https://frontline.thehindu.com/arts-and-culture/article28064266.ece
Extract:
There are many histories and many ways of looking at history. Yet there is a common strand of marginalization of the role of women. History is often told from a male gaze. How challenging was it to address these inequities in a work of historical fiction?
At the start, it wasn't challenging so much as frustrating. I encountered references to women as either feminine ideals--dutiful and chaste sisters and wives who supported the efforts of men, mostly through social work--or else championed for being 'as strong as men.' There the narrative stopped. The social and sexual stigma around their life in the prison colony meant that they were barely if ever mentioned in books written by men.
It must have been frustrating?
At some point, I stopped caring about what had or had not been said. I entered that other world, the one of fiction, where the focus is on language and character. The unnamed political prisoner was the first character I wrote, over twenty-six years ago. My interest was, from the start, in her daily and interior life, as someone transported and imprisoned. I didn't want to erase or champion her: I wanted to know her as a person, in her entirety. She was a seed that I carried with me, across many seas. I just had to be patient. I had to let her speak. The same was true for Nomi, who in a sense becomes the keeper of her family's history. I wanted to know how she got there. I wanted to value her life, as a young girl who grows up not only between two colonial powers, but between two parents who largely don't see her. I just had to hold her, and listen, and forget about any other gaze.
The book took around 26 years to be completed. Yet it has a seamless narrative. How challenging was it to keep coming back to it after each of your other novels?
There is a lovely compliment embedded in your question. Thank you. I have actually asked myself the same question. How did I slip back into this book, after immersing myself totally, body and soul, in each of the others? And now I am not complimenting myself so much as acknowledging that I don't quite understand. I think the simple reason is love. The unnamed prisoner, Nomi, Shakuntala, Aye, Haider Ali--I simply could not abandon them. They seemed to know it because they never left me either.
Mind you, this doesn't mean I love the characters in my other books any less. It means there is never a choice--you love who you love. Through writing, I've discovered a greater capacity to hold love for multiple people across time and place.
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Read the full interview here: https://frontline.thehindu.com/arts-and-culture/article28064266.ece
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