In Conversation
Of gains and losses
GOWRI RAMNARAYAN
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Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni focuses on the immigrant experience, the flitting between the old and the new, from a woman's perspective.
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The best thing is not to worry too much, but show the picture with as much clarity and authentic detailing of daily lives... If there's truth in your fiction, it will get through.
PHOTO: PTI
Straddling cultures: Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni.
"My husband grew up reading The Hindu," she says as she opens the door, shuts the dog into the bedroom, and talks about going to the temple for Dussera puja. A painting of Kali Mata on the wall is flanked by peacocks. You realise that like her characters in Arranged Marriage (1995), The Mistress of Spices (1997), Sister of My Heart (1999), The Vine of Desire (2002), and Queen of Dreams (2004) Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni, now teaching creative writing in Houston University, balances her life between two worlds. An award-winning poet (The Reason for Nasturiums, Black Candle, Leaving Yuba) and fiction writer, Divakaruni focuses on the immigrant experience from a woman's perspective, adjusting the lens up close in verse, and for a broader view in prose. "Poems are about a moment, an image, a particular detail. Stories are about an entire society."
After a traditional middle class upbringing in Kolkata, the young woman pursued her studies in Dayton, Ohio, and UC Berkeley, California. Teaching in Foothill College was paralleled by launching and shaping Maitri, a helpline for victimized women. Shifting to Houston, Texas in 2006, Divakaruni continues her interests in teaching and writing. Her anthology Multitudes combines the two, including works by her students along with more established writers. She is associated with Daya, a centre similar to Maitri in Texas.
"We do hear women's voices more now, and that's healthy for the world," says Divakaruni, now working on a novel based on the Mahabharata, retold from Draupadi's perspective. Yes, she has read novels in Indian languages with Draupadi as protagonist. But her work is concerned with war. It is not heroic, adventurous or a power game for women. They see their children die. "I guess if many people thought like women, we won't have wars." Excerpts...
Your last two books, Neela: Victory Song and Queen of Dreams, have overtly political themes set in two different periods, and nations. What kind of research and mental adjustments did this demand?
Meeting Gandhiji had a deep influence on my mother. I'd always wanted to write about the freedom struggle, a novel that children can read, particularly Indian children in the U.S., who grow up knowing very little of Indian history and heritage. I wanted them to know that India went through a freedom struggle just as people in this country did. Not many are aware of such common grounds. I think literature is a wonderful way in which people can dissolve their differences and find common ground. Victory Song was a new experience for me. Apart from historical research and fact gathering, I interviewed people like my mother, and read novels like Ananda Math and The Home and the World, to know what people thought, believed in, what things looked like, what inspired them to make huge
sacrifices.
Those books brim with an impossible idealism! How does it connect with today's climate?
Struggles of any kind, say, that of Nelson Mandela, have the same sense of idealism. When we identify ourselves with a cause greater than our personal good, we make those sacrifices. Idealism decreases without a common enemy to unite us. But now, in India, I see a different kind of idealism, impelled by the belief that we must help less fortunate people. Younger people are getting involved, a lot of people here quit their jobs to take up NGO work.
You must have been personally hurt by post-9/11 hatred to write The Queen of Dreams.
There was huge stress in this country. Something had happened here that had never happened before. Secondly, Americans realised how much they were hated. A spate of hate crimes began, against anyone who looked different. The Indian community was also targeted. In California, where I lived then, overnight the Afghani families on our street stopped being seen outside their homes, their children were off the road. Fear made a whole community invisible. They had endured so much to come here, stayed in refugee camps... Then, when they felt safe, they became victims again. Indians too were beaten up. I go to the grocery and someone shouts, "Go home, crazy Iranian!" Or simply, "Terrorist!" It's hurtful and scary, it affects our self-image. Think of the ignorance and prejudice making people behave that way.
I notice that all Islamic nations are lumped together in a single prototype. But not only are Iraq and Indonesia poles apart, they also have their internal dissentions.
Muslim countries too have this idea of Big Bad America. If you live here you will know that people are willing to be friends. Not everyone supports the government's stance. Many outside the U.S. don't know about pockets of liberal thinking, and the community education programmes organised by regular Americans to dispel this ignorance.
How do you transform material from personal life for the public eye?
All the exciting things happening to people in my novels haven't happened to me! Only two things come from me. The geography — I latch on to the locations where I grew up in India, or where I live in the U.S., to make the word realistic. The other is true of most writers — I write what I'm passionate about. The ideas in my books don't necessarily have to do with my immediate personal life. Since I teach literature, I tell my students that autobiography is limiting. How can you write a historical novel if that's the only source? And anyway, how many stories can you write about yourself? I draw on what I see in the community around me. In Arranged Marriage the stories came out of observance.
How do you show your readers that a Bengali immigrant is very different from a Kannada or a Punjabi immigrant?
With translations into many languages I've to think of a world readership. The best thing is not to worry too much, but show the picture with as much clarity and authentic detailing of daily lives. Readers are intelligent, they pick up those subtle details. In talks and readings I remind people that India is a vast country of diverse cultures. Aren't Texans very different from Californians? If there's truth in your fiction, it will get through.
How did you feel when you first landed in smalltown Dayton, in Ohio?
I was stared at, people were a little suspicious too. I was homesick. Good for me as a writer, though painful as an experience. It made me realise what immigrants go through, placed in unfamiliar situations, visually a minority, their extended family, close neighbourhood, people they grew up with, all gone, like that! But there's also growth, excitement, challenges. An immigrant learns to adjust, to balance paradoxes. There are gains and losses. Some are obvious, others you never thought about. Parents feel these losses, children don't. Although some children grow up and try to recover their roots.
Was it a culture shock for the middle class girl to work in bakery and cafeteria to put herself through college?
I realised it's no big deal here. I was doing it for a purpose, unlike those who did it all their lives. I learnt to respect manual labour as I hadn't in India, where upper classes have a sense of entitlement.
You've created two mysterious women in Mistress of Spices and Queen of Dreams. How did you arrive at a style to describe their back and forth journeys in two worlds, their grasp of the hidden? Or did this come to you intuitively?
Nothing comes intuitively! Though once I'm really focused, it does come from a different source. I've to be very quiet to allow it to come through. It's a more poetic style when I write about these women who have access to another level of existence. I really wanted to bring out the mystic nature of experience. However, the two other narrative layers in Queen of Dreams are practical, realistic.
You've taught creative writing in two universities. Is this a skill to be taught?
You can't teach talent or vision. But treatment, clarity, sharpness, precision, dialogue writing, evoking atmosphere can all be taught. We have wonderful students from all over the world. Also, students learn from other students. I learn a lot from them. I ask each student why do you want to be a writer?
Why do you want to be a writer?
I'd like my writing to make people think about issues, become conscious of problems that otherwise they wouldn't want to think about. I do it through the life of my characters. Hopefully they will pull the reader in to feel what they feel. I think writing is a great tool to create empathy.
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