Nilanshu Kumar Agarwal
Author as a Citizen of the Global Village: An Interview with Sunny Singh
Sunny Singh's first play, Birthing Athena, was staged at the prestigious Sri Ram Centre, in Mandi House, New Delhi. The play was a critical and commercial success, with its story of emotionally fraught relationships in modern India -- relationships between ambitious mothers & daughters, and between young professionals looking to reconcile ambitions that involve a global reality with relationships requiring some geographic stability. Her Single in the City, Nani's Book of Suicides and With Krishna's Eyes have been received well by the scholars. This literary talent discusses with Dr. Nilanshu Kumar Agarwal several social and literary issue of contemporary significance.
NKA: Does the memory of your homeland haunt you? Are you nostalgic about your home? I think you are quite homesick as you call yourself “Bollywood fanatic, bhangra-mad” in your blog. What do you say? What effect has this nostalgia left on your writings?
SS: I am very uncomfortable about the assumptions this question makes about me, and indeed issues of homesickness and nostalgia. Why should one need to be homesick in order to be a Bollywood fanatic? I have been a huge fan of Hindi cinema since I was a child in Varanasi. Same holds true about being “bhangra-mad” – my father loved bhangra from his time in the army and passed that love down to us. And living in Delhi just cemented that fondness. I don’t think either of those have anything to do with being homesick.
I think the idea of “alien” lands is one that is steadily changing, based on historical shifts, technology, as well as personal experience. When I was very young, my father worked for the Indian government and so we grew up in various parts of India – often in small towns along the borders – but that did not remove us from our roots in rural UP. Similarly when my father began accepting foreign assignments, we grew up in places like New York but we never felt anything but Indian.
Moreover, when you are discussing everything from the price of potatoes in the local mandi and the panchayat level politics in the village with friends and family on a daily basis, it is very difficult to feel disconnected. And I do that daily via skype or chat, where I know what is happening in Azamgarh and Lucknow, and Tehri as much as I do about London where I am currently based. Besides, I am involved on a daily basis with people – through my project, through family and friends – who are in India, in its metropolitan centres, as well as in its small towns and villages.
And again regarding the issue of nostalgia – I think this idea is drawn from writings and experiences of an earlier generation; from writers and people who “emigrated” to foreign lands and due to factors of economics and technology were cut off from their roots. Also the immigrant experience is quite different – one chooses to become part of a foreign land, assimilating in the host culture while somehow fighting to retain one’s natal identity. I am not an “immigrant” – I am an expat who lives in the part of the world that interests me and then returns to India when I am done. I have lived in five continents so far and have never felt an iota of nostalgia – after all, my homeland is not lost to me, it is there, with me, stamped in bright gold on my passport.
NKA: Why do the Indian authors and intellectuals move towards the West? Does the West provide better opportunities to the authors? How will you differentiate between the publishing scene in India and the West? Are the western publishers better than the Indian ones?
SS: I think it is dangerous to generalize about authors and intellectuals moving towards the West as some general trend. There are after all a huge number of intellectuals, artists and writers who live, write and publish in India. I think different people move for different reasons – I am sure people like Amitav Ghosh or Vikram Seth would have different explanations, just as Salman Rushdie’s family moved to the UK for very different motives. I can only speak for my own personal decisions: I have a curiosity to see the world and experience it. I move as and when opportunities and personal interests coincide. And I return to India when the need or interest arises.
Regarding publishing – I don’t think you can make such vast generalizations about western publishers being better than Indian ones. This varies from one publisher to another, and from one language/country to another. I find that Indian publishers are at par with international ones – they are willing to take similar risks, find interesting new ideas, new names, and bring them to the reader.
NKA: In your blog entry ‘Hypocrisy or Just Plain Ol' Hubris, You Betcha!’, you discuss the racial prejudice of the British and the West towards the East in general and India in particular. The racial slur makes an Indian aware of his “double consciousness”. Is there a way out? Or should we just follow Rushdie’s suggestion--“I am recommending the ancient tradition of making as big a fuss, as noisy a complaint about the world as is humanly possible”-- in the essay ‘Outside the Whale’ of his celebrated critical book Imaginary Homelands?
SS: I think that particular blog entry was not so much about British and the West in general but about biases in the media which continue to frame events in dichotomous terms. So when the Irish “troubles” were on, these were somehow a “political” issue, while the same sort of political movement would be described in bleak sectarian terms if it were happening in Iraq or India or somewhere in Africa.
