ANITA NAIR
THE BREEZE BLEW AS STIFFLY FROM THE SEA AS IT HAD ALL THOSE YEARS ago when I came to Kanyakumari as a young girl. The horizon stretched as far as one could see and beyond. After all this time I felt again the hope the horizon offered. Limitless possibilities. Of taking life in one’s hands and doing with it what one could. I sat on the embankment wall and thought of the last section of my book Ladies Coupe. Here is where Akhila decided to wrest control of her life again. The boundless seascape compelled you to feel that way no matter what the circumstances of your life or how old you were. Writing has been that horizon for me.
I leaned into the breeze and thought again of how I had sought to discover myself. At first, language was the horizon with which I tried to define who I was. For I began with not knowing what my language was. Should language be a matter of choice, or should it be determined by where you were born or the circumstances you grew up in?
My father worked with the defence forces and so we were stationed at a military base in a suburb of Madras (now Chennai). Because it was a defence establishment, it was populated by people from other parts of the country from different socio-economic backgrounds. So Hindi became the link language while at home we spoke Malayalam. This was Chennai, which meant I had some familiarity with Tamil. Since I went to a Central government school, the third language I studied was Sanskrit. So there was English, there was Hindi, there was Sanskrit, there was Malayalam, and there was Tamil. Apart from which there was also Telugu, Kannada, Bengali, Marathi, Gujarati and Punjabi all of which were part of my every day.
My mind was a heaving tower of Babel. Words from several languages hurled themselves this way and that like celestial objects through space, and I floundered not knowing what it was that I could shape my thoughts with. In a strange way it was in English that I found reprieve and refuge. Truth be told, it reminded me of an eccentric uncle.
Like him there was an almost transparent epidermis around, the vowels and consonants of the English language that allowed it to stay untouched by the messiness of everyday emotions. Like him, this was a quirky language with no real logic to its syntax and I especially liked the reversal of the subject-verb agreement. Yet like my uncle’s natural sense of style, there was an elegance to the language in the way it was used that separated it from everything I knew and heard around me. Later when he pointed out to me the pristine simplicity of the Kerala sari with its cream and gold amidst a sea of ornate Kancheepurams, Benaras, Jamevars and Patolas, I saw a metaphor for how I perceived English.
Sometime in those early years I began writing but in that world there was no place for a girl in love with words. To belong you had to fit into boxes that had been chalked out. There was a place for the sprinter, the volleyball player; there was a place for the kabbadi-kabbadi chant and the swish of the discus as it flew through the air. There was a place for the singer, the dancer, the actor, the painter and the debater. There was a place for the math prodigy, the class topper; why there was even a place for the academically challenged. But to be someone who read the dictionary for pleasure, someone who just wanted to be left alone to find yet another palindrome, and someone who preferred to lose herself in the written word rather than the spoken one was to be suspect. So I chose to keep my writing a well-guarded secret.
But I wrote, filling notebooks with stories and poems. When I wasn’t writing, I read. But there came a moment of self- awareness in my mid-twenties: what I wrote and was writing was inconsequential. I was merely dabbling. Something was holding me back. It took me a little longer to realize that what was holding me back was not knowing what would be the voice and style I was going to make my own. Now you see the thing is, unlike many writers writing in English in India, most of whom set their novels or short stories in an urban scenario, I am someone who has always been interested in writing about suburban and rural India. So how was I to find a voice that would help me capture a world where English and its nuances have no place?
When I started writing the surge in Indian writing in English hadn’t really happened. There still was a great deal of scepticism not just among publishers and distributors, etc., but among readers as well. Even to this day I meet countless people who say, ‘I read a lot but I don’t read Indian writers.’ It is almost as though we haven’t made the mark.
At that point my confusion was not because I didn’t know who my reader would be but from the thought as to how I would write in English without making it seem like a tawdry translation or making it sound stilted. By a happy chance I was given a book by the Brazilian writer called Jorge Amado. He wrote about a province called Bahia in Brazil, and he wrote in Brazilian Portuguese. But when I read his book I discovered that this was written and translated in such a fashion that at no point did I feel I was reading a translation; there was nothing awkward or pretentious about it. But at the same time the language was beautiful and lyrical and most importantly, there was a perfect fit between the voice and the characters. And that for me was probably my moment of epiphany for, without that book, I wouldn’t have known how to portray the world I wanted to write about.
It was a voyage of discovery as I learnt how to handle language and form, to match it to the kind of milieu I wrote about. It made me that much more confident in terms of being not just a writer but in my subject matter as well. To be able to tell all the stories I wanted with effortless ease.
