In 2004, Rupa Bajwa published her debut novel, The Sari Shop , and instantly became the country's new literary find. She earned rave reviews and numerous accolades, and then, quietly exited the publishing world. Now, she's back from her hiatus with her second book, Tell me a Story , and already, there is an eager anticipatory buzz surrounding her latest creation.
Writing this book
The process of writing this book was just as gruelling as The Sari Shop . Only this time, the challenges were different. I had a baby in between and he kind of mellowed me. I wrote half of the book when I was pregnant, and the rest of it after childbirth. And now, I'm a mother as well as a writer. It's a lot of hard work being both. So the process is gruelling in a different way, and physically exhausting too.
Finding her voice as an author
This is technically my third novel. I started on another novel after The Sari Shop . Somewhere in between I realised that something was wrong, somehow. I felt like I was falling into a writer's trap. The Sari Shop had got critical acclaim; I still don't know how it did commercially. People talk about a writer finding his or her own voice.
A very senior writer congratulated me about finding my voice, more than the success of the book. You write from experience, you write from what you feel.
As you grow, you are in flux, you are going through experiences, learning and unlearning things. I don't see how that voice is a fixed thing. Yes, definitely the core of that voice is the same. But perhaps over the years you become tolerant towards certain things, learn and unlearn certain things. And that affects the writing. You cannot keep writing the same book again and again.
On her new book
I love fiction, I can say things in my novels that I cannot say otherwise. I'm not so articulate. I've tried to put in a lot of things in this novel which are all about stories.
One is the importance of stories and why people need stories. Like Bittu, Rani's nephew who clamours after stories. And why we occasionally lose our ability to imagine and transport. Why it is sometimes difficult to tell stories. I have tried to take storytelling to different levels.
There is Rani who tells her nephew stories to shut him up. But most of the times, she can't find endings for her stories. Maybe because some stories don't/ can't have satisfactory endings.
The inevitable comparison between the two books
That's what's making me uncomfortable, because I think Tell Me A Story is going to get a lot of flak. The Sari Shop was a very powerful book. Tell me a Story is a more mellow and accepting sort of book. I know that. This complete lack of direction is deliberate; it reflects the randomness of our lives and our own stories.
In this book, I have let go. I have not been a control freak. It was one of the most difficult things I've done. Some things have just developed in the book without my planning them. For example, there is a passage; in the second part of the book, where Sadhana, who is a novelist like me, says that she has not played her cards well. That's when I realised that a part of this character had become autobiographical. When I'd started, she was just Sadhana. Somewhere along the line, she changed.
Her place in the literary world
That brings me to the fact that in this book, I've tried to include some things that are very important to me. For example, through Sadhana, I show how, in today's world, writing has become about the publishing industry. In this book, Sadhana hasn't made the right moves, and there's a part where she says that she is unable to function in a savage literary market place.
And then, there is also a sentence that was so close to my heart that I was actually crying when I wrote it — where she says that her little god of literature had been taken away. Many people have told me that I made a mistake by disappearing from the literary world. I didn't disappear from the literary world, but I disappeared from the publishing world. And that's a distinction that is very important to make. If I'm reading and writing every day, how am I disappearing from the literary world?
My connection with literature is just as much in my blood today as it was when The Sari Shop released. It's never diminished. It's just that I didn't go to festivals and events and get-togethers.
Today, it's become too important for authors to create a persona and project themselves in a certain way, wear certain clothes, have a trademark look. Recently, I ran into someone and I was dressed normally, in a salwar kameez with my hair tied back. The person told me I don't look like an author.
Her love for literature
I didn't study literature in college, but for me it was everything. It was a teacher, a friend, a companion. I was able to read some of the best books without knowing their snob value. I read books like Madame Bovary and The Red and the Black and House for Mr. Biswas and never knew anything about namedropping. All I felt was overwhelming love for those writers and characters. I have wept over Kafka. I'm a very personal reader I have a very emotional bond with everything I read. For me, there are no classics, children's books etc. For me there are good books and bad books; books I like, books I don't. That's why I dislike the idea of sitting in a class with strangers and dissect writings and authors. I have to sit alone with a book. It's a very personal thing.
Being a personal writer
I haven't thought about it, but now that you ask, I suppose I am a personal writer too. It's the only way I know. I cannot think of a plot, arrange characters and clinically create a book. I can't do that. I couldn't belt out books and cash in on the success and attention of The Sari Shop . When The Sari Shop came out, it was the critics who told me what the novel was about. I'm not even joking or being half funny here. While I'm writing, I write with the whole of me, not just with my brain. It's all of me.
