MAZUMDAR: Huge advance, major publishers, international attention. How are you dealing with all this? JHA: I work at a newspaper desk. I’m neck deep in hype the whole day and I’ve been trained to cut through it. So I see all this as a fleeting thing. It feels nice, the novelty of it, but what is sobering is the thought that the second novel is waiting and it’s going to be more difficult. The first novel, you’re turned on by the very fact that you’re being published. You have to be on guard against exaggerating your own capabilities.
Was there any influence of journalism on your creative writing? That’s for other people to judge, but yes, journalism is a very, very important part of the way I write. Journalism has taught me that the reader has a very short attention span, you have to get your point across in as few words as possible, that detail is crucial only if it’s relevant.
What do you think of the current buzz over Indians writing in English? Let there be buzz, let more and more writers write. That will encourage youngsters, in schools and colleges, to think of writing as a career because that’s where the next generation of talent will come from. And sure, there will be good stuff and not-so-good stuff but the readers are pretty smart, they’ll take care of that.
Salman Rushdie said the best writing coming out of India is in English, not in regional languages. What’s your view on this? Maybe he meant that the best writing the West gets to read these days from India is in English. Because if you go by the simple logic of numbers, less than 5 percent of the population reads English. It’s hard to believe that the cream of creativity comes from this 5 percent and the remaining 95 percent is mediocre. The best Indian cinema, the stuff that’s really world class, is still in regional languages–Malayalam, Bengali, Kannada.
So do you think it will change? Yes, it has to. Especially when big publishers realize that they cannot put all their eggs in an English basket. For that to happen, translators will have to get the same kind of incentives that writers get. And finding translators won’t be difficult. Anyone who writes in English can speak, read and write at least one regional language.
Are your characters modeled on real people? The only real character, I think, is Calcutta. I have tried to be faithful to it because the city is a very powerful backdrop for all the characters in the story. They are essentially composites of people I know and people I think I know.
How long did it take to write this book? Did it involve extraordinary discipline? In a way, it took a long time to write this book, emotionally. Because very early on, I knew I have had to write and when things fell into place, purely by luck and coincidence, the writing didn’t take that long. About a year and then a couple of months for rewrites and editing. More than discipline, it required a strong faith in the characters and the story.
What are you working on? First, I have to put “The Blue Bedspread” behind me. Then there are a few things I want to take up, things I feel strongly about. Like ordinary people leading ordinary lives and suddenly everything falls apart. I find it fascinating to follow them as they walk around, trying to pick up the pieces all over again.
Gabriel Garcia Marquez once said sooner or later people believe writers rather than the government. If so, then it makes writers very powerful. What do you think? Power, I am not sure but trust, maybe. I think writing, honest creative writing, is perhaps the only profession left today which cannot con you into buying a product. A book can never be an investment in the way a painting is, it can never earn revenue as, say, a film can. You buy a book because you need or you think you need a certain emotional experience. Politicians are the exact opposite, they are very public, they keep advertising, they even invade your bedroom. So naturally, in a world where it’s getting more and more difficult to believe anyone, I would rather put my trust in a guy who’s only trying to sell me a story, nothing else.
