‘I am a work in progress’

Author Jerry Pinto dextrously deconstructs the borders between fiction and non-fiction, verse and prose. MINI ANTHIKAD-CHHIBBER listens in

Cities have no time for writers, says Jerry Pinto Photo: Sampath Kumar G.P.

How does Jerry Pinto decide if he is a novelist, a poet, a documentarian, or a maths teacher? “To answer that, you have to work on the assumption that there is one Jerry Pinto,” says the writer who was in Bangalore for the launch of his novel, Em and the Big Hoom (Aleph, Rs. 495). “I wake up every morning to discover who I am and that will determine what I will be. If you choose to write a novel, it is a commitment. With non-fiction, the borders and questions are determined by the outside.”

The National award-winning writer of Helen: The Life and Times of an H-Bomb on the original item girl, Helen, says: “Fiction has two taskmasters — beauty and probability. Even if you are writing fantasy, it should follow the rules of fantasy, and even if you are writing ugly things, it should be beautifully written.”

Em and the Big Hoom, a darkly-funny and searingly honest portrayal of a boy grappling with his mother’s mental illness seems a difficult choice for a debut novel. “I didn’t know there were choices! I have been writing this book for a long time. I had written 24 fully-formed drafts. When I turned 40, I realised I will never be courageous to walk away from a salary. I quit then to write this book. For three years I wrote a 1,000 words a day. I then did my time test, which is to look at the manuscript six months later. I discovered it was very bad and thought of abandoning it. I found 30,000 words worked and wrote to my long suffering editor, Ravi Singh. When he told me that the book is half way done, it gave me the encouragement to proceed and finish the book.”

Jerry admits he cannot decode how he decides what he will write about. “The Helen book, the answer came from somewhere inside my body — where my nerves intersect my gut. I spent Rs 3 lakh and got Rs. 20,000. But it is okay.” Jerry has two projects going now. “I am working on a translation from Marathi —Sachin Kundalkar’s

Cobalt Blue and after that I will be editing Adil Jussawalla’s works.”

Coming back to Em , would he describe it as an autobiography? “ Em and the Big Hoom is a novel. It is fiction. I contend that the line between fiction and non-fiction has always been blurry. The only people who need to know whether a story is fiction or non-fiction are librarians and policemen. For everyone else, a book is something you read and you read it for what it has inside it. Often fictional characters seem more lifelike than real historical figures, haven’t you found? Don’t you know Nagarkar’s Cuckold better than you will ever know the Rana of Mewar?”

Insisting every book is difficult to write, Jerry says: “Each book presents its own set of challenges. It is always difficult to write but we are blessed by amnesia and nostalgia. Together they work to help us recollect the good bits and blot out the bad ones.” Jerry, who has edited

Reflected in Water: Writings about Goa and is co-editor of

Bombay Meri Jaan: Writings about Mumbai , says “cities shout so loudly, I can never understand what they’re saying. I have lived all my life in one city, Bombay. I love it and I hate it. I don’t think it ever has spoken to me. Cities have no time for writers. They do their city thing: they create and erase identity, they apportion and savage meaning, they produce and consume wealth. Writers limp behind the city, picking up the scraps that fall off the garbage trucks. Of this, they must make what they can.”

About people taking offence to Em , the 46-year-old says: “One wants people to read the books one writes. One wants them to like the books one writes. No, one wants them to love what one writes. But when you’re writing you can’t second-guess the responses of that shadowy figure, the reader.”

Amidst all this poetry, Jerry takes maths tuitions and enjoys it. “I had an epiphany in school when my teacher, Lidwin D’Souza, said, ‘Mathematics is just another language, only one that is much more precise than any other. It is an art and an art that works on behalf of science’. I figured out that I was good in languages and I should be able to sail through, and I did.” Jerry is open to writing a love story, “like Georgette Heyer who wrote these corking love stories. My story would have wit — chick lit these days has so little of it, or a thriller (‘the plotting will have to be tight’),” he says

Having written so much about the film industry, has he ever thought of a film script? “The joy of writing is that you are on your own, while film is collaborative.” And finally does he have any regrets? “One regrets what one says once it is said, because one could always have said it better. One regrets one’s silences because the unspoken words rot somewhere under the tongue.”