Soft-spoken but hard-hitting, Kiran Nagarkar revels in telling tales about unpalatable truths, writes Suparna-Saraswati Puri

 
For more than four decades, he has been trying to shake us out of stupor with themes that are real, riveting and thought-provoking. Adept at the art of making the reader uncomfortable with the truth, Kiran Nagarkar’s understated demeanour complements his literary eloquence. To understand Nagarkar fully, humour is essential. Popularly hailed as an ‘Indian writer you must read’, Nagarkar is an acclaimed bilingual novelist, playwright and screenplay writer as well as social, political and literary critic of eminence.

His debut novel, Saat Sakkam Trechalis, written in 1973, is hailed as a landmark in Marathi literature, and is credited with reinventing the language. It revealed a new voice that told the story of urban angst and the confused nature of modern life. In the septuagenarian’s words, “At that time, I thoroughly enjoyed writing in Marathi. For me, it was a romantic exercise. The novel was fragmented, elliptical, condensed and, up to a point, minimalistic. It indulged in black humour. As the novel featured lust and compassion in equal measure, it was described as a revolutionary first novel in Marathi.” The book, translated into English as Seven Sixes Are Forty-three—first published in Australia by QUP—was followed by the controversial play Bedtime Story, completed in 1977, a modern take on the Mahabharata. It was written during and after the Emergency, and brought to stark reality themes like caste, religion and war, inviting objections from political parties and the self-appointed cultural custodians of Bombay. When the screenplay went to the Censor Board, 78 cuts were ordered and later scaled down to 24! However, with the actors developing cold feet, the play could not be staged. “I wrote this play as I was deeply concerned about the fact that we don’t take responsibility for our actions. Anything that happens anywhere in the world is our responsibility. The world is our responsibility and the world is our problem,” asserts the playwright who finally found a publisher for his four-decade-old theatre piece. Bedtime Story was published in 2015 as a two-in-one book, along with the screenplay Black Tulip. Nagarkar’s recent novel, the last part in the Ravan & Eddie trilogy, Rest in Peace Ravan and Eddie (HarperCollins; ₹ 599; 362 pages), was also published last year.

A born storyteller with an unerring eye for detail, Nagarkar’s novels—Ravan and Eddie (1994), Cuckold (1997), God’s Little Soldier (2006) and The Extras (2012)—have been translated into Marathi, German, French, Italian, Spanish and Portuguese. When the erogenous Cuckold won the Sahitya Akademi Award for best novel in 2000, the doyen of Indian literature Khushwant Singh remarked “…Cuckold written in English I regard as the best by an Indian”. In 2012, when The New York Review of Books published Ravan and Eddie, Pulitzer prize-winning journalist and author Katherine Boo called it “Wicked, magical, hilarious, enduring: A masterpiece from one of world literature’s great cult writers”.

In November 2012, while bestowing Nagarkar with the prestigious ‘Bundesverdienstkreuz’ (Cross of the Order of Merit), Germany’s highest civilian award, then German ambassador Michael Steiner said, “Kiran Nagarkar is one of India’s best known authors in Germany. Nagarkar’s works make a colourful, complex and, in many ways, complicated society tangible to our senses. Particularly his book God’s Little Soldier (Gottes Kleiner Krieger) was a bestseller in Germany, offering a unique insight into the world of extremism…. At the crossroads between our cultures, he became a major voice of India in Germany and, I trust, also a resounding voice of Germany in India.” In fact, in a recent survey of its members conducted by Litprom (the German Society for the Promotion of African, Asian and Latin American Literature), Nagarkar was ranked 12th in the list of the ‘Best 30 authors’, along with Gabriel Garcia Marquez, Nadine Gordimer and Salman Rushdie. God’s Little Soldier also featured among Litprom’s ‘30 Best Books’.

The chaos and contradictions of life as experienced by the writer meander subtly into all Nagarkar’s writings, making each novel a memorable reading experience. Born in 1942 in Bombay, which was then “still full of trees”, Nagarkar recollects an “anglicised, but very poor” childhood in Dadar Hindu Colony. His illustrious grandfather B B Nagarkar, Chitpavan Brahmin-turned-Brahmo, participated in the 1893 World Parliament of Religion in Chicago. A student of English literature, Nagarkar studied at Fergusson College, Pune, and S I E S, Mumbai, and then worked as a copywriter with the iconoclastic Mass Communications and Marketing (MCM) ad agency founded by Kersey Katrak in 1965, famous for its towel ad campaign with a young Maneka Gandhi. “The towel campaign was created in Delhi,” recalls Nagarkar. “I suspect she was dating Sanjay at that time, but I don’t think she was married to him.”

