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Magazine
A coming-of-age book
ANJANA RAJAN
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Nikita Lalwani on how her first book Gifted happened.
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The novel came out of “various histories that are ransacked and imagined,” she says, likening a storyteller’s work to the crafty gleanings of a magpie.
Photo: V.V. Krishnan
Visual descriptions: Nikita Lalwani.
At the end of Nikita Lalwani’s debut novel Gifted, you may have more questions than answers. Absolute answers can be searched for in maths, not life. And this story, it seems, is less about the words said than those left unsaid. We, as readers, yearn to fill the gaps in the conversations of its principal characters, in an effort to bend back the tide of sadness that engulfs them. It is not surprising then, that Nikita says, “Yearning interests me greatly.”
Admittedly, the London-based Nikita, in the country for the novel’s India launch by Penguin, is speaking of yearning in a different context here. It is the yearning for a mother country, yearning to belong, to succeed, to receive unconditional love. But all these seem to block the words in her characters’ throats, imprisoning them in their individual experiences, bereft of the key that will bring about an understanding.
Immigrant experience
Brought up in Cardiff, Wales, the India-born Nikita understands the immigrant experience of the 1970s and 1980s. In Gifted, long-listed for the Man Booker 2007, she has immaculately imaged the gulf that divides first generation Indian settlers — many of whom survived Partition to build a new life in the U.K. like the parents of her protagonist Rumi Vasi — from their children for whom the sub-continent is but a part of an “inherited nostalgia”, as the author so pithily puts it.
Rumi, a maths prodigy who enters Oxford at 15, longs for India though she fails to understand — and her mother Shreene is unable to explain — the customs, taboos and expectations of life there. Even as she resents her mother’s constant references to “shameless” white ways, compared to her own upbringing, Rumi revels in memories of the India Trip.
Nikita speaks of her family’s visits to India once in four years when growing up in Cardiff. “I would feel very free when I was in India. I felt I belonged here.” Once back, “I would spend months getting over it, and there would be a gap, and we would save up to come.”
But Rumi’s story is “definitely not” an autobiographical novel, if only because Nikita was not a prodigy who went to Oxford at 15. “I have an interest in maths, but nothing beyond mental arithmetic,” she concedes. The novel came out of “various histories that are ransacked and imagined,” she says, likening a storyteller’s work to the crafty gleanings of a magpie. But, she adds, “The emotional veracity of the book — that is real.”
Like life, it could be hilarious if it weren’t so real. But the adolescent Rumi is not the only one tortured. Nikita understands both parties. “It’s a coming-of-age book and also about wanting to do good by your child,” she explains. Rumi’s father Mahesh is trying to transcend class and colour barriers. “No one can argue with grades and exam results,” she points out. This knowledge pushes Mahesh to push his daughter. Mahesh, by making sure his daughter is recognised as a prodigy, is ensuring her stable future, where she will never have to contend with the struggles he faced.
Generation gap
Things are different for Asians in the U.K. now, Nikita points out. “The book is about the patchy years,” she says, when the sudden influx of immigrants created a climate of suspicion in society. The generation of the 1980s has grown up. As doctors and other highly qualified professionals, they “have created a whole new stratum,” she notes. “But who knows what this generation will do with their kids?”
Yet, even if things have changed, one kind of suspicion has replaced another. “You’re part of a multi-cultural society. But colour still defines you.”
Nikita, a documentary filmmaker, gave up her job with the BBC to write. “Who knows why you want to write? Probably because you read a lot,” she muses, adding, “A lot of my documentary came into it.” Full of visual description, the book is a filmmaker’s delight, and the rights have already been snapped up.
Nikita, currently researching for an anthology for the AIDS Conference in 2008, has started her second novel set between India and the U.K. It is at a stage when “you’ve got a sense of the room you are in, but don’t know who’s in it.” As for making the Booker long-list, she says, “More than nice, it was a big shock. When my publisher called me, I said, but why did they do that?” She continues modestly, “But I also feel they went for the unknown authors this time.”
Unknown, perhaps. Gifted, certainly.
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