Nandini Nayar
Shashi Deshpande: An Interview
Moving On (2004) is Shashi Deshpande’s latest book. Always eagerly awaited, her books seldom disappoint her readers. Using the structure of a domestic novel Deshpande explores the private lives of women, while also situating these private lives in public contexts. She does this with consummate skill that strikes an instant chord. The ease with which Deshpande presents a voyeuristic peek into the lives of ordinary men and women makes her a revered institution in India where she lives and in the larger world of literature. Deshpande, who began her career as a journalist, has also authored four books for children, and here Nandini Nayar talks to her about them.
NN. You wrote your first book A Summer Adventure in 1978, at a time when there was no real “Indian” writing for children. Was there any special reason that made you decide on the adventure story format for your first book for children?
SD. Actually I don’t think I sat down and made any conscious decisions. I only remember that, seeing my sons read Enid Blyton, I thought to myself, `Why don’t I write something which comes out of our life here?’ Not that I thought reading Enid Blyton was bad or wrong. I only felt that there were things in the book far removed from the understanding or the experiences of the kids here. And I also felt I wanted to write about my own free and happy childhood in a small town and that it would interest children. We had a wonderful time as children in Dharwad where our father was teaching in a college; we were wonderfully free, able to go about everywhere – which would have been impossible in a big city. Which is why we did have our own adventures, some real, some we made up. (Not influenced by Enid Blyton, I have to add, for I read her only with my own children.) All these things came back to me and converged into the writing of A Summer Adventure. A lot of nostalgia has gone into the book.
NN. The family is central to all your books for adults. In fact most of the action is set within a family and usually involves the power equations that split or keep a family together. But in your books for children the adult-family is peripheral. In A Summer Adventure the parents are largely ignorant of what the children are going on. This is true of the other two books too. Once the children have settled down, the adult family fades into the background and the children are on their own, making decisions, laying traps and outlining dangerous plans. Would you like to comment on this feature?
SD. I guess this is a part of writing for children, for they are the protagonists, the heroes and one cannot have them taking instructions from adults, from parents, as happens in real life. Also, one enters the world of make-believe when writing such books and in this make-believe world, the children become the ones who control their own day to day lives. To bring parents into the picture would mean making it impossible for children to do most of the things they do in the books. And, as I said, in my own childhood, we children were in fact unfettered by adults. Most of the time, we were on our own. Or rather, the most real parts of our lives were when we were on our own, in our own world. Parents provided the comfort, the security of home, of being there when and where we wanted them to be – which is the kind of world I created in my books.
NN. All your books for adults focus on problems of women and you have been consistently acclaimed for the insights you offer into the minds of women, as also for the hope your stories radiate. But all four of your children’s books are unashamedly boy-centric. Did this have anything to do with the fact that you wrote these books for your sons?
SD. This is something I became conscious of after I wrote my first book. In all the books I had read, the boys had always been the leaders, the more adventurous souls. Which is the way I saw it when I started writing. (In spite of the fact that in real life, we girls were on our own and never needed a boy around to give us any kind of support!) I did try in the next three books to correct this picture. Especially in The Narayanpur Incident, I made a very conscious effort to set this gender bias right. But there is also the realistic situation to be taken into account that girls, specially in villages, were more confined to their female roles and therefore it was difficult for them to be leaders. However, I hope I have given a slightly different picture through the children’s mother and Manju. And of course there are the college girls who are leaders of the struggle. This I got from real life.
NN. Your characterizations of the girl characters are amazingly real. Minu comes across as a spirited girl who recognizes the need to challenge the boys and their assumptions of superiority. In this she is ably supported by the minor girl characters like Padma and Roopa. Both of these girls, as also Manju, come across as sensible, spunky girls. However, it is the boys who get to do all the interesting stuff. I realize that you were probably doing this in keeping with the times, but since it was fiction anyway, didn’t you ever get tempted to write a totally girl-centric children’s book?
SD. I would have loved to do such a book and, perhaps, I would have if I had gone on writing. Don’t forget that the books came out more than twenty years ago and the first was written nearly twenty-five years back. It was not easy to think the way we do now. The attitudes of those times were different and my own feminism came to me through the years, through my own writing. I am sure if I had gone on, I would have written quite different books.
NN. Indian history, as represented in school textbooks, focuses on the freedom struggle in the large cities of India, and features only the well known freedom fighters. The Narayanpur Incident, on the other hand, is all about a localized struggle in a small village in India. would you like to comment on this interesting divergence from standard historiography?
SD. This came out of my access to a certain episode in the history of the freedom struggle in Karnataka, as I have explained in my introduction to The Narayanpur Incident. I read about this incident in the papers I got from my father’s collection of documents about the Quit India Movement in this part of the country and I thought it would make a wonderful adventure story for children. Some of the things in the book really happened, but the characters and many of the events are made up.