From making a living as a freelance copywriter, penning his most controversial play during the Emergency and not writing for 15 years to churning out literary masterpieces and being recognised as one of the most significant writers of post-colonial India, Kiran Nagarkar’s own story has the right ingredients for a marvellously exciting screenplay. At the recently held Tata Live Literature Festival in Mumbai, the author—who lives in Mumbai with his companion of more than three decades, Tulsi Vatsal—was honoured with a Lifetime Achievement Award. Flashes of his famed humour are on ample display in our interview as Nagarkar talks about things as disparate as his literary sensibilities, the fictional world and childhood memories.

EXCERPTS:

 
You have been described as ‘one of the most significant writers of post-colonial India’ ….

I’m trying hard to blush and lower my head modestly. On a serious note, the one thing that matters is whether my readers take cognisance of the fact that even my mad, farcical, black humour has an underlying seriousness and whether it makes them reflect upon the issues it raises, perhaps even change their hardcore beliefs.

Given the popularity of your books, is there a particular reason for steering clear of publicity, particularly in times when authors are treated as celebrities?

I am puzzled that the members of the Lok Sabha and the Rajya Sabha and perhaps the denizens of the subcontinent too seem to believe that there is only one culture in this country and that is cinema, especially Bollywood. You hardly ever hear of the finest scientists, sociologists, historians and doctors being nominated to these august bodies. I believe that a book must speak for itself and the author should not be promoting it like a new brand. At the same time, I am conscious of the fact that I am anachronistic in my views. Times have changed and literature is today a highly endangered species.

You’ve been quoted as saying, “I am an instinctive writer; I’m a believer in the art of storytelling.”

I don’t choose a subject or a theme consciously; the subject always chooses me. When I set about telling a story, its contours are mostly unknown to me. Even when I wrote God’s Little Soldier, I didn’t have a readymade prior thesis. In the case of Cuckold, all I knew when I started writing was that if I ever wrote the book, its male protagonist would paint himself blue.

Take us through your childhood and your father’s enthusiasm to educate poor children.

We were a nuclear family. My father got married only after all his siblings had either finished their education or were married. I have an older brother who left home almost immediately after finishing his master’s as he had got a fellowship to study at the Sorbonne in Paris. My own educational career has been less than spectacular. As a kind of crowning glory, I got a third class for my master’s. This was, I think, because I had heard that some universities abroad evaluated a master’s student on the basis of just one essay in answer to half-a-dozen or a dozen questions. I knew damn well that that was not the case in our country but, hey, I was trying to be a secret hero [chuckles]. So much for false arrogance!

My father was a clerk in the Railways. He got a pathetically low salary and even though we could barely make it to the end of the month—actually we couldn’t without help—I discovered rather late in life that even with our terribly straightened circumstances, he was always helping poor Dalit peons who had not made it past standard 10th. He gave them money to appear for school-leaving exams. More often than not, they failed; but my father continued to help them in the hope that that their salaries and prospects would improve substantially if they passed the exams.

How do you remember your grandfather B B Nagarkar? How do you think he would have reacted to your storytelling style?

Both my grandfathers died a long time before I was born. In that sense, they were barely even virtual grandfathers. However, while there was a big lacuna when there was talk of Balwant Nagarkar at home, some things stayed in my memory. For instance, as a child he was attached to a temple in Ahmednagar. I have no idea how he broke so radically with his past and came to join Wilson College or became, perhaps, the first Indian professor of English at the prestigious Elphinstone College in Mumbai. More gaps in the story till we come to 1893, when he went to America to attend the World Conference of Religions. But, as we all know, the remarkable Swami Vivekananda stole the limelight there. Nevertheless, my grandfather must have made an impression on the delegates because he was asked to attend the next conference in 1903. Back in India, he seems to have taken on all kinds of jobs and assignments, but I need to ransack my cousins’ brains to find out more about him! One thing is certain. I have always maintained that he was the main mover in the Nagarkar clan. It is because of his rebellious nature that, along with my family, I too did not have an orthodox Hindu upbringing and yet I am so beholden to an all-embracing notion of Hinduism. Would he have approved of my writing? Your guess is as good as mine. I know only one thing. He would not have praised my work, if at all, just because I happened to be family.

Is there any compelling recollection from your childhood that has contributed to your writing?

I must confess there are many compelling recollections, one of them being the nocturnal violence underneath the calm exterior in a family that stayed on the top floor in the building opposite and another being that of a man who brought a second wife to stay with his first wife and several children in their two-room apartment. Yet another is of the Prohibition Police Squad coming to the back of our building, opening the gutter covers and emptying large tin cans of fermenting dates and other ingredients, all of them crawling with cockroaches. Later in the day, a drunk servant turned up. He was in a mad rage at the loss of hooch and started throwing stones all around and swearing loudly. Windows were broken in all the surrounding houses and there was an eerie silence; no one dared to step out.

