INTERVIEW WITH RANA DASGUPTA - II

Who : Rana Dasgupta
About : Writer, Author of Tokyo Cancelled
Website: http://www.ranadasgupta.com/

How it happened : Interview with Rana Dasgupta
Interview Date: April, 2006
Place: Kitab Fest, New Delhi
Pics: Rana Dasgupta Interview

Rana Dasgupta is one of the torch bearers of what we call the new-age contemporary writers of South Asian writing in English. Based between India and the UK, his debut novel, Tokyo Cancelled, a thirteen-part story cycle, which has been translated into eight languages, was published in 2005 and has won critical acclaim from the world over.

Tokyo Cancelled was shortlisted for India’s leading literary award, the Hutch Crossword Book Award, and one of the stories, "The Flyover," is shortlisted for the BBC’s National Short Story Prize. Another of the stories, "The Billionaire's Sleep", is currently being adapted for film by Australia-based film writer and director, Robert Hutchinson.

Young, suave, good looking and strikingly intelligent, Rana Dasgupta, takes out time for an exclusive chat.

Nikhil Taneja (NT): You’ve termed your novel a ‘story cycle’. Why is that so ?
Rana Dasgupta (RD): I think that we know in our lives of cycles of stories, which could be things like bodies of myth like Greek myths or Indian myths. They are not one story, they are clearly different works. But they seem to form a whole of some sort, and together they represent a certain reality – the world, the cosmos. So, umm… by using the phrase ‘story cycle’, I was trying to invoke these earlier forms of writing, where there are separate entities, which form a coherent vision.

NT: Since you have told 13 different short stories in your novel, you could also have presented them in a book of short stories rather than in a novel format. Why did you choose the latter?
RD: Because it’s very important in my book that these stories are being told. The book is not only the stories; the book is a reflection on story telling. Now I think that story telling is rather rare in our culture – it’s disappearing. We don’t meet people who tell stories anymore. We feel a lot of that. We feel that there is something good when we sit around our grandmothers and listen to their stories, (pauses) because there is wisdom in them. So I wanted to say, okay, here are 13 middle class modern travelers, who decide to tell stories, and they can. How does this make us feel? Does it remind us that we lost something? Does it aspire us to being more creative? It’s a reflection on that.

NT: What made you decide upon the airport as the place where the various stories are being told?
RD: The airport is a.. (pause).. a non space. It’s a space where people only come to go, to leave. It’s therefore, quite neutral. And it’s important to the book that the reason that the people are able to find these stories in themselves, is because time has stopped for them. They don’t have places to go or people to see. Therefore, they are able to enter different poetic space themselves. And I didn’t want it to be in a house, or even a bar, or a city space. I wanted it to be somewhere, where they are completely unfamiliar with the surroundings, and they have to fill those surroundings with new stories.

NT: Also was the airport perhaps chosen so that people from different nationalities can come together and tell their tales? Because it is a distinct feature of your novel, that all the stories belong to different countries.
RD: Obviously, that’s one of the things. One of the things is that you can have different people from different places coming together. And its important that, umm.. if we think about things like globalization, we think about how do people from different places talk. It’s one of the essential features of a global culture. That people do not only speak to people like themselves, but they can also speak to people who are not like themselves. I would only say that the book does not tell you who these people are. There is a Japanese man, but the other people could be from anywhere. Now, it is natural to assume that the person who tells the Paris story is French. But, I want to leave it open that the person who is telling the Paris story is, let’s say, Mexican. And the Mexican person in an airport, has the ability to let his imagination to travel. Because that’s another key aspect of the story.

NT: An interesting feature of your novel is that the stories have fairtytales embedded in them. There is a distinct touch of folklore in them. Was it something intentional?
RD: Very intentional. It was a key part of the project – trying to write contemporary folklore. Like I said before, we all know that we have a traditional folk tales which we consume sometimes as kids, or we consume in other formats. But it’s also not a living part of our culture. And, I wanted to try and resurrect it and put those fairytales in the middle of contemporary lives and see what happens – and see what a contemporary folktale would look like.

NT: You have presented so many different stories through so many different perspectives. What kind of research did you have to put in your book?
RD: Lot of research. Lot of research. I traveled a lot. And I was on the internet a lot, and I read books a lot. I was writing a lot about places in which I had not lived – I was not familiar. So I read a lot of local newspapers, traveled and spoke to people etc etc.

NT: One of your stories, the ‘Flyover’ has been shortlisted for the BBC National Short Story Prize, which is equivalent to the booker for short stories. What do you fancy your chances as ?
RD: I suppose my chances are not very good(chuckles), because.. (pauses). I mean, I don’t know actually. I really don’t know. I don’t know how the judging process works. But I am shortlisted with extremely eminent authors.

NT: Have you read their books?
RD: I have not read all of their books. But I have read some of the books of some of those writers. And I have a great deal of respect for those writers. So, for me, at the very beginning of my writing career, it’s a little awe inspiring to be short listed with people I have read and grown up with. So, for that reason alone, it’s difficult to imagine if I could win. But who knows? (Smiles)

NT: You have an undergraduate degree in French literature. Is there an influence in your writing that stems from French literature or have you tried to instill your own sense of writing?
RD: Well, I don’t think there is anything particularly French about the book. But (pauses), certainly, obviously, during the course of my undergraduate degree, I read lots of lots of French books, which have stayed with me. And (pauses), I think, two things, I would say have influenced my style of writing.