NN. The Only Witness is the only one of your four books to be set in a city. The other books – especially The Hidden Treasure - glorify the joys of a rural life. Was this something that you did consciously
SD. The rural background came out of my own exposure to a village after my marriage. My husband comes from a landed family and after marriage I visited their village where they had their ancestral home and most of their lands. I had lived in a District town, Dharwad, and then in Bombay. This village life was something new to me and I was totally fascinated. When I thought of writing my second book, it made itself the locale of my story. I must say I enjoyed creating the village very much, which is partly my husband’s village and partly my own creation. `Kaka’ was inspired by my husband’s older brother who was living on the lands and was a progressive farmer.
NN. In A Summer Adventure you have restrained yourself from using any vernacular/local words. You were writing these books for an Indian audience, one that came from a middle class English-educated background. But such children, who despite their familiarity and ease with English, were often also comfortable with their mother tongues. As a reader of Indian fiction for children, there were times during my childhood when I felt twice removed from the texts I was reading even though they were by Indian writers. The fact that Indian children, with familiar recognizable names were doing unbelievable things and speaking a foreign language, including the jokes and wisecracks, made the book seem doubly distant. Do you think the lack of words from the vernacular added to the appeal of the books or detracted from it?
SD. I don’t really know whether the lack of words from our own language added to the appeal of the books or not. I must add again that these books were written at a time when things were very different, even language-wise. It took time for Indian writers to realise that they could use their own language-words occasionally with comfort and without the need to gloss them. I guess this began with Rushdie’s Midnights Children. I myself find that if I look back at my adult books today, there is a perceptible change in the language. I have never used Indians words or 'Indianisms’ deliberately, but if an Indian words comes comfortably into the text, I let it in and don’t feel the need to explain it, either. As I said earlier, if I had gone on writing books for children, I am sure there would have been many changes in them, whether in ideology or language or format.
NN. The Hidden Treasure, your next book, had several words from the local language in it. It is obvious that you had made a transition. How easy or difficult was this transition and how did you do it?
SD. Though I am not sure I remember the process exactly – it was so long ago - I think, it came naturally since this book was in a village and English would have been much less a part of the lives of people there.
NN. What is your opinion of the Indian brand of English that goes under the name of ‘Indian English’. Do you think using this country-specific adaptation of a foreign language will make it easier for Indian children to relate to the books?
SD. Deliberately creating a language and calling it `Indian English’ is not something I am happy with. Language evolves very naturally and we Indians have done much to bend English to our own uses. If one uses language that way, it’s fine. But as far as children are concerned, I think what they would feel most comfortable with is simplicity and honesty. I mean, if the writer just writes the way she/he feels right, without thinking of whether or not it will appeal to a larger audience, the thing would work much better. I am very jealous of the rights of a language to be used with respect and therefore any deliberate distortion does not work – at least in my view. Books will work only when there is a combination of various factors; language is a part, an important part of it, but it has to be something that is unobtrusive and a means of conveying what the writer is saying. No child wants to take special note of the language. It’s positive qualities should be invisible.
NN. Indian fiction for children, right from the Panchatantra/Jataka stories, has always linked to a ‘moral’. Each story illustrates a point and is seen as an opportunity to ‘teach’ children. Writing against this background, how did you resist the urge to be ‘moralistic’ and write only fun books?
SD. Well, I guess since I was writing books which I hoped children would enjoy, the idea of doing some heavy sermonising could never have been part of it. Also, being the kind of person I am, one who hates to be told what to do, who would consciously resist anything told to me, I could not do the same thing to others.
NN. The popularity of the Harry Potter books has resulted in a reawakening of interest in the area of children’s fiction. Indian children, like their counterparts around the world, have been dazzled by the magic of these books. Would you like to comment on the publishing sensation of the Potter books? And what it means to the area of children’s literature?
SD. While I am delighted that Harry Potter has made children take more interest in reading, I feel very sad that this book seems to make others quite invisible. There are so many wonderful books for children, as good or even better than Harry Potter. (Personally I am not a great admirer of the books, though watching my grandson’s response to the books, I admit there is something for children there.) A lot of the success of these books has come out of media hype. Imagine Treasure Island (one of the finest books for children, I think) or Alice in Wonderland – they were just read by generations. They didn’t need the media to plant stories about the book having been just begun by the author, of its nearing completion, that some character was going to die in the next book, guess which one? etc, etc. So, like I said I welcome fresh interest in reading, but feel sad that it has to be orchestrated this way with a huge economic motive behind it. I think there is nothing like children discovering their own books. That is an adventure indeed. And these books are with you for life. I read the What Katy Did books when young and can still enjoy them!