Swati Chanda’s first novel Drowning Fish (Hachette India) spans three generations. The novels follows women from East Bengal after the 1950s, to a humble home in Triangular Park in Calcutta and USA of the 1990s. Reading the book is like opening a treasure trove, as the writer draws you into Neelanjana Sen’s world. A smart, academically bright Neelanjana leaves India for America, embarking on a journey of self discovery and exploring friendships and relationships. But circumstances force her to come to terms with her family’s history.
Neelanjana’s delightful childhood revolves around her grandmother, her mother and her aunt. Her grandmother, Nayantara, flees her home in the riot-hit East Bengal after1950. Her only link to the past is through her antique furniture, which she is determined to bequeath to Neelanjana. The Bengaluru-based writer through her superlative storytelling skills and lucid, yet profound writing brilliantly evokes a sense of place and time. The book is peppered with multi-dimensional characters that are easy to relate with. “The book is about Neelanjana’s journey of growth. During this process, she finds out her stories are tied in with older histories of her family and secrets that have been kept from her for many years. It is a discovery about the relationships she has to relook,” says Swati who graduated from Purdue University, and has taught in various colleges in USA and India.
On why she chose to write the novel now, Swati says: “I didn’t have a story!” she says and adds: “I have been writing, on and off, over the years on gender, culture etc, but not fiction. The character of Neelanjana is one that has occupied my imagination for many years now. I wanted to write about a certain perspective, a certain kind of person. Over the years, I wrote bits and pieces, about her. I must have started at least ten years ago. None of them, though, formed narrative.”
The book is steeped in research; though at no point of time does it overwhelm the story. “Five years ago, I did a formal research project on migration after Partition. It was completely data driven, just numbers — how old were you? How many people in your family, and income, among others. I was able to survey quite a large number of people. While I was reading just the numbers and transcribing them, I found myself wondering about the stories behind these numbers. It captured my imagination. In 2013, these elements came together in my head and a story emerged and I could see it from beginning to end.”
The notion of home forms another layer. “The book tries to raise questions of what is home, whether we belong, how does your home betray you sometimes. Can you go back home? Why do you not want to go back? Is there anything liberating in not belonging anywhere?”
Swati says one kind of research was doing questionnaires and surveys with people of a certain age who had real experiences of migrating. “The other kind was just reading up to soak in the history. In my mind, I had a detailed picture of the time and place I would set in my novel, so that when I wrote my book, I would be very comfortable that it was as authentic as possible, in terms of the feel of it.”
Swati even looked at details of the price of a tram ticket in the Kolkata in those times, things like how much was the first class ticket, the fact that there was a first class and a second class in trams. The fact that tram lines went all the way to Howrah station. “For me it was discovering facts about the familiar places I have never been to, where the book is set in.”
The most interesting aspect of the book, says Swati, is the way it is written. “The narrative is not linear. It doesn’t go from point A to point B. In my mind, I visualise it as loops. It’s not something I did consciously at all. It is something that came very organically. But I was very happy at the way it was coming out. I tried to be honest in that I didn’t do it for effect.”
Swati’s exploration of relationships forms the core of the book. “What is the relationship between love and friendship? What happens when a relationship in which one person is a friend, and the other person loves? What is unrequited love? What is the sadness of a person who loves without being able to help it? What is the guilt of the person who cannot return that love? It’s about a man and a woman in this kind of a relationship. From that perspective, it is not for women readers alone. The book has a fair amount of violence too, racial and sexual.”
The title is catchy, Drowning Fish… what’s its significance? Swati replies with a smile. “Do fish drown? When would fish drown? They would probably drown when they couldn’t survive in the water, in their environment. For me that could be a metaphor for the book, but I don’t want to say anymore. If you read the book, it is spelt out quite clearly.”
Swati spent 12 to 14 hours everyday in writing the book, and found herself completely immersed in writing the novel. “There are two relationships in the book and writing them was both challenging and extraordinarily rewarding. I just loved doing that.”
