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Writing what she believes in
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Writing a novel is a test of endurance, says Usha Rajagopalan, at the launch of her book "Amrita"
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Usha Rajagopalan... It's about honesty
TO A bunch of young students of English Literature, entertaining a visiting writer is almost as cool as entertaining a wild-haired, black leather-clad member of a rock band. So, when Usha Rajagopalan, a poet and short story writer-turned-novelist, dropped in at the Women's Christian College to talk to the girls about the process of writing, she found herself addressing a wide-eyed, appreciative audience peppered liberally with aspiring writers waving manuscripts.
For girls brought up on a steady diet of deliciously eccentric writers like Virginia Woolf, who ended her career, and life, by filling her pocket with stones and walking into a river, Usha must have seemed rather tame. She doesn't wander on lonely moors looking for inspiration, neither does she shut herself up in a tree house looking to the skies for a muse. She's the typical `Indian writer in English' of today, well-qualified, urbane and hardworking.
Usha, who has won the Andrew Fellowship in Fiction at the University of British Colombia, Vancouver in 1999 and prizes in the Commonwealth short story competition for three successive years from 2001 to 2003, says for her, writing came by "choice, chance, compulsion."
A voracious reader, she constantly found things to snigger at when she read short stories published in the newspapers. "So, one day, my husband said, let's see if you can do any better." And that's how it all began.
A few stories later, she was hooked. "So I chucked my extraordinarily well-paying job and began this hazardous profession of living by your wits." Stating that a "writer's life is fraught with uncertainty," Usha says she went through a phase when editors just kept rejecting her stories, which led her to study how and why a story works, and then bring out a book called "Get Published".
"Indian writing in English has lots of limitations. For even though you are now writing in a language that is as Indian as Tamil or Malayalam, there are some words that have no translation. Take words like athai, chithhi and akka. In English, they're all aunty."
"But doesn't Indian writing in English tend to cater to the West," asks one student, adding, "you know, writing with words in italics all over the place..." Usha answers, "I write stories that I would like to read. A writer should write only what she believes in, not just what will sell. You have to be honest, and that honesty will come through in your writing."
Usha's first novel, "Amrita," which is about a bond between two sisters, one mentally challenged. A story about "the vulnerability of such children and the dangers they are exposed to; the apathy of society towards a problem that does not concern them; and growing materialism and intolerance towards the less privileged," "Amrita" took Usha years to write, four of which were devoted to research.
At a time when "the whole Indian writing in English wave has died down," Usha says the novel, released a couple of months ago, has been selling by "word of mouth." Shuffling through the short stories submitted by the girls she smiles, "Short stories are challenging... but a novel, it's a test of endurance."
SHONALI MUTHALALY
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