As a child, you nursed the ambition to be an actor. Much later, you happened to act in Split Wide Open, a feature film.

In primary school, I was the sole male and main actor in almost every production. I have no idea how rotten my acting was and whether I was the standard insufferable precocious brat, but some years ago I discovered several thin books the school had gifted me for my acting stints. Perhaps that’s where I got the idea that I would become an actor, but by the age of 10 I had become so thin that sometimes you saw me and sometimes you didn’t. A little girl of three or four in the neighbourhood used to call me lambu, and pretend she had not said it. I had turned self-conscious to the point that I telescoped all the words in a sentence into one when I spoke. And soon I lost the capacity to memorise even a simple paragraph. That’s how India lost one of its finest actors even before he made his debut!

In Split Wide Open, I was a semi-priest called Brother Bono, a pederast who ultimately dies of AIDS. I got to improvise just one sentence as I talked to one of my victims called Cut-Price on my deathbed. “Ah Cut-Price, it’s a cut-price death I’m in for.” Brother Bono’s funeral procession gets caught in the rain. As the funeral had to be shot from various angles, I was soaked to the bone. The only other problem was I could not remember my lines!

What intrigues you as a writer?

I’m fascinated by human beings and characters caught in a bind. For instance, Ravan in Ravan & Eddie must perpetually live with the dilemma of not knowing whether he is Ram or Ravan; similarly, Zia in God’s Little Soldier can and does change religions or ideologies but is also perpetually true to extremism. In Cuckold, Maharaj Kumar’s plight is truly tragic. On his marriage night itself he discovers that his wife is carrying on with someone else. As if that is not bad enough, it turns out that her paramour is none other than his sole guide and teacher, God Shri Krishna. Add to that, his second mother, Rani Karmavati, is Rana Sanga’s favourite queen and is making sure that her son, Vikramaditya, will be the next king.

Do you share your draft with anybody? Also, does the anxiety of how your work will be received bother you?

You can’t publish a book unless it is sent to an editor who decides whether she or he is willing to publish it. But as you are aware, I am the world’s slowest writer. On the rare occasion when I’ve finished my first draft of a novel, I will show it to my companion and if she thinks it is okay after umpteen revisions and rewrites, I will show it to a very dear friend who was an editor abroad, and then get around to showing it to my chief editor at HarperCollins. As to anxiety, that comes with the territory.

What is of paramount importance to you while characterising for your novels and plays?

The most important condition is that the story behind the characters should be gripping. For me, the plot is a means of getting into the hearts and minds of the main protagonists. Not just that, even the minor characters must be so powerfully created that they come alive and you want to follow them and their destinies. Now, here’s the paradox that a writer must continually come to terms with. From all accounts, the writer is the creator. And yes he is, but the irony is that if he makes all the choices for his characters and decides their fates, they will turn out to be puppets. But on the other hand, if he is willing to follow wherever they lead him and gives them the freedom to live their own lives, make blunders and the right choices, there’s a good chance they might come alive and become memorable. Who knows, you might have just written a classic!

Is your latest book Rest in Peace a departure from your previous works, even though it is a sequel to Ravan & Eddie?

I guess you could say it is for Ravan and Eddie as they have finally made it big time, not as superstars but as path-breaking music directors. They’ve also moved out of the chawl into three-bedroom apartments in high rises located in Pali Hill. Oddly, their mothers refuse to move in with them and stay behind in CWD Chawl No.17. But like all good things, these happy days will also pass and Ravan and Eddie once again hit rock bottom. It is important to remember here that Ravan and Eddie are not mere survivors; they don’t know how to give up. The one thing that Mumbai and poverty have taught them is to keep reinventing.

Is advertising more about gimmickry today and less about creative responsibility?

I’ve only one thing to say about today’s advertising. It seems as if the creative juices have run completely dry in the last 10 years or so. The only advertising that one runs into these days is the hybrid of the testimonial ad where some superstar or the other is vouching for the product. I’ve lost count of the number of products for which Amitabh Bachchan is the mascot. He sells cement, high-class suiting, jewellery and God knows how many other products. If it’s not him, it’s Shah Rukh Khan, Deepika Padukone, Farhan Akhtar, Aishwarya Rai or Sachin Tendulkar. I’m unwilling to believe that creativity has abandoned the Indian advertising scene. So then, who is at fault? You tell me!

While scripting a novel in English, does your thought process oscillate between Marathi and English?

I’m sure it does every once in a while. But then, I must also add Hindi to the above-mentioned languages. After all, Bollywood is what makes the Indian world go round.

Are you guilty of any idiosyncrasy that interferes with your literary sensibilities?

I suspect, like most other authors, I too wonder what the point is of talking about a book whose future is completely in the dark. The only time you can be sure about a book is when it is published. And even then it can suffer from that American film noir term, DOA, Dead on Arrival!

