Chronicler of memory

Having entered the literary arena with a semi-biographical offering, The Music Room, journalist-author Namita Devidayal now woos her readers with Aftertaste, a work of fiction about a trader family ruled by an iron-fisted matriarch. Excerpts from an exclusive interview…

July 03, 2010 04:53 pm | Updated 05:09 pm IST

Easy straddling of genres: Namita Devidayal

Easy straddling of genres: Namita Devidayal

Having entered the literary arena with a semi-biographical offering, The Music Room , journalist-author Namita Devidayal now woos her readers with Aftertaste, a work of fiction about a trader family ruled by an iron-fisted matriarch. All is well till geriatric debilitation sets in but the hidden agendas, malice, and unfulfilled expectations (along with, hitherto unexposed shades of love and care) that get exposed give the reader an interesting glimpse into the moorings of a joint family. Namita Devidayal talks about how this book came about and her experience writing it…

How easy or difficult was the transition to fiction?

One of the many gems I got from being inside the ‘music room' was what the legendary singer Kesarbai once reportedly told my guru Dhondutai while teaching her: “You should develop different facets of your personality, girl. Sometimes, one part of you should not be able to tolerate the other. That's what makes a woman mysterious, unpredictable, and even bizarre.” This is the imperative that perhaps explains how I was able to seamlessly move from the magical, lyrical space of a musical memoir into a slightly dark narrative about a dysfunctional Indian business family. It wasn't difficult at all. Both books flowed quite naturally for me.

I think there is a tendency for both writers, and readers, to pigeon-hole themselves in genres. I have strong views that we must have the confidence to explore all parts of our writing — and reading personality — and be able to enjoy a work of ‘high literature' (whatever that means) as much as a light flip story, without judgment or precondition.

What prompted you to venture into fiction?

I think we all have many stories within us. A writer is a thief — one is constantly stealing ideas, observations, even other people's memories. So for me, moving from non-fiction to fiction was not a conscious decision. Fiction allows one to have a lot of fun with imagination and narrative and plot, and I was not able to do that with The Music Room , so I really went all out with Aftertaste. Yes, this was probably a story within me, but I didn't really know where it was going until I started getting into it, and it unfolded as I wrote it. Yes, the context and some of the ideas in it were derived from the business family milieu that I have grown up in.

So, does the story trace its origins to a real-life story of someone you knew?

The seed of this story comes from the community I belong to — the banias, a very unique diasporic community driven largely by a desire to make money. This is definitely a work of pure fiction, though there are slices and vignettes that I have pulled out of my memory or stories I have heard from people and family members. Many of the scenes come out of childhood memories with my grandparents and I have tried to recreate those old-world values and scenarios because they are so special and so lost!

The story is set in the India of early 1980s and the nuances of that era have come out perfectly. Did you have to do much research?

I had the best time researching this book — mostly through the archives of newspapers and The Illustrated Weekly. I found all kinds of quaint things; products like Thermos flasks and Tata's eau de cologne that were the big things of their time. I spent hours browsing old newspapers between 1960 and 1984, which is when the book is set. I would often get lost in that world and forget what I was actually looking for.

You are known to be a spontaneous writer who doesn't write with a target audience in mind. Comment.

I believe you can never write with an audience in mind because that takes away from the integrity of the writing. Besides, the audience is always diverse and unpredictable. I was surprised by the range of people who responded to The Music Room, many of them people who had very little interest in, or background in, Indian classical music. A book has to touch a chord. You write what you want to write and hope that it reaches as many people because of the way the story has been told.

As a typical Indian joint-family drama, the story seems to be of a completely contrary background to your obviously Western upbringing in a nuclear family. How was the overall experience of delving into something so different from what you might have experienced, growing up?

Yes, I grew up in a nuclear family and on the contrary, I think that gave me the perspective to see how the Indian joint family — especially one that is joint by financial considerations — can be so insidiously oppressive. I may not have experienced it personally but I can see it all around me. It was easy for me to explore the idea based on so many people and stories from my extended families.

You're also a journalist with a well-renowned newspaper, how did it feel to lose yourself in a fictitious world?

My experience as a journalist has always contributed to my writing, both in terms of being able to write succinctly as well as the content. After all, novels derive their material from things around one, vignettes of the urbanscape, interesting characters one encounters, and journalists are chroniclers of the city. For example, I remember doing a piece many years ago during Deepavali, on the chopdi pooja that is performed by people from all communities, not just by Hindus. It is so interesting to see how Deepavali, and so many other festivals, have been adopted by people from all communities so seamlessly. I have used bits of that article in the novel.

In Music Room , you credited your mother, Meera Devidayal for initiating your journey into music. Was she also, in some way, responsible for your tryst with this book?

