A Conversation with Githa Hariharan
Arnab Chakladar: I thought we might begin by talking about your own beginnings as a writer. Could you say a little about the pathways through which you arrived at being a full-time writer.
many of us wanted to break the rules because of our politics, our feminism etc, and there was a realization that if you were going to break all the rules, live life according to the beliefs you are so vocal about, you had better not look for doles from the family
Githa Hariharan: Even as a child I was pretty sure I would do something with the written word. I was always a voracious reader--though, of course, it would be unfortunate if all voracious readers took to writing! As an adolescent I wrote reams of what I thought was poetry. In retrospect I see this was not really a wasteful exercise. Beyond the therapeutic value of adolescent writing, something like "notes to yourself", it also meant I acquired some discipline, training in using patterns of imagery, nudging together image and idea, using time in different ways in a narrative. All this would become, much, much later, some of the important concerns of my craft.
I was lucky enough to have some truly extraordinary teachers when I was studying in Bombay -- I did the last two years of my Bachelors in Bombay. It was a BA in English, which I now think is not a very useful thing for a writer to have, because, particularly in India, you have to unlearn pretty much everything you learn. But I was very lucky in that I had at least two, if not three teachers who were the kind you dream about: who not only teach well, inspire and challenge you, but who also become your friends and keep track of your progress beyond the degree. Not only did they lend me books outside the syllabus, they also came to some writers through me and other students -- and that is truly a remarkable thing. For example, one of my teachers, a brilliant teacher called Nita Pillai, began reading Yasunari Kawabata because as a 17 year old I had discovered his work! And not surprisingly years later the same teacher read my first manuscript even though by then we were not even on the same continent. In fact, she was happy to describe herself as a midwife of my first novel.
Those were the beginnings. Later I began writing short fiction while I worked in publishing. It was very important for me to do something with books, and as you know the publishing industry and universities are full of people who are closet writers or putative writers and so on. So that's a safe place to do your apprentice work! It was also very important to have a career, a regular source of income. This I think had something to do with being a middle-class Indian woman of my generation. Many of us wanted to break the rules because of our politics, our feminism etc., and there was a realization that if you were going to break all the rules, live life according to the beliefs you are so vocal about, you had better not look for doles from the family. About my early writing at that time -- and this is probably something that many who go through that great youthful process of politicization have had to go through -- for a long time I imagined that I had to write about certain things, and all with a visible "political perspective". Of course it's unlikely that you have the equipment to bring this off at this early stage of writing. Your readerly and critical abilities are often more developed than your writerly abilities. All you really have at that point is a developing worldview, which is perfectly valid, but you don't have the rest. At any rate that was my experience -- and it took me a while to bring that first work out of the closet.
people always say women writers whine about how difficult it is to write because of the children and the household and so on
Arnab Chakladar: So when did that happen for you?
Githa Hariharan: It actually happened quite late, at least by today's standards-- as you know they're getting younger and younger .
(laughter)
People always say women writers whine about how difficult it is to write because of the children and the household and so on. It's true, of course, but my experience turned this upside-down, at least in getting started. It was when I got pregnant and went away on maternity leave that I got the courage to say, "all right, I'm not going back". And I started working seriously on The Thousand Faces of Night. Partly this was because of the phenomenal boredom and sameness of those early months of motherhood...
(laughter)
But maybe there's nothing like motherhood to make you feel you need to make choices. There's a feeling that this is it - in a society that places such a premium on motherhood, you can stop here, no one will really expect any more of you. I think I was so frightened by this -- and so enraged -- that I began writing more seriously.
I have said the confinement period was boring, but there was also an unexpected source of creative stimulation. It may sound rather romantic-feminist, but really it was the first time in my adult life that I was surrounded by women, an incredible range of them, all of them coming up with all kinds of advice -- and a lot of it was terribly weighed down by myth. There was an example for everything -- like scripture or government documents, there was something applicable to every situation, there was a lot in small print you were just about aware of. And so I started writing the section on Mayamma, the old woman, first, and that just sort of emerged intact -- because I had got to know so many old women like that so well. Probably the first and last time as a writer I had that experience some writers talk about, "it wrote itself". I know it's possible and I also now know that it doesn't happen too often. After I had that little fragment I knew that there was something I could work on, but I had to figure out how to make a novel of it!
Arnab Chakladar: So, The Thousand Faces of Night came before your short-stories? Or had you already published short stories before then? I'm thinking of the ones collected in The Art of Dying.
Githa Hariharan: Not the stories from The Art of Dying. There were some earlier attempts -- I remember a story in "The Illustrated Weekly" that was important to me. But then it was more important for me to do journalistic work (not that it isn't important now). So, The Thousand Faces of Night was the first as a "committed" writer or at any rate a writer looking to be suitably published.
Arnab Chakladar: I'm quite stunned to discover that it was your first piece as such because it is such an assured piece of writing. And I think this goes back to what you were saying about having come to it relatively late, by today's standards.
Girish Karnad's ability to mine old stories for our times is also something I learnt a lot from
Githa Hariharan: To my mind Thousand Faces is very much a first novel. But I think it is important to say that there was a lot of "apprentice work" that was done to get to this first novel. I think it has the virtue of spontaneity, even a kind of innocence, which you can, perhaps, only have with your first work. I am grateful for the amount of attention the book has got -- but I also suspect you always feel ambivalent about your first creation.
Arnab Chakladar: Could you say a little about your literary influences or models -- direct or indirect...
Githa Hariharan: I can speak about the conscious influences -- it's hard to know, if you are a greedy reader, what may have taken hold of your imagination at some level. When I was growing up, just the discovery that there were worlds other than Indian and English was a big thing. So for example the Russian novelists, or Japanese novelists and poets, were a big discovery for me. Desani's All About H. Hatterr and Raja Rao's Kanthapura were both jolts in terms of what could be done with English. Later, of course, Rushdie did something equally imaginative with language in Midnight's Children, and it also spoke to us at the time in a way older writers or writing in translation didn't. In terms of direct or conscious influence though, I think I would put A.K. Ramanujan top of the list. The tale as a protagonist is an idea that permeates all his retellings. Girish Karnad's ability to mine old stories for our times is also something I learnt a lot from. For similar reasons, there's Borges, and for sheer breadth of imagination, Calvino. And as far as the kind of spare style of writing I aspire to, I always think of Coetzee. He is one of the readers I address in my mind when I write -- I hope it keeps me from leaving in what may well be flab!
Arnab Chakladar: Do you think you might go back to the short story form again?
Githa Hariharan: I hope so. I love the short story form. It is a challenge -- because you have to do something worthwhile in a very neat little space. But perhaps the novel form corrupts you a little? Once you have written a couple of novels, you find yourself pushing every story you begin till you end up occupying the whole house, not just that one room the story needs. But I must point out that at least three of my novels use stories - they could stand on their own, I think, but they have been written to be strung together, do things together. Of course these are not what we usually think of as short stories -- some of them are myths retold, some are fables I have made up. I don't think we need to have such clear-cut definitions of short stories and novels -- some of my books have not really been written to fit any mold or form.
The Art of Dying came about for a very specific reason. After The Thousand Faces of Night, I thought, if this is what I am going to do for the rest of my life, let me set some exercises for myself. The Art of Dying was the result of the agenda I was trying to define for myself for the next 10 years or whatever as a writer. And I think I followed this plan -- out of the title story grew The Ghosts of Vasu Master, for example. So those stories were limbering up exercises.