Writing is a labour of love. You write because you feel the great urge to tell a story. There is a singular feeling of achievement that nothing else will ever provide; no award, no number of bestselling books, nothing is going to match that flush of joy that I know when I write well and this is the driving spirit that relentlessly keeps me doing what I do. You will break every bar you have set yourself, surmount every obstacle and keep at it.
I began my literary life with a quiet novel that in many ways matched my character; it was my second novel that helped me break through my natural timidity. For, Ladies Coupe was also a book I wrote for myself. I needed to know what I truly thought about my identity both as a woman and writer.
Twenty-one years ago, I climbed onto the top berth of a ladies compartment in a train from Bangalore (now Bengaluru) to Madras and discovered an unexpected world. Once the door was closed and the blue night lamp switched on, the middle-aged women who were my fellow passengers in the coupe began a conversation that riveted me to my sleeping berth. It was a no-holds-barred conversation on mothers-in-law, daughters-in-law, husbands, servants, forgotten dreams and cast aside ambitions; secret fears and unexplored possibilities. It was a combination of the confined space and assurance of anonymity, as they were strangers to each other that turned the coupe into a confessional box. Their candour, their subversiveness, their subtle strength and courage inspired Ladies Coupe.
Ladies Coupe is not about feminism and nor am I a feminist writer. It is a book of stories about women and how a woman makes her own place in society. It is a book about the human condition like each one of my novels has been. But it was with Ladies Coupe that I first depicted ‘the right women have to be women’.
Ladies Coupe was immediately labelled a feminist novel in many parts of the world; and somewhere deep within me I was amused, appalled and of course, gratified at the notion that I had written what was being considered an important feminist text. But mostly I was, and still am, puzzled. For what this novel emphasized is what it is to be a contemporary Indian woman.
I have been criticized for being outdated, but I don’t think women’s lives have really outgrown the lives of the women I write about. Perhaps it’s because of our pre-conditioning. Perhaps it is the effect of the stories told to us by our mothers and grandmothers. I remember a story my grandmother would repeat when I was growing up: there was this girl who had got married and was sent back to her parents because she didn’t know how to cook! It was a cautionary tale. I don’t ever remember her telling me the importance of things like knowing how to change a light bulb, for instance.
This very same grandmother was a strong woman otherwise. A perfect role model. She was married at twelve as was the custom those days and went to live with her husband when she was fifteen. By the time she was twenty-six she had taken over the reins of running the family. My grandfather worked in the railways and was mostly away. It was she who brought all six children up, made sure they had a well rounded childhood and education; it was she who built a colony of houses and looked after the agricultural lands, the farming, etc. She was capable, practical, artistic and fun. Yet perhaps because of her own conditioning, she thought girls would never do as well as boys. A girl child gave you love; a boy child made you proud….
I have never viewed life from a woman writer’s point of view. But merely as a writer. Nor do I think there is a division between male and female literature. I think in some sense writers lose their sexuality when they walk into the world of words; but all writers have to face the duality of existence that an artistic life brings. To not just go through their everyday existence but to live through the grind of imagined lives many times over.
I do not know enough writers, male or female to know if this is universal or particular to my own experience, but I do know that a woman writer in India is subject to a great deal of loneliness because she is still answerable to the world about what she writes. As all my novels are translated into Malayalam, my themes come up for scrutiny and discussion in Kerala where I have a fair readership. And any deviation from the traditional is questioned.
So to even think about tackling difficult subjects is an act of courage. A self-inflicted censorship hovers. What will my family think of me? How will society perceive me? Do I really wish to take them on? Subversion is fine but I am a woman. To publish what I write may be to invite scorn, recrimination or even harsh criticism. But at some point I shrug these thoughts off and accept that the true dharma of a writer is to reveal the truth of her heart.
It is the deep rooted need to be true to myself as much as my art that lets me disregard the consequences and pursue a literary life where the rewards are few – a grudging acceptance perhaps and a certain dismissive regard for the work I create. Sometimes I think true to my childhood influence I write with more a soldier’s spirit than the artist’s. For as Barrie, the creator of the immortal Peter Pan wrote: Courage is the thing. All goes if courage goes….
Along with grappling with what I want to write about is a demon I need to battle with day after day. As a married woman with a home to run and as a writer engrossed in the peregrinations of her characters, I know a daily conflict of interest.
How does one harmonize a literary life with a family life? Both require involvement. Both demand dedication. Both need the luxury of time. If I choose to be a good wife and mother, the writer in me suffers. And if I choose to put my writing above all else, I am afraid I will be seen by family and society as a cold, wilful and selfish woman. I know I can expect little support and hardly any encouragement.
This daily shredding of the soul. This daily emotional upheaval. This daily state of flux. Often I wonder is this worth anything at all? And yet I continue to write because as all writers know, the need to create is paramount.
For when I write I know who I am.