I got a chance to talk to Namita Gokhale on the penultimate day of the Jaipur Literature Festival (JLF) at her room in the Diggi Palace Hotel while the crowd roared outside in the Front Lawns, where a session with Sachin Pilot and Rajdeep Sardesai was in full swing.
Gokhale’s recent novel, Jaipur Journals , is set against the backdrop of the JLF, which she co-founded and has been co-directing for 13 years. In this freewheeling conversation, Gokhale talks about her novels, the Himalayas, where she is from, and the strong women who populate her work.
Jaipur Journals has the JLF as its context. Has such a novel been in the offing for a number of years?
No, I began two years ago: somebody suggested the idea to me and the idea took root in my mind. Of course, many of these stories have their backstories in things that have happened to me, but over these 13 years, I have been observing writers, talking to them, wondering about the writing process. This is not a novel about the JLF, but about writers and why they write. It could have been set anywhere.
A lot of your books are located in the Himalayas. Why do you keep going back to the mountains?
I grew up in Nainital: it’s a sort of a childhood romance that never left me. There’s something about the mountains that moves me more than anything else. Once the smell of the Himalayas gets into your blood, it will never leave you.
You have been writing mythological fiction long before it became the ‘in’ thing. How did it all start?
It started with In Search of Sita (2009), an anthology I had co-edited with Malashri Lal. Even before that, I had written The Book of Shiva , which was originally published in 1999. Then I wrote The Puffin Mahabharata for young readers — which was the most transformative piece of writing I had ever done. I realised that every story in the world is contained in the Mahabharata in some form or the other. The most important lesson I learnt from this epic is that everything changes. Time or kaal is the real ruler of the Mahabharata and I have felt this wisdom keenly, even tried to apply it to the way I have programmed this festival.
There are so many women in our epics and lores, but they hardly have a story. I am compelled to fill in those gaps. I used to seethe at the injustice done to Sita. Then I realised Ram’s compulsions, Sita’s strength — Sita is perhaps the strongest of all the women in our epics. In Search of Sita led to a lot of novels on Sita, by Amish, Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni, for example, and they acknowledged that they were inspired by our anthology.
From Sita I have now turned to Radha; I think we Indian women should find the Radha within ourselves. If religion can celebrate the wondrous leela of Radha and Krishna, why can’t every woman channel their inner Radha?
You have written books for adults and children. Is the process of writing different in each case?
You write to the child within or you write to the world without. It’s not different. The only difference is in the vocabulary — I never talk down in my children’s books but I try to keep the vocabulary simpler.
Your novels are known for their strong women. As a female novelist, do you do that consciously?
I come from Kumaon, from a family of strong women. The women of Kumaon/ Uttarakhand are among the strongest I have ever encountered anywhere. I think it’s a combination of a very tough life, the beauty of the surroundings and the fact that they are always confronting the basics that gives them this strength.
When I am writing about strong women, I am writing from the memory of those women I have known, and I don’t really write to validate any theory: it’s just that I haven’t known any other kind of women.
You have become synonymous with the JLF; do you think this has helped you as an author?
It works against me as an author. I am much more famous as the co-founder and co-director of the JLF than as a writer because that gets more press than anything else. I don’t think it has helped me as an author but it has helped me in another way: it has broadened my vision, my understanding of literature.
