Entranced by the past

With her latest book, The Shadow Princess, released recently, author Indu Sundaresan reflects on her historical obsession and the craft of her writing.

February 19, 2011 03:17 pm | Updated 03:17 pm IST

Write factor: Indu Sundaresan.

Write factor: Indu Sundaresan.

Indu Sundaresan's first book in the Taj trilogy, The Twentieth Wife , won the Washington State Book Award in 2003. The book and its sequel, The Feast of Roses (2003), contemplate the life of Empress Nur Jahan. In her third book, The Splendour of Silence (2006), Indu fell back on her Indian-American background to tell a romantic tale between a U.S. army captain and the daughter of a political agent against the backdrop of World War II and the freedom movement in India.

Her latest offering, The Shadow Princess , goes back to Mughal times and weaves together a fictitious love story of Princess Jahanara, Shah Jahan's daughter. In addition to her historical novels, Sundaresan has also brought out a collection of contemporary short stories set in India, In the Convent of Little Flowers (2008). Excerpts from an interview.

Mapped sequences

I begin every book with a lot of reading, taking notes and map out what I think will happen. When I begin writing, it's usually with a good idea of where the book is going; sometimes I have chapters mapped out, or some chapters only, sometimes not. Things change as I go along, depending on how the story is progressing, if I'm stuck or if it's flowing smoothly.

I first began working on research for The Twentieth Wife and The Feast of Roses in 1994 and a lot of my reading was done the following year. By the time I began writing these first two novels, I already knew that I would write the third, and about Jahanara, two generations removed from the protagonist in the first two, Empress Nur Jahan. The spark for Shadow Princess was present then, as early as that.

All three are written to stand alone if picked off a bookshelf randomly, although perhaps it is better to read the first two in order, if only to see Mehrunnisa, Nur Jahan's growth into power. I'm very tempted to continue writing about the Mughals, I must admit, but I'm not sure when this is going to happen!

Time Line

The first two novels of the trilogy took about a year in the writing (this is not including all the research time); Shadow Princess took two years, approximately. I shopped The Twentieth Wife around for five years before finding representation and a literary agent. It was difficult at first, I think mostly because Mehrunnisa, Empress Nur Jahan, is not as well known a personage as her niece, Empress Mumtaz Mahal, for whom the Taj is built. Since the book was published, and has done well in several international markets (my work is translated into 17 foreign languages so far), it has been easier, yes, to find placement for my subsequent books.

Background

I tend to keep true to history where I can, in writing fiction, all the three books have an Afterword where I explain what is historically documented, why I didn't agree (or agreed) with particular accounts, and in some instances, what thought process brought me to the decisions I make in the storyline.

For example, in Shadow Princess , Jahanara (Shah Jahan's and Mumtaz Mahal's daughter) is known not to have married; this is a fact. But there is also a small, stray mention in a foreign traveller's memoir that an alliance had been formed for her with a noble at court, a man named Najabat Khan. And in yet another traveller's account is this bit of thrilling gossip, that the two princesses, Jahanara and Roshanara, because they were forbidden to marry, invited men into the imperial zenana for their pleasure.

I first went in search of Najabat Khan's antecedents, and found him to be a well-respected courtier and a well-connected man descended from Timur the Lame and the Kings of Badakhshan. When I discovered this, the small mention of his name in connection with Jahanara began to make sense, because he was eminently qualified to be her husband and to marry into the imperial family. So I put together a love story for Jahanara and Najabat Khan in Shadow Princess from these three parts of my research — the stray mention of his name; the fact that Jahanara never married; and the gossip from the bazaars about her clandestine affairs!

Bridging time and distance

It's a funny thing, but for me, the distance from India (physically as I live in the U.S.) and in time (as in the 17th Century of my novels) is actually very helpful to my writing. I find that I have a different and a removed perspective that allows me to see my characters and my stories from a distance, more effective in my case.

Discipline for short stories and novels…

…Is certainly different. A short story is not more easily written for being shorter; it requires more compact thinking, the compression of a storyline, backgrounds for characters, a completeness if you will, within a shorter space. And the short stories I write are, by choice, very emotionally involved for me. I tend to pack a lot of action and emotion into them.

I write short stories in between writing novels, or sometimes, especially if it's particularly tough going on a novel, I set it aside and exercise my writing skills with a short story. The break keeps me writing and keeps me from fretting about obstacles in the longer work.

Write inputs

I came to the U.S. for graduate school and have an M.S. and an M.A. in Economics and Operations Research. This was, in many senses, what I was expected to do; get an education, and find a job. But when I finished my education I decided to write a novel simply for myself. So I wrote one, and then I wrote another one, and then I wrote The Twentieth Wife and The Feast of Roses !

But, growing up, my sisters and I did not lack creative input into our lives. Both of our parents were imaginative thinkers, our father (a fighter pilot with the Indian Air Force) was an avid storyteller, he painted in his free time, he wrote a little, he kept us engaged and amused with his stories. So the beginnings of this writing life were there in my childhood.

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