How did you decide the title?
It's a multi-layered expression that evolved from the story.
In what genre of literature would you put your book
What the Body Remembers?
Literary fiction/Diasporic fiction. For more information, see the
conversation
with Rich Rennicks
Why, in your opinion, is there hardly any fiction
based on the Partition?
By definition, the Partition of India meant that people and their stories
come to one side of a border and leave their setting on the other. So the
Survivor Generation was the one familiar with both story and setting.
After 1947, few survivors could spare time for the luxury of art. Their
children wanted/needed to get beyond survival and few -- perhaps only the
feudals -- could afford to work full time in the arts. For many in the
second generation, Partition was still a painful reminder of loss. The
third and fourth generations after 1947, both in the subcontinent and in
its diaspora, have been curious and a few of us have been able to find
time and money to address it in art.
It's now almost impossible for Indian nationals to travel in Pakistan and for Pakistani nationals to travel in India. To write fiction about a traumatic event like Partition, writers need to research setting -- smells, flowers, fauna, birds, minerals, geography, mythology, distances, local customs -- and spend time talking with people in and from both countries. (I was fortunate that I could travel and research in both countries because I'm Canadian).
Each generation will ask different questions about 1947, and when there are more cross-border academic collaborations on the subject, I'm sure we can expect more fiction.
Why or how did you choose to write a fiction against the backdrop
of Partition?
I followed the characters from 1895 to 1928 to 1937 and as I wrote, found
that the central conflict of the polygamous marriage was an allegory for
what was happening to the whole country. So the tension in the story
built naturally to 1947, and the transformational event for my characters
became Partition/Independence, just as it was for 17 million displaced
people on the subcontinent.
The book uses the native language of the characters
for the purpose of conversation, but the reader does not feel
that they're not reading english, neither is there a glossary
at the end like other books. How did you manage this?
Carefully, with attention to syntax, rhythm and grammar.
It is a condition of publication that no glossary shall be included any language used to translate What the Body Remembers.
All the Urdu and Punjabi words are defined either by context or with recurring adjectives. If there is an English equivalent, I give it after the Indian word.
Some of the Punjabi words in What the Body Remembers are lost even to Indian speakers. For example, we no longer have the "siapa" mourning ceremony and the very word has changed meaning to mean "problem". We no longer use "saukan" regularly because since 1956 when polygamy was outlawed, Punjabi-speaking Hindus and Sikhs no longer use the word that names the relationship between co-wives.
More on this subject in the interview by Rich Rennicks
What were your references for the book?
Many varied resources: personal interviews with women who are or have
been first wives; accounts by women who live under conditions of polygamy
today; personal interviews with and accounts of women who, like my
maternal grandmother, experienced both second wifehood and surrogate
motherhood.
I traveled in Pakistan, for What the Body Remembers is set mostly in Rawalpindi, Lahore, villages and small towns in Pakistan. (In India, the book has a few scenes set in Firozepur, Simla, and at the very end, in Delhi). I read about 1200 history books (some very boring); tax codes; District Gazetteers; cookbooks suffering from Raj nostalgia; truly awful British memoirs, and interviewed witnesses of Partition and its aftermath: Indians, Pakistanis and Britishers.
Were you expecting the Commonwealth Award for the
book once you were nominated?
Like the other finalists from the four regions of the Commonwealth, I
hoped my book would receive it. It was an honor to find What the Body
Remembers, my first novel, in the running for Commonwealth Prize for Best
Book, along with Salman Rushdie's sixth, Lily Brett's fourth and J. M.
Coetzee's eighth.
We find a lot of literature, fiction of non-fiction,
about the partition of India and West Pakistan, but not about
India and East Pakistan. Why do you think this bias exists?
It is possible that the economic realities of writing and in the
publishing industry create the regional differences you perceive, not
"bias" as you put it. These economic realities of the publishing industry
are demonstrated not only between regions but between countries -- for
example, as of 1998 there were more than 70,000 books about the American
civil war and only 600 or so non-fiction books on Partition. Non-fiction
works are a prerequisite for fiction that enters into rigorous and
challenging conversation with our past, interrogating it through multiple
points of view.
Novelists need savings or funding, along with peace and quiet to research and write fiction for 2-3, even 10 years. After a book is written, its readers vote to keep it alive (which means in print) by buying it. For example, English Lessons and Other Stories and What the Body Remembers are currently prescribed reading for University courses discussing Secularism and Fundamentalism; Women's Studies; English Lit; and South Asian Studies, which will extend their life in print. But it's often difficult for books in Indian languages other than English to remain in print no matter how loyal their readers, no matter if professors would like to prescribe them in class -- unless they are translated into English. (English is like Microsoft Windows -- the current standard, full of features but by no means crash-proof or bug-free, and the economic reality bilingual/multilingual writers face is that we need to shoehorn our ideas and images into its applications; rewriting its base code and adding neologisms as we go, trusting Lord Macaulay is clutching his Minute and spinning in his fusty old grave).
Whom do you rate as the best writer?
Writing is not like going to the horse races, so there is no "best
writer" -- only writers whose concerns resonate with my own or who I feel
illuminate the human condition. My list changes as my life changes and is
unlikely to coincide with anyone else's.
There's a list of books I recommend at
the
Random House website
When did you realize that you wanted to be a writer?
At eleven -- but it took a few years, for my first book was published in
1992 when I was thirty. I detoured into an MBA, a stint in e-commerce
consulting, all the while studying the writer's craft. I took every
writing class I could, and I still do.
Who was your inspiration in entering this field?
No one person -- areas of silence and anger inspire me, oral stories
inspire me.
What are you future plans?
I'm working on my fourth book -- a second novel -- and also on a second
collection of short stories.
I loved reading the book and am looking forward to read more by you. Thank you once again.