One thing is that I have read a lot of medieval French literature. And medieval French writers, for instance, gave us many of the stories of King Arthur…many of the stories that eventually turned into fairytales, you know. I’ve always had a deep interest in that kind of writing – magic and the likes.

And another thing is that great 19^th century French novelists were fascinated by what’s written in newspapers, by everyday reality. And they wanted to transform into literature that is not just recording stuff, it really has a much bigger agenda. That’s why I have been through a lot of newspapers. Newspapers have been a big inspiration.

NT: You have lived abroad all your life. But when you came down to Delhi some years ago, that’s when your debut novel happened. Does India, or Delhi in particular, inspire you in some way?
RD: Yeah, I mean when I gave up my job in US to come and live here, it was specifically to write a book. And I didn’t expect to stay in India but I’ve been living here for six years now. (Pauses) So, yeah, I have been very inspired by Delhi. It’s the first acknowledgements of my books – the city of Delhi. And, that’s very real. I could not have written it without being here.

NT: One of your stories, The Billionaire’s sleep, is set to be transformed on the celluloid screen by an Australian director. Can you tell us more about it?
RD: Yeah, this is a director from Australia, who called me up when he read the book and said that he wanted to make a film. Initially, he wanted to make a film on the whole book but then he, sort of, decided to narrow it down. He wanted to make it the Indian – the Delhi story. So he came down here for a month and we, sort of, collaborated on the form that the film would take. So now he’s gone back to Australia to raise money and he’ll be back, hopefully by the end of the year to shoot it. So he’ll be back at some point to cast it and look at locations. He’ll obviously be looking at Indian actors. He’ll be shooting it here with Indian actors. But, no, I can’t say who would it be in it. He would like Kajol to play the daughter and…

NT: Amitabh Bachchan ?
RD: Yes, (chuckles), and Amitabh Bachchan to play the father. But, you know, I think it’s gonna be an art house, independent film, probably without known actors. I don’t know, really!

NT: You have been on quite a few panels in the Kitab Festival. What do you think is the scope and the reach of the festival?
RD: I think it’s a good beginning and I think some of the conversations that we’ve been having are important conversations. I think it is important to remember that the importance of fiction writing in English is massively over stated by the media. It’s important to, (pauses).. I think writers like other kinds of creative people have other things to say about what happens in society and what kinds of stories can be told and everything. But frankly, the no. of people that read any of the books that any of these people have written is very small in comparison to the population. A bestseller in India is 5000 copies. 5000 is hardly a fraction of a Delhi colony. And that’s nationwide over, maybe, 2-3-4 years. So, I think it’s very, very important for writers to question how they tell stories in India. Because we have many, many, very serious questions to ask ourselves. But, let’s remember that most people are not reading their books, and most people are consuming completely different kinds of things. And if this kind of things is not packed out, it is for that very reason.

NT: One of the important issues that was addressed in the discussions was the fact that regional authors are not present in the festival. What are your views on this subject?
RD: I think, it is a genuine crisis. I think the crisis will only be resolved by us realizing that all these authors inhabit the same space and are part of the same culture and need to be, as you say, part of the same forum. Now, one of the key things that needs to happen in that regard, is translation. There needs to be more translation into and out of regional languages, so that people can sit down speaking and reading only one language, but reading literature that’s written in English, that’s written in Bengali, in Hindi, whatever, which no one can do right now, very easily. English readers do not have access to a lot of these things.

If you are a Hindi reader, you probably are in the best position because there is decent amount of literature translated into Hindi from a lot of other languages. But if your reading language is Oriya, you probably don’t know any of this stuff. And I think that’s a massive tragedy. And if it leads to all kinds of resentments about money and deep misunderstandings, its very obvious why. Yes, there needs to be a situation where people need to sit down in the same forum and speak. And if that would mean interpreters, it shouldn’t be a big deal. That’s what happens in Europe. I am going to literary conventions which are in Germany where most people don’t speak German or in France where most people don’t speak French, and they arrange for translators. And that means a writer from India, a writer from France and a writer from Australia can actually sit down and have a literary discussion about what it means to inhabit the same world and write.

NT: Can you briefly overview the festival in your own words for us?
RD: I really think that this festival shows that it is the first one that’s been done, with people not necessarily knowing whether they wanted to be involved. All these things are natural in the first event. Some of the panels have been weaker than the others but I really think it has been a very bold attempt. We have had serious subjects addressed. I’ve met many, many significant writers here that I have never met before and I’ve heard them speak and understand something of their universe. I think in the future we do need festivals like this in India and what we need in the future is better communication between people from different backgrounds, not only within India but also in the UK.

I think some of the panels that have been the weakest are the ones that have been very India dominated or very UK dominated, where there has not been a lot of dialogue between the two. And I think we probably want to broaden things out, so if there is a panel discussion going on in which you are not at all interest, you have the choice to go to maybe a literary reading at the same time. So you have a no of things going on at the same time.

NT: Finally, can you tell us what next can we expect from you? Is it going to be a conventional novel this time round?
RD: Yeah, I am writing a novel. And yeah, this time it is a one sustained narrative, yeah. It’s about a 100 year old man, who is reminiscing about his life. So it is the history of the 20^th century really, through the life of this man. It should be out hopefully next year, by early 2007.

© Nikhil Taneja (nikhiltaneja@gmail.com)