“If you’re going to tell a story, why stick with real world? Why not think up the most magical, fantastical things — something that you could never imagine would happen in the real world?”
As Zuni Chopra speaks about her new novel, The House That Spoke , her excitement is palpable even in a phone conversation. She’s always been a fiction person, she says, because “I loved the idea of storytelling.” Within fiction, it was fantasy that caught her fancy. “On a boring day in school, I would imagine that my favourite fictional characters just burst in through the window and took me off on an adventure.”
It’s no wonder then that her novel is also a fantasy. An intriguing mix of the fantastic and the real set in Kashmir, the book is dedicated to Zuni’s three friends: Anjali, Ish and Shreya. Mention that and she dissolves into giggles. “Oh, don’t let my dad hear! He’s been throwing hints about dedicating it to him but my first two books were dedicated to the family; the first to him alone. (Zuni has published two books of poetry earlier). I don’t know what more he wants.” Then more seriously she explains that the four have been friends “for the last 12 years. Now I feel like we’re already starting to go our separate ways, which is why I wanted to dedicate something to our friendship.”
Besides, Shreya was, in a way, responsible for this book with her stories of a house she’d seen in London. “I have a whole draft of the book set in London. But it had no depth or substance. I couldn’t breathe life into it.” Acting on a suggestion from her mother, well-known film journalist Anupama Chopra, Zuni decided to relocate the novel in a place she knew and loved. She plumped for Kashmir because “I needed a setting where the house would have snow for at least one season. Then when I built the story anew, it became one worth telling.”
As for knowing Kashmir, her father (director Vidhu Vinod Chopra) grew up in there and “we visited at least once a year”. She drew up on the memories of her father and his siblings, read books — “non-fiction, not fantasy,” she clarifies, “books like Rahul Pandita’s Our Moon Has Blood Clots and Basharat Peer’s Curfewed Night — watched documentaries on the state. “The documentaries not only gave me info but also provided visuals. I once asked my uncle about the first thing he saw when he stepped out, and he said ‘Sankaracharya Hill’. It became a part of my story.”
Given the protagonist’s name is so close to hers, how much of Zuni is in Zoon? “Not much really,” she muses. “Zoon is the me I would have wanted to be if I could design myself. I just wanted to use my name.”
The House That Spoke by Zuni Chopra
Unlike most other novels about battling evil, The House That Spoke ends not with the protagonist destroying the darkness but accepting it as part of herself and keeping it under control. Zuni’s response to why she chose to finish this way is rather startling. “I don’t know,” she says. “All I knew was fighting it was not the answer because it was never going to go away. Even when the house was most powerful, the darkness was only trapped. Also when I was writing, Kruhen Chay wound up between the fireplace and Zoon. I thought it would be interesting if she went through it rather than around. Later when I thought about it, I realised this is what we have to do with all darkness. There is no way to get rid of it or avoid it. You just have to jump through and know that you will come through the other side.”
Given how visual her writing is there a movie in the works? Zuni agrees that it is possible, “but it’s mostly in my day dreams. I don’t know if enough people would read the book for this to happen. Besides I think in words, not images. So, yes, the book can be adapted for the screen but I’m definitely not the person to do that.”
With board exams looming up on the horizon, she has to balance studies and book launches. “I’ve spent so much time on the book that I’m sure I’ll fail bio,” she says nonchalantly. “But it’s okay.” She talks about her ‘amazing’ experience at the Jaipur Literature Festival. “There was a Penguin author party,” she laughs, “which was the first party I got my parents into. And then I had dinner with David Hare. At that moment, I decided that even if I fail my boards, it’s so worth it.”
It helps that her parents don’t really care about grades as much as she does. “My dad wanted me to drop school and focus on writing. Mum says to do my best. But I tend to put pressure on myself. I need to get good grades because I know how good I feel then.”
What next for Zuni Chopra, the author? “A book on short stories and poetry because I found a whole bunch on my laptop. I definitely want to do more novels but before that I want to do some more courses on writing, read a lot and develop as a writer.”
What the book is about
In ancient India, a pandit traps Kruhen Chay, the spirit of darkness, in an underground cave and builds a house over it. He infuses the house with a powerful magic to ensure that the spirit doesn’t escape. But, during the British rule, Kruhen Chay uses an unhappy soldier to get free and Kashmir descends into a vortex of violence and unhappiness. It is now upto Zoon Razdan, a descendant of the original pandit, to realise why she is able to communicate with the house, understand her powers and take up cudgels against Kruhen Chay.
Process of writing
When: Get up by 6.00 a.m. on school days; write for an hour and then head to school. Not that I’m super disciplined or anything but I set the alarm for 6.00 a.m. because I knew I would take another half an hour to get ready and start work. On weekends or holidays, I would get up a bit later and write for as long as I could. I think it’s important to have a specific time to write. If you wait for inspiration to come, it’ll probably happen only once in a million years.
How: A laptop always. If I wrote long hand, I would never have finished. Either the paper would have crumpled or torn or gotten lost or I would have stopped because I didn’t like my handwriting. Also with the laptop, I had the security of saving everything; I didn’t delete anything, even a para that I hated.
A few of my favourite things
Books: Coraline Neil Gaiman; The Harry Potter Series by J.K. Rowling; Alice in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll; The Truth is a Cave in the Black Mountains by Neil Gaiman; The Art of Dramatic Writing Lajos Egri
Authors: Neil Gaiman; Lewis Carroll; Enid Blyton; Roald Dahl; T.S. Eliot
Movies/shows: La La Land; Birdman; Lion King; Sherlock; Cookery shows, even though I don’t like cooking
