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| Sunday, December 14, 2003 |
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| Sunday, December 14, 2003 |
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HER first book Smell was translated into over 15 languages, winning her acclaim across the world. But this time around her literary agents refused to even read her second book, let alone get it published. Radhika Jha had committed the cardinal sin of not gauging the publishing industry’s market compulsions before putting pen to paper. The signs were clear. The end of the short story as a literary genre was obvious. Jhumpa Lahiri, who won the Pulitzer for short stories, was clearly an oddity. No publisher wanted to touch a collection of short stories with a barge pole. Penguin agreed to publish Radhika’s book but made it known they preferred a novel. Her book, The Elephant and the Maruti, has been published in paperback recently and the publishers are wondering if it deserves a formal launch. Radhika, however, is upbeat and thinks short stories are easier to read. After all, her first book Smell had started as a short story before it meandered into a novel. However, irrespective of the publishers’ needs, writing, for Radhika Jha, means a lot. She is also an Oddisi exponent, and she says her literary imagination fills in all the gaps of her abinay in the classical dance. Besides writing and dance, Radhika is also involved with social work. Therefore, talking and writing about the lives of ordinary people who live on the fringes of our consciousness comes naturally to her. The Elephant and the Maruti has some real-life characters she met on Delhi streets. She talks to Sanjay Austa about her concerns, her writing and her dreams. You have authored a novel and have just written a collection of stories. Which of the two is harder to write? It is more difficult to write a short story. These are vignette-type of short stories. For writing these, you need a photographic imagination. It has a very tight format. How did you begin writing your book? All of them started with an idea. I had stopped working for a while and I used to walk around Delhi a lot. So I used to meet the people who had come to Delhi in the last 20 odd years on the streets. Was meeting the people on the streets at random a part of the social work that you do? It was curiosity, and not social work which led me to meet these people. I was curious about who these people were, these people who are not seen and are made fun of and dismissed as oh yeh to Bihari hai! Was it easy to talk to people on the street? Did thy willingly share their stories with you? It’s all in the eyes you know. You are walking and someone is standing. Somewhere your eyes connect. In a split second you get a feeling about a person and I have learnt to react to that feeling. In the book you have included characters from all strata of society to present a pan-India reality. Was it a conscious decision? Yes and no. I wanted to have as many characters as possible. I was curious about the people around me. Do you think women writers write in a different way? Are their concerns different from those of male writers? I do think there is a way in which one looks at people or situations which is feminine. It doesn’t mean men can’t do it. But women are concerned with the material, they go into the sensory aspect of things, and their writing is rich in detail. But men can write like this too. However, men believe stories unfold. Women tend to be dense while telling stories. Short stories are not in demand by the publishers while the novel remains the only favoured genre. Publishers actually discourage a short story book. They tell you it is suicidal and that no one is going to read it. But I think people read it as there is no time to read long novel anymore. Short stories have the same intensity, and give the same chance to escape but in a shorter format. So why should one mind? Then why did you still go ahead and bring out a collection of short stories? As a woman I tend to get involved with details. I want to use details to build up an atmosphere. In short stories one has to do that in a small space. I was wondering how to bring a lot of characters into that space. I really wanted to know whether I had it in me to write a second book. I had set myself a challenge. I wanted to see if I could pull it off. You are already into your third book. What is it about? My third book is a novel. It is a book on cows, both rural and urban cows. Do you have a particular writing discipline that you follow? Not really. Sometimes I don’t write for a month. I usually like to stew things in my head before I sit down to write. Does your dance affect your writing in any way? It is the opposite. Writing affects dance. In this type of dance (classical) abinay is telling a story. You have a poem and you are working around it to bring out everything that’s in it. In that respect it is useful to have the imagination to imagine the details, the drama of the story and how the characters work. I first write the story about the poem and then work it into a dance format. |
