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‘Writing is a lonely process’
ZIYA US SALAM
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In India to launch his second book, The Age of Shiva, Manil Suri talks about his trilogy and what it means to be both a mathematician and a writer. An exclusive interview.
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Not a prolific writer: Manil Suri’s current book took him seven years to finish.
“Hello! This is the first call I am receiving after landing in India early morning.” With these words Manil Suri, — with The Death of Vishnu in the attic and The Age of Shiva, the second of the Trinity Trilogy, just hitting the market — announces his arrival. A mathematician who once thought of his literary characters as algebra symbols, Manil is a late bloomer, a slow writer, but an author with a following of his own.
“It is hard to make new friends when you are older. Strangely I have managed to do that. I live in Washington D.C. but seem to make new friends here in Mumbai. I love living in the U.S. but in terms of people-to-people contact, it is dislocating.” Little surprise then Manil keeps coming back to India.
Does he come back to his roots — he was born in the then Bombay in 1959 — looking for food for soul?
Well, I come to India three-four times a year. My mother lives here and after my father passed away, I come back more often. The city has changed so much. There are so many places to eat out, hang out, make friends.
Isn’t that part of a larger one-world, one-culture syndrome affecting the world, India being happy to bring up the numbers?
I was in Hyderabad last January. When you come out of the airport, there are enormous multi-storeyed buildings. Some parts of India today are indistinguishable from the West. But only bits of India have changed. The greater part of the country remains the same. There is a bit of dichotomy there. Real India is changing too and change is always constant. It might sound like a profound statement but is not. We can preserve what we have if we look at the past. Like the book, The Age of Shiva, it is all about the past.
Isn’t there an erosion of personal space with even the media being too intrusive?
In a way, it is there. It bothers me. At times I wish I were born 200 or 500 years ago when I could have just written a book and people would have interacted with the book and its characters rather than the author. There was that cover of anonymity then. Once I did give an interview talking about one of the characters in The Death of Vishnu being based on one of the aunts. But it was completely distorted in print. At times I am glad I am not an actor or a cricketer. With a writer, the media bothers only for some time when the book is launched. Soon, it forgets too. Then I can live in my anonymity. I can withdraw to my mathematics. I do my own thing after the book.
Doesn’t every creative soul look for recognition?
There is a paradox there. You find comfort in anonymity, yet yearn for recognition. I used to wonder at the time of the first book. Writing a book is a lonely process. I need something more, teaching does give me that fulfilment.
Paradoxes, little ironies, seem to covet Manil’s company. Born in India, he found his calling in the U.S as a mathematician, but found true recognition only as a writer with The Death of Vishnu, a work he almost gave up half way, and was actually a product of many years’ hard labour. Much like the second book which started some seven years ago.
They say the first book is easy. It was not entirely so for Manil. They say the second book demands discipline. Was it any different for him?
Second book is hell. My friend Kiran Desai told me as much. Somebody said it is like taking a kidney out and giving it to somebody. I say it is like taking both the kidneys out and giving to somebody. It is a challenge. All the interesting characters you had within you have been used up in the first book. The autobiographical elements are all but saturated. At the beginning it was easier. I did not know if I would get published! The characters in the first book are often autobiographical. For The Age of Shiva, my characters had to be at least partly from imagination. I start with imagination; then take slices of real life. My parents were from Rawalpindi; then they left for India, leaving all their wedding presents behind. But I did not want a Partition story. So I did not take their story as such. I just used it as a kind of take-off point and then filled in the blanks."
Manil, for all his critical acclaim and mass acceptance — his first book was translated into more than a dozen languages worldwide — is not exactly a prolific writer but has managed to blend the logic of a mathematician with the fertile imagination of a skilled writer. He agrees.
I am not a consistent or prolific writer. I have taken seven years to complete The Age of Shiva. By any yardstick I do not have a good output. When I first started, it was very much like a mathematician. I used to write short stories that I don’t show to anybody. Maybe, after I die somebody will discover and say, ‘Hey! He used to write this!’ Initially I used to think of my characters like algebra symbols. I thought people could fill their own details. But that is not a great idea in terms of writing. One other thing that distinguishes a literary work from mathematics is the need for consistency. As a writer you want to make your characters a little inconsistent because the really interesting people are all a bit inconsistent.
Is he a bit inconsistent too?
I prefer if you call my characters inconsistent.
But aren’t literature and mathematics blending now?
Yes, the current view of applied mathematics is to make things a little inconsistent. That way maths and writing are blending.
Talking of blending, Manil also brings the mundane and the sensual or the erotic closer. He can make something as innocent as a mother feeding her baby almost as erotic as a man approaching his wife. The Age of Shiva starts on this note.
The mundane and the sensual? Yes, it is there but there is something deeper. If you go deeper into the new book, the sensual component is there. It is deliberate. Incidentally, now it is established by science that the same hormones are released when a mother feeds her child or otherwise. It is part of the human evolutionary process.
The ironies continue in Manil’s literary life. He read the Bhagwad Gita and the Koran for his first book when he began his trilogy by talking of Vishnu, the Preserver, but the book was called The Death of Vishnu. Now comes this Penguin book where again he talks of Shiva. And Brahma, the first part of the Trinity, is not there yet.
Brahma comes next. I should have started with Brahma. But when I first started I did not think in terms of Trinity. The whole idea of mythology came to mind once I finished the first book. I have heard there is only one temple dedicated to Brahma but actually it is not so. In the second book here I am just looking at Shiva, and what he stands for. He is representing the role of religion. Rather than religion or mythology I am more interested in India. I have used only a few myths.
And engendered a lot of goodwill.
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