A Conversation with Uday Prakash
Arnab Chakladar: Are you suggesting that a writer has to have a sense of location, of connection to a place to write authentically?
Uday Prakash: Possibly, or even the rootlessness has to be expressed properly. Rootlessness is there here in India as well. For instance, I was born in a small village and now for last 30 years I have been spending a lot of time here in Delhi and other towns and cities...this is the problem of rootlessness...I feel some time myself as an immigrant here...for instance, if I meet my nephew, who is still in the village and lives a rural life it is easy for me to relate to him because I have lived the same life. But for my sons who are born and brought up in Delhi it is not so easy for them to communicate or to be able to stay in the village without electricity or things they are used to here. These are some pragmatic considerations, but it also goes down to a deeper level, to the micro-structures of feelings and experiences, which are different. So uprootedness, I am talking about in these terms. If I am away from that life for a long time it becomes difficult to write about them, and I should honestly depict the kind of experiences I have here now. And that is what I am trying to do.
So uprootedness, I am talking about in these terms. If I am away from that life for a long time it becomes difficult to write about them, and I should honestly depict the kind of experiences I have here now
And recently I have written a story "Mohan Das", which is a story of my village, a man of my village--but I have intercepted this narrative to give a sense of time-difference, to say, "this is the story of a time when the twin towers collapsed" or "this is the story of the time when Munnabhai MBBS became a superhit"--so one can see that these kinds of lives and times are simultaneous.
Arnab Chakladar: Earlier you'd mentioned that our perception of reality has changed, that realities themselves have changed, and that narrative form has to keep pace with these changes. You are not yourself a straightforward realist as a writer. Can you say something about your feelings about form and so on?
Uday Prakash: Basically, I see myself as a poet first. I don't really have a form or style in mind when I write. So when I wrote "Mohan Das" at first I wrote about a man's life. It looked like a man is living in British India, in 1931 or 1932, say...but I wanted it to be clear that this is a life from our time, so I began to intercept the narrative with statements. I didn't realize at the time what I was doing, and when I read the story to a friend he was quite confused. But I quite liked the style. I think form and style are not things that can be external, they evolve from your subject and from your experiences; it comes out of that. And every different subject or experience discovers its own form. I think if you read my different stories you will see that difference. I think it is monotony to write only in a particular narrative style--it hampers and hinders.
Actually, for India now I think this is a very fertile time for narrative, post-90s and now--because every day you can see some new structures of reality are coming out and my argument is your narrative form should be all-inclusive, should include everything around you, if you can capture them.
Arnab Chakladar: And scholars of the novel form will say that this is what the novel has always been about: about absorbing all kinds of subjects and structures into itself and changing--so in a sense to talk about the death of the novel in the face of new kinds of realities or forms of narration is a contradiction.
Uday Prakash: Definitely, definitely--I am in full agreement. I think the author should have a child-like eye, an essential innocence. If you are already indoctrinated or biased with some sort of political structures or thought systems, you really cannot see--you have a corrupt soul, an adulterated eye or something.
language in my view is not a tool ... possibly for politicians etc. it is, but for us it is a means of existence.
Arnab Chakladar: If I may change directions again: who are some of the writers who have influenced you or who you think of as literary models?
Uday Prakash: There are many. There is the Polish writer, Bruno Schulz. When I read his book, The Street of Crocodiles I could identify with it because of my own family history. Later on I discovered he was a very unfortunate man, and I read his other books--I thought he was better than Kafka, and closer to me. I felt the same way about Crime and Punishment.
Arnab Chakladar: I remember the first time I read Crime and Punishment--I developed a high fever, which went away soon after I finished the book. It is the single most powerful literary experience I have ever had...
Uday Prakash: But I could not feel the same way about Tolstoy's War and Peace--it is a great epic but it could not touch me in the way of Dostoevsky's writing. People say Dostoevsky was the writer of darkness, he wrote about things that are in shadows, the inner world of man; whereas Tolstoy wrote about bigger, grander themes. So writers like these, like Dostoevsky, like Bruno Schulz, Lorca sometimes, Cavafy's poems...
Arnab Chakladar: One of your books is dedicated to Nirmal Verma...
Uday Prakash: He also influenced me a lot--I should admit it. He influenced me a lot especially when I was young--I first read his translations..."Romeo, Juliet aur Andhera", his translation of "Romeo, Juliet and Darkness" by, I think, Jan Otcenasek. I read it twice or thrice and each time I thought I was that 18 year old boy. His language has a melody, he knows how to write...language in my view is not a tool...possibly for politicians etc. it is, but for us it is a means of existence.
Arnab Chakladar: I also wanted to ask you about your painting. Can you talk a little about the relationship you see between yourself as a writer and as someone working in visual media?
It is not about how many readers and speakers there are for a language--it is also about how good a writer someone is. People should not say Hindi literature must be read because Hindi is a big language. It is not about that, but about how good the writing is.
Uday Prakash: I think these kinds of things don't come from separate places. I don't think this is a valid question--because I don't think writers who have no visual sense or who have a bad ear for music or sounds, who think just because they have command over language, can be good writers. In my opinion, some of the best writers are people who are not known as writers--many film directors, like Ritwik Ghatak and Luis Bunuel or Ingmar Bergman. First of all, I think a good movie is as good as a good novel or poem. But also many directors like Bunuel or like the artist J. Swaminathan, who wrote autobiographies or memoirs--in my mind they are much bigger writers than many people who are known as writers. If you are successful in expressing your life, your experience, your inner world in language, it does not matter if you are exclusively a painter or a writer or even a doctor (I say that because today I read a piece by a doctor in Granta that mesmerized me, and he is not even officially a writer).
Arnab Chakladar: I have taken up a lot of your time, so let me ask you one last question: this interview will be going up on a site that, quite frankly, is read primarily by English language readers who have very little knowledge of Indian literature in languages other than English (and I will include myself in this list), and many who have never read any kind of Hindi literature. What would you say to them to convince them to take an interest?
Uday Prakash: For any author like me, it is something dream-like to discover new readers, to find that people in other countries, from other languages, in places like Germany are reading me. I think people will come to know soon that in other Indian languages, not just in Hindi, that something significant is being done, especially in the fields of poetry and narrative--many new things are being done. People should try to read some of it. Just as for me someone like Bruno Schulz or Milorad Pavic was a discovery, for them also it may be a discovery to find new writers, and not just minor figures like me. See, for example, Vijaydan Detha--he is a Rajasthani writer, Rajasthani is a very small language, it is considered a dialect of Hindi, and the total number of Rajasthani speaking people is hardly 2-3-4 crores. But he has a place today among Indian writers that is at the very top. Major playwrights and filmmakers have made plays and films on his short-stories. He has become like a sacred stone, where most Indian creative figures want to go and touch him. One day more people will come to know him.
It is not about how many readers and speakers there are for a language--it is also about how good a writer someone is. People should not say Hindi literature must be read because Hindi is a big language. It is not about that, but about how good the writing is.
Arnab Chakladar: Thank you very much for your time.