As a fiction writer, you’re often inspired by your surroundings, which then morph into whimsical plotlines involving demons, dragons, or in 15-year-old Zuni Chopra’s case, a house that spoke. The young author has changed the face of the grim reality of Kashmir into a land where adventure and acceptance are the core traits in her first novel The House that Spoke , published by Penguin India. Chopra has published two books of poetry in the past, The Land of Dreams and Painting With Words (Ameya Prakashan).
“Cloaked in chinar, enveloped by the snowy mountain range, it stared into the royal-blue evening sky,” reads the description of a fantasy home on the first page of Chopra’s book. Bursting with paragraphs overflowing with descriptive visuals and attention to detail, The House that Spoke is a book that takes the phrase “good writing makes the reader want to visit,” very seriously.
The book follows the life of a 14-year-old curious girl named Zoon Razdan, who has always been able to communicate with her house, but never understood why until before her 15th birthday. It turns out that the house has been occupied by Kruhen Chay, the spirit of darkness for centuries. In ancient times, the evil force had been trapped by a pandit using powerful magic in the underground caves beneath Razdan’s house. During the British Raj, the conniving spirit tricks an unhappy soldier into setting him free, enveloping Kashmir into a vortex of sadness and violence. In the present day, the pandit ’s descendant Zoon takes it upon herself to fight the evil force looming large on the horizon.
“I live by the quote that says ‘In fiction you can write about whatever you can get away with, unfortunately you’ll find that you can’t get away with much’,” an excited Chopra says in a telephonic conversation with The Hindu . The young author aims to reach a place in her writing where the nonsensical seems believable, much like her role model, Roald Dahl. “I’ve always been into writing fiction. Sometimes, in class, I would imagine that my favourite fictional characters would come rescue me and take me off on an adventure.”
Chopra’s book, which was launched at the Jaipur Literature Festival last year, was initially based in London, until her mother, film critic Anupama Chopra, suggested a setting that Zuni was more familiar with. “The book was inspired after a conversation with a close friend who told me about a magical house in London. In fact, I had an entire draft of the book based in London, until I realised that it had no depth, no feeling, because it wasn’t something that I loved, but what she loved.” She then moved the story to Kashmir, where her father, filmmaker Vidhu Vinod Chopra grew up.
Largely influenced by Dahl and Lewis Carroll, the author’s writing leaves no rock in imagination-land unturned. “Caroll’s Alice in Wonderland is amazing because it makes no sense at all. But that’s what gives it its depth. It’s so unrealistic, but you’re kind of just going with it.”
The young author makes juggling schoolwork and writing a novel sound fairly easy. But she views writing as a discipline, giving herself a daily deadline of a certain word count. It meant locking herself in a room during summer holidays in Michigan while her cousins played Mario Kart . During schooldays, Chopra would ensure that she woke up early to write for an hour every day before setting off to school. She staunchly believes in maintaining a routine while also having fun. “I think people have this idea that working hard means doing it till your fingers bleed. But it really isn’t that hard, you just need to structure it in the right way.”
What also helped is that her parents didn’t care about her grades as much as she did. Chopra says her father would probably “laugh out loud” if she downgraded to a ‘C’ in her assignments. It’s self-pressure that keeps her going, keeps her in place. “My school also let me drop chemistry, which was a gift from heaven!”
Chopra has never really experienced Kashmir other than as a tourist, and used the reminiscences of her father, aunt, and uncle, supplementing them with documentaries. “I once asked my uncle about the first thing he saw when he stepped out of his house and he said, ‘Sankaracharya Hill’.” It’s a detail that found its way into the narrative.
Unlike most stories that deal with good over evil, The House that Spoke has a different twist. It ends with the protagonist accepting the darkness as a part of herself rather than destroying it. Chopra’s pragmatic belief is that fighting evil doesn’t seem like the answer as it’s never going to go away.
