novella The Visiting Moon explores the mind of a woman and a writer against a backdrop of friendships and a possible love. Here, she answers some of MUKUND PADMANABHAN'S questions about her new work.
On writing a novel of such complete interiority:
YOU are right about it being a novel on interiority — the tradition is, if you remember, called "The Life of the Mind". I had become clearly marked as a writer who was lucid and tranquil — and it's a style I return to in my next novel, Riding the Waves. In Moon I wished to break from the serenity of the accepted orthodoxy of my earlier protagonists. Here, in Moon, I wish the characters to reflect the cynical and amusing culture of Delhi where a certain class of people battle with everyday crises in psychological terms.
On the autobiographical elements in the novel:
Many people ask if Moon is autobiographical. In so much as any writing reflects an interior state, and there is a bias to the choosing of a theme it is so. In my sociological work, particularly the text called "An Ethnography of Mysticism" which IIAS, Shimla published in 1998, I had been looking at a French monk called Henri Le Saux who had met Maharshi Ramana. Moon looks at the existential vacuum in which many of us are forced to live, and sometimes in the daily shuddering of the cosmos people find small spaces of fulfilment and identity — friendship is perhaps the most complex of these spaces. Interiority for me then, is about survival, resilience and hope. I absolutely believe that in the most tragic circumstances human beings have hope — the last thing left in curious Pandora's box — and so the species survives.
On why there is a whole chapter of "another" novel in this novel:
The novel within the novel is a laughing attempt at disguising failure. It's there because stable units come together in the oddest of situations — they may not be premised on sexuality or cohabitation, but because of shared space and fate. The protagonist, Rashmi claims the right to be involved in the questions of survival of migrant marginalised and betrayed communities.
On why the novel ends in such an abrupt, unresolved fashion:
For me the future is always open, and questions are always unresolved. There are myriad choices and any of the actors on stage may take a path the other may not have thought of. That is the frightening and magical space by which we understand the power and velocity of the individual will. While it may be difficult to escape one's destiny, the mode of questioning or adapting to that destiny is what free will is about. And my protagonists express that fluid space of encounter in their individual ways. Clearly as a writer I feel that recording the past or present is one of our integral functions, and that the very act of writing can be a symbol of protest and resistance.
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