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Photo: K. V. Srinivasan

Into people’s mind Priya Sarukkai Chabria

With the lights low, coloured spotlights rested on the author as she spoke about her eight-year journey in writing the science fiction or speculative fiction novel, which is a complete departure from her first, “The Other Garden.”

“It took me ages to research and write this book, which covers a huge span of time 2,500 BCE to the 24th Century. It is an act of faith — in myself and in an intelligent and engaged reading public,” said Priya, who is also a poet and the editor of the Talking Poetry South Asia website.

“Generation 14” is a dystopic futuristic novel set in the 24th Century, and speaks of a sanitised global community comprising four orders — Originals, Superior Zombies, Firehearts and Clones — governed by fear and terror. The story revolves around the awakening of 14/54/G, a 14th generation clone that suddenly begins to have ‘visitations’ or memories of her past lives.

“I have been troubled by the violence in our world, by how we keep repeating these patterns of behaviour,” said the author. “That’s where the idea of the clone as a metaphor came from — are we all, in a sense, behaving like pre-programmed clones?”

The book, co-published by Penguin and Zubaan, was launched by Priya’s mother Saroja Kamakshi. Then, the stage was set for readings from the book, and the dim red-and-green spotlights of Pasha created the perfect atmosphere for excerpts that dealt with, first, the bizarre 24th Century world of the clone, before moving on to some of the surrealistic visitations from the past. There was the one, read by Priya herself, where the clone sees herself as a gecko on the wall, watching Marco Polo with an Indian courtesan called Love’s Sweetness. And then there was theatre personality Deesh Mariwala’s animated dramatised reading of the clone’s memories of being a prisoner in Kalinga awaiting his death sentence.

“I don’t plot my stories — I simply sit at my laptop every night and write,” revealed the author. “You could say I dreamt up this story rather than wrote it; it’s a risky method, but it does generate a different kind of energy.” The process did involve some research though, and she shared slides of visual material she worked with, such as paintings from the caves of Ajantha, or miniatures from the late Mughal period.

All in all, the evening did make for an unusual, if somewhat strange, experience, moving backwards and forwards in time; certainly for the audience that sat blinking for a few moments when the lights came back, the end of it meant a return to the everyday life of the 21st Century.

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