Both my parents have been very instrumental in my creativity, my curiosity and my sense of humour about even the darkest aspects of life. My mother is an artiste and a student of literature, so she was naturally a big part of my growth as a creative person. But interestingly, even though my father is a businessman, he has contributed enormously to my craft. He taught me to observe the un-obvious and to enjoy the funny moments that take place all around us which we are too busy to really appreciate. I owe a lot to him for Aftertaste – he would take me into the bylanes of Kalbadevi and tell me about the way in which business functions in these old-world places. He also took me on a fabulous journey to our hometown in Amritsar and introduced me to people and locations which, I think, gave me a lot of inspiration because the family in this book is a typical Punjabi bania family. Above all, he shared with me his love for food which remains a central theme in the book.

An exclusive extract from Aftertaste to be released by Random House on July 15...

Phoolchand — a dwarfish man who had long drooping moustaches and looked like a walrus — was Mummyji’s distant cousin and Daddyji’s close friend. They shared an office in Kalbadevi, a long room between a wholesale cloth merchant and a shop that sold music instruments. The room was lined wall to wall with a thick mattress covered with clean white sheets with a border of bolsters, also covered in white. This arrangement lent itself to quick snoozes in between customers and account-keeping.

Their families belonged to the trader community — the baniyas — known for their formidable business acumen, where the boys were taught their multiplication tables in quarters. At some point they may or may not have come from Marwar in Rajasthan but, over the years, they had dispersed all over the country, following the smell of money. The Todarmals had long adopted the language, food, and dress of their adopted home in Punjab. Yet, their identity was baniya first and they continued to intermarry within this diasporic business community. One of Daddyji’s favourite jokes was about a marwari who was visiting his old college friend, the Sheikh of Dera Arabia. After a heavy evening of food and drink, the Sheikh suddenly complained of severe heartburn and was rushed in his car to the hospital. He needed blood and the marwari offered his. The Sheikh got well and rewarded his friend with a new Rolls Royce. The marwari said it was not necessary etcetera, but accepted the gift. About a year later, the marwari was visiting his friend and, again, after a heavy evening, the Sheikh had to be rushed to the hospital. Marwari blood was transfused again. When the Sheikh recovered he sent his friend a box of chocolates with a note saying, ‘Most grateful for your timely help. Can’t offer more than chocolates as I now have marwari blood in me!’

Both Phoolchand and Daddyji were moneylenders, though Daddyji also used to speculate in grains and pulses. Daddyji was a simple man whose taste revolved around money, food, and dirty jokes. Phoolchand had a poetic side, unusual for someone from his background, and used to spend hours writing and reading verse or wandering off in the middle of the day to listen to great musicians in the nearby Girgaum area. His favourite was a young singer called Ameer Khan whose music he found particularly enchanting. Phoolchand said his music felt like the undulating waves of the ocean, one washed over you before the previous one had receded. He introduced Daddyji to Ghalib, Rumi, and Kabir, and helped his friend appreciate the existence of a world beyond the one he knew.

Daddyji lent only to the grain traders he knew and worked with. Phoolchand’s money-lending business had a unique clientele — wealthy Punjabis and Sindhis who had moved to India after Partition. These were families who, through their well-placed contacts and influence, were given homes almost comparable to the ones they had to leave behind. They settled in housing colonies built especially for them, enrolled their children into decent schools, and gradually recreated their private bubbles of affluence, by setting up trade — shops, warehouses and small factories that made buttons or tap fittings.

Phoolchand helped get them the money to do this. By the mid-fifties, his business was so successful that he went to the banks and borrowed from them to lend to others — with Daddyji as his guarantor. The two young men revelled in the headiness of easily begotten wealth and bought generous gifts for themselves and their families. Daddyji first moved from a crowded chawl in Bhuleshwar to a two-bedroom flat in Cozy Villa, just off Marine Drive, a few minutes away from Churchgate station, next to a night club where pretty Anglo-Indian singers crooned until late into the night. Then, he bought himself a navy blue Plymouth with plush leather interiors. He also splurged on new furniture which he took great pride in sourcing, including a stylish and extremely expensive dining table which he had custom-designed, getting his inspiration from a Hindi movie that had featured a similar table in the villain’s den. The table was an aquarium — a thick glass slab placed on top of a water tank. The walls of the aquarium were made of toughened glass. The two short sides had a double layer, fitted with tubelights inside so that you could see the fish swirling about under the food even at night. When he first bought it, Mummyji and the children were thrilled and would take great pains to count the fish, drop food inside, and call friends over to see it. But it didn’t take long for the novelty to wear off, and it soon became the fulcrum point for arguments in the house, with Mummyji having to clean it every two weeks.

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