What was most challenging while screenwriting for The Broken Circle, The Widow and Her Friends and The Elephant on the Mouse for children?

I wrote these screenplays a long time back and did not even show them to anybody except a couple of friends. I wouldn’t be able to say offhand whether these old screenplays need an endless amount of reworking or they should be just dumped. I wrote Black Tulip originally in 2000 and then forgot it to the extent that I did not even think that the manuscript was anywhere around. Luckily for me, I rediscovered it in 2013 and revised it dozens or more times. It’s a caper, a genre I like very much if it’s without hi-tech. Looking back, I feel it might make for a tense but fun heist movie.

How do you view the young Indian reader?

The young Indian reader is a highly endangered species. Frankly, come to think of it, I can hardly think of any other species as endangered as a reader. I am aware that there are authors today whose work sells in lakhs and they’re crorepatis. But that is a totally different breed. By and large, bookshops and bookshop chains across the world are closing down. Mumbai has been rather lucky that some years back we actually got perhaps the finest bookshop in the country called Kitab Khana, which is totally devoted to books and not a hodgepodge of CDs, DVDs, children’s toys and God knows what else!

What would be your advice to aspirants of regional literature?

My uncalled advice for both regional and English writers would be the same. Please remember that barring a very few authors, the majority of us have to take up a regular 9-to-6 job and manage our writing on the side. There is no need for breast-beating on this score. It’s not a bad idea to remember someone like William Faulkner whose books are now considered classics and yet he hardly sold during his lifetime and had to work at various other jobs to make a living. Having said that, it might be a good idea to think of writing as a vocation; what that means is that it’s a gift and a calling. This, of course, implies that you owe it the highest possible integrity. One last thing, please don’t forget that humour can be dead serious!

What kind of discipline do you observe as a writer?

This is a confession I’m most loathe to make. I suffer from that disease called zero discipline! For me, writing is sheer masochism. The only time I can enjoy it is in retrospect and that too on the rare occasions when you think you might have written something memorable.

How do you unwind?

I used to be a movie fiend. Believe it or not, I used to watch six or seven films a day during film festivals. It has been a long time since I indulged in such non-stop film-watching or reading. And this is not because I’m working on something. Let’s just say that there are dozens of books waiting either by my bedside or on the shelves. And I haven’t got around to reading them. I wish I could offer you a good reason why that is. But I don’t have one!

What does an ordinary day look like for you?

What it looks like is a total absence of routine and discipline. There is just no end to the editors who call asking for articles. They mean well and it is often difficult to say no. And so, one’s own work gets happily sidetracked.

Do you have any food preferences?

I’m not a foodie. You could say I’m singularly uncultured when it comes to gourmet food. I eat to quieten the pangs of hunger. Every once in a while I’ll enjoy a superb biryani or lightly fried Bombay duck. My biggest problem, of course, is that I don’t have a single sweet tooth—all 32 are totally addicted to sweets. As you can imagine, this is a prescription for disaster. I’m not sure that I can claim to be in control of excesses.

What infuriates you as an individual and is totally unacceptable as a writer?

At the moment, what is going on in our country makes me despair. The sad part is that the entire world seems to have lost its humanity. One has rarely seen anything as horrendous as the ISIS notion of brutality. But at the same time, one cannot forget that it was the United States who attacked Iraq on totally false charges and look where it has led. The entire Middle East is turning out to be a problem without any solution in sight. America and its allies in Europe have no idea and no policy about how to end the appalling quagmire of violence and the displacement of millions of people.

Let me add one more thing. I do believe that writers and artists of every variety bear a special responsibility. They must stand up and raise their voices, not once, but again and again. As I’ve said in my play Bedtime Story, whatever happens in our backyard, in our country, in any part of the world starting from Palestine, the Philippines or the United States, you and I are responsible for it. Just think about it. We human beings have brought the disaster called climate change upon humankind. We know its consequences, we are suffering from them and yet we are either in denial or making such pathetic gestures that it is highly unlikely that we will reverse the calamitous consequences of abusing Mother Earth.

Awards and honours

• The Extras – shortlisted for The Hindu Literary Prize 2013
• Order of Merit of the Federal Republic of Germany 2012
• Cuckold – Sahitya Akademi Award 2001

Novels

• Seven Sixes are Forty Three (1980); translation of Saat Sakkam Trechalis (1974)
• Ravan & Eddie (1995)
• Cuckold (1997)
• God’s Little Soldier (2006)
• The Extras (2012)

Plays and screenplays

• Bedtime Story
• Kabirache Kay Karayche
• Stranger Amongst Us
• The Broken Circle
• The Widow and Her Friends
• The Elephant on the Mouse

Photo: Haresh Patel
Archival images courtesy: Kiran Nagarkar
Featured in Harmony — Celebrate Age Magazine
April 2016