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Your first novel, The Death of Vishnu, had a much smaller canvas than The Age of Shiva. What made you chose to write such an epic story this time around? |
| A. |
It’s true whereas Vishnu took place in a single building over the course of a day, Shiva stretches from Rawalpindi to Delhi to Bombay, over several decades. This was very much a conscious decision – to make the second novel different not only in scope but also in mood, point of view, and structure. I wanted to test my range, to make sure I didn’t sink too comfortably into my own special writer’s niche.
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| Q. |
The book is written, not in the second person as such, but as though delivered by Meera to her son Ashvin, almost like a love letter. This is a considerable literary conceit - was it ever problematic? |
| A. |
Strangely enough, I never thought of it as a literary conceit – it was simply how the voice emerged from me. Meera was an intimate presence in my life through the years I worked on this novel – it was an incredible experience to be able to see Ashvin through her eyes, feel the passion she felt for him, inhabit a woman’s mind so intimately.
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| Q. |
Ashvin is, like you, born in Bombay, and around the same time you were. Are we right to assume that there is a lot of you in him? And how do you feel about people making this assumption? |
| A. |
One of the most liberating aspects of this novel was that I wasn’t writing about myself (my parents, unlike Dev and Meera, were married for over fifty years, until my father passed away at age eighty-two). I daresay there’s a lot more of me in Meera compared to what there is in Ashvin.
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| Q. |
Do you consider yourself an Indian writer - and to what degree does your life in the United States affect your take on your mother country? |
| A. |
If it looks like an Indian writer, walks like an Indian writer, writes like an Indian writer, it must be an Indian writer. Living elsewhere isn’t going to change that – India has a centuries-old tradition of emigration after all. Life in the United States has, however, helped me gain both sensitivity and experience in explaining one culture to another.
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| Q. |
Bollywood has had a real resurgence in recent years, and your passion for the medium comes through - particularly in the early parts of the book when Dev is trying to make it in the business. Why do you think it endures, and appeals to the wider international audience? |
| A. |
The Indian movies I’m most passionate about are the older ones, which I saw while growing up in the sixties and seventies. Yes, Bollywood’s appeal has widened (to the extent that even the New York Times has started reviewing its movies), but I fear that its distinctiveness has fallen victim to this globalization. In particular, I worry about all the remakes of Hollywood mediocrities that Bollywood has started churning out of late.
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| Q. |
How do you balance your life as a university mathematics professor with that of a writer? Is there pressure to give up one or the other profession? |
| A. |
After Vishnu, the number-one question I heard was, “When are you going to give up your day job?” Considering that it took seven years to write Shiva, I’m glad I had another profession to keep me from going completely crazy. I’m now trying to use my visibility as a writer to further mathematics outreach. It’s a subject with an almost nonexistent profile in the cultural media – I’d like to help put a mathematician on Oprah.
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| Q. |
The complexity of Hindu gods can be baffling to Westerners. To what degree does an understanding of Shiva’s iconography affect the reading of The Age of Shiva? |
| A. |
Shiva is such a misunderstood deity in the West that it might be advantageous to approach this book without knowing anything about him. Rather than the cliché of the ferocious destroyer, the attribute to which I was most attracted was that of the ascetic. He withdraws from life to meditate, and his unavailability evokes an irresistible yearning for him, which can never be fulfilled. Shiva appears primarily as a background presence in this book, wafting in and out of the narrative as a symbol of longing, of religious upheaval.
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| Q. |
What about Shiva’s consort Parvati? How does her mythology echo or reinforce the story of Meera and Ashvin? |
| A. |
There is a wonderful myth about Parvati creating a son from her own body, to keep her company while Shiva is off meditating, which I was able to weave into the narrative. What does this idealized love lead to when experienced by flesh-and-blood humans? What lies beyond the fabled all-encompassing maternal rapture for which there is even a special word, “vatsalya,” in Indian languages? These are questions I explore in this novel.
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| Q. |
You write wonderfully about the experiences of women in your books. In fact, they are the strongest characters. Why do you think this is? |
| A. |
Quite simply, I come from a family of very strong women. I’ve seen my mother and each of her three sisters in action, and they can be as headstrong and iron-willed as they can be nurturing and affectionate.
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| Q. |
Why do you think Indian literature and India itself still have such a hold over us in the West? |
| A. |
I suspect it’s because Indian culture is so unique – there really isn’t another country in the world that can lay claim to weaving together so many diverse strands into such a compelling whole. And let’s not forget India’s rising international clout – the type of Indian literature with the greatest hold on the West these days is probably computer software.
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| Q. |
Did writing this novel change your own feelings toward India? |
| A. |
One of the most fascinating aspects of the research has been the many hours spent in the Mumbai microfilm library of the Times of India, browsing through decades’ worth of history. I now realize what tremendous odds the country faced at independence. To have remained united despite its divisions of ideology and class, its profusion of orthodoxies and prejudices, its crushing illiteracy and poverty, and most of all, its profound religious schisms, is amazing. For India to have risen in sixty years to a point where it is poised to become a major power on the world stage is nothing short of a miracle. Writing this novel has been a journey of discovery for me, one that has helped me better understand the evolution of the country of my birth.
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| Q. |
What's next for Manil Suri? |
| A. |
The Death of Vishnu gave a freeze frame of India in contemporary times; The Age of Shiva explores the history of how the country got there. Which leaves the obvious question for the next book – where will India’s future take it?
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