Anuradha Roy | SCILET Live
A very productive and rewarding afternoon today, over a vibrant LIVE CONNECT with Award-winning novelist Anuradha Roy, thanks to SCILET, The American College, Madurai.
The programme started on time, and Dr. Premila Paul made the session so exciting and engaging for all of us, who’d gathered on the virtual ZOOM platform to connect with the renowned novelist.
The LIVE MEET that happened over the ZOOM virtual platform, started exactly at 2 pm and went on till around 3.40 pm.
A few memorable excerpts from the Q & A session for us all –
Anuradha Roy, on publishing her first book when she was forty years old…
Well, I had never wanted to become a writer. I had really wanted to be a publisher. And that’s what I was! I worked at OUP after my studies.
I was completely happy working there. After leaving OUP, there was some space that opened up. So I made use of this space to write my own book.
Maybe I was 37 years old then. For a year or so, it kept getting rejected by publishers in India and abroad. The whole process of acceptance took a year or so! Only when I turned forty my first book was published, says Anuradha Roy!
Dr. PP asks,
“I’m just eager to know why you’ve named it Permanent Black!” Do you see white as a binary of black!?
Novelist Anuradha replies –
The name was partly a rebellion over the ‘whiteness’ of OUP! Partly against the whole hegemony of the white world in the kind of publishing we’ve been doing! That apart, we used to write in black ink! That’s added reason!
Dr. PP asks,
Your mother Sheela Roy has been a companion in your life, in your research tours, in your writing of novels, helped you in your hill climbings, your father has been an inspiration in your novels. Is there any female character in your novel inspired by Sheila Roy whom you admire and adore?
Novelist Anuradha replies –
My mother is an artist. She paints. When you build characters, it doesn’t happen that way. Characters begin with a kind of few molecules. So I’ve not directly drawn on my mother in my novels!
Dr. PP asks,
In your novels, historical figures and imaginary characters jostle with each other. Where do you draw the line between the demands of authenticity and the demands of integrity!
Does your extensive research come in the way of your imagination or rather, choke your imagination?
Novelist Anuradha replies –
While reading historical novels, I don’t feel like getting mere information, where the knowledge is so plain, and you can’t enter the book intellectually or emotionally.
I had been reading this American writer Janet Malcolm who’s written a book on a murder case. She’s described the realm of writing as a space like a house in which a journalist or the historian is a tenant, but the fiction writer is the owner. So the tenant writer can live in the house but has to leave it that way.
But a fiction writer can break down the house, and remake it according to what they have in their minds.
So I had to digest the history and bring it out as fiction, says Anuradha Roy.
Dr. PP asks,
The pain of abandonment is so real also. The societal identity gets established for this little boy, as the son of a white man!
Added, it’s a kind of broken promise as well. Bali as a dream destination. Gayatri has been a very special mother, her parenting style, as a singer, as a story-teller… but why does she leave her son behind…
Well, you have captured the essence of the patriarchal notions prevalent in the country…
Anuradha replies -
Gayatri’s need to be an artist, find the independence and the space to do what she needs to do.
It’s a stereotype that women will always leave to be with another man. Bali is a place she ends up coincidentally. She did intend taking her child….
Dr. PP asks,
But the fact is, she didn’t…
Anuradha Roy replies -
All kinds of enormous forces of history like the pandemic, can overturn all our notions…
Dr. PP observes,
Anuradha does not work with words or visuals alone! She works with mud as well.. Her able fingers make powerful artefacts with mud (video is being screened now…)
Dr. PP continues,
Anuradha I understand that you don’t sell your lovely creation.
Anuradha Roy replies -
Earlier if I made something precious, I couldn’t part with it. But I recently sold my first two pieces and find very victorious about it. But I’ve never had exhibitions. I only give them to people who are interested in them. All our household mud teapots, tables, are all made by me…
Replying to a participant’s comment – Anuradha Roy observes –
You probably were too young to have written letters. A letter is a very physical thing. Your handwriting tells people a lot. Miscoth was my second dog. I was amused when you said ‘You read to your dog’. When I was seven years old, I was similarly convinced that I could teach my puppy to write… The presence of dogs around us, creates an anarchy around us that’s so wonderful. They’re absolute fun and so hilarious to be with!,
says novelist Anuradha Roy!
Prof. Sharon had two interesting questions -
Ma’am, do you have any kind of writing ritual – like you exile yourself, or a particular room where you sit and write… Do you think all of that is needed for writing to be possible, or do you think writing can be possible anywhere… Do you have a ritual or a process before writing…
Anuradha Roy replies –
You do need quite a lot of routine… I can’t write when things are disrupted. I need to start writing in the morning. When I began my first book, it was in Delhi. It was in the studio, which is a calm place. But I’ve written in plenty of other spaces as well. Like I’ve written in airports, hotels, houses of guests, etc. So the thing is, you just need to keep writing…
observed novelist Anuradha Roy!
Dr. Premila Paul proved the ideal moderator for the session, as usual, and on the whole, the evening proved quite a rewarding evening, with all of us blued and glued to Award Winning Novelist Ms Anuradha Roy.
PS: Dr. Premila Paul has been with us with the Department of English, MCC on many occasions in the recent past, to give Endowment Lectures and Invited Talks. Incidentally, she also gave the introductory address on our Meet the Author Programme, where she introduced Ms Anita Nair, in her own inimitable charming way, to our gathering, a few years ago.
You may want to link to the event HERE in our past post.
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