More importantly, that blog post was directed towards a section of the media in India itself that idolizes USA and Europe as somehow epitomes of democracy, secularism and so forth. It was to point out that the hate speech that is present in public discourse in places like Switzerland, Holland and most importantly, given their political/economic and military importance, the USA is of such magnitude that we cannot imagine similar stuff at the same level in India (no matter how much we complain about Hindutva and sundry fringe elements). The images and words used in western elections, in the past year, are not only blatantly prejudiced in terms of race, religion and ethnicity, but also the sort that incite violence against specific targets, even the political opponents. These are the sort of things that the EC would clamp down very quickly on, and would be completely unacceptable to general public in India.
NKA: Can literary creativity be taught? Is it not something spontaneous? Wordsworth defined poetry as the spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings; while teaching of any course is structured and methodical. How can an emerging author establish a proper coordination between the two situations?
SS: I don’t think creative writing programmes are about teaching literary creativity. I would compare them to art schools where you learn techniques and skills for creating art. Or to music schools where you can learn to play the piano or the sarod. Does that mean every student ends up as a Picasso or a Chopin? No. But it is time we started looking at literary production as an artistic pursuit with its own set of competencies. That is what—I believe-- creative writing programmes attempt to provide.
As far as my own experience is concerned, I think the whole Romantic enterprise has probably done more harm to literary production than anything else. Not because they weren’t great authors, but because of the myth-making they did around literary production. We know that Coleridge worked for days, even weeks on writing a single poem. Same is true for Wordsworth and the others. Yet the myth that grew out of the era was of this fabulous organic writing process that is somehow inspired and thus grows spontaneously.
Let us be reasonable: even poems don’t get produced spontaneously; they require a huge amount of polishing and parsing. And when it comes to novels, this “inspiration” premise gets even more absurd. How can 80,000 words be written as a spontaneous overflow of feeling? It requires discipline and hardwork – and those CAN be taught. The importance of discipline and hard work cannot be overemphasized. There are immensely talented people out there who never produce any considerable body of work not for any other reason but that they lack the discipline. At the end, I believe in what Einstein said about genius – its one percent inspiration and 99% perspiration.
NKA: What is the response of the West towards Indian literature? Do the westerners, particularly the British, approve of our creative efforts? Are they not filled with some bias towards us, because of their complex of racial superiority? Or do you think them to be objective and dispassionate? What is the reaction of the West towards your works?
SS: First of all, I don’t think these monolithic categories of “West” vs India are very helpful. India produces great writing, and also some awful stuff. At the same time, there are people in western countries – readers, editors, critics, publishers – who love Indian literature and there are others who are oblivious to it. To reduce all of this to simplistic categories is not really helpful to any meaningful discussion.
Second, why should we care if anyone approves of our creative efforts? Surely in the past sixty plus years, we have moved past that postcolonial inferiority complex that requires a stamp of approval from our former masters? I am also particularly worried about the generalized assumption that there is a “complex of racial superiority” either in the west or in Britain. This is not to say that there is not a meta-narrative rooted in imperialism of the past that can be found in the media, or even politics.
But in general terms, I don’t think readers decide on the merits of literary efforts based on “complex of racial superiority.” If that were the case, writers like Amitav Ghosh, Orhan Pamuk or Ben Okri would not be as influential and respected.
And finally, as an author I fervently hope that readers – from any part of the world - are not be “objective and dispassionate” as you suggest. That in itself is a death sentence for all art. Art is meant to challenge and provoke, and make people think, feel and experience. And if a reader is going to be “dispassionate and objective,” they are not going to participate in the aesthetic, emotional, intellectual experience that art offers.
Finally speaking specifically about my writing, I write about India, about the changes facing us, and about the way we are coping with the transformation of our culture and society. Some people are interested in those issues and ideas and others aren’t – both in India and abroad. But their approval is really immaterial to the literary process. I find readers from all parts of the world who understand and connect to my writing. For example, I am fascinated by the fact that there are people who read my work in Italian or French and connect to it in an immediate, urgent way. In contrast, there are people who are Indian, live in India, and cannot find a way to connect to what I write. What I am trying to explain here is that an empathetic reader is not necessarily limited to one’s own country or culture.