Sunday, November 17, 2002		Interview

Meet the author
“India has much more variety than I have seen anywhere else”

ROSWITHA Joshi was born in Hamburg after World War II. Though she spent her formative years in Germany but came to India, about three decades back, when she married Jagdish Joshi who was doing his PhD in Economics at Hamburg University. The couple returned to India and Roswitha took up a job in the German Embassy where she worked for 25 years, but, then decided to quit a full-time job to take to writing, photography and painting. Life Is Peculiar (UBS) is her first book. It was recently launched in New Delhi, and she is already ready with her second book, On The Rocks which centres around relationships.

Humra Quraishi met her for an interview. Excerpts:

I have not written about what it was like to live the early years of my life in post-World War II Germany because for me this would mean stepping into my German past, instead of moving forwards and acquainting myself with my Indian present. It would also mean extensive soul-searching and researching, apart from the act of writing it in a way which would be moving and meaningful today. I have shied away from it also because it would probably change my life and my personality considerably, as I might relive periods which were very painful for me and those close to me. However, at some stage, I intend to write about those times in a fictionalised way.

In the same context, how do you view the rather turbulent, communally charged happenings in present-day India. Many view it as similar to the happenings in pre-Nazi Germany.

On account of my early memories I feel a lot of empathy for people who are economically or otherwise deprived, and/or suffer on account of being located in a place which puts them in between powers who, on the one hand, demand their loyalty and on the other, doubt it. My paternal family originated from an area called Silesia, which is now a province of Poland, but at times in history was also German. The people who lived there and regarded themselves as Germans had to constantly prove their loyalty to Germany and, thus, often became "extra-nationalistic".

I wrote about incidents which I perceived as peculiar from the very beginning. I restricted myself, however, to narrating them in German in letters to family members and friends in Germany. They encouraged me to get them published. Since I wanted them to be published in India, which had become my home, I first had to improve my English. I did so by reading a lot and even acquired a translator’s diploma from Hamburg as an external student. The fact that I studied Latin and Greek at school also helped me in the process. The largeness of the Indian theatre is so obvious you cannot avoid noticing it if you move through life with open eyes and an open mind. In the literal sense I remember my father standing in front of the Red Fort in Delhi exclaiming with childlike wonder: "And I thought the castles at the Rhine were big!" If you consider the sheer variety of people, their ways of expressing themselves, stages of development, the abundance of designs and patterns, food, landscapes, whatsoever in India, it is so much more than what I have seen anywhere else.

I have a keen desire to enjoy life. This might be born out of a strong consciousness that death and destruction might be lurking just around the corner. That is probably why I look for the jewel, even if it lies in a dustbin. I also feel that actual life is mostly mundane and that only people’s desire to aggrandise themselves by aggrandising their life and its players creates the illusion that it is otherwise.

My life has been unconventional in the sense that I have always felt drawn to the ‘otherness’. And this otherness provided my life with the spice which convert a plain fare into a delicious meal. I have also led a conventional life in the sense that I married, brought up two bright children and held a full-time job for 25 years. I have always tried to harmonise the conventional with the unconventional.

I have never been tempted to move back to Germany on a permanent basis, but I visit more often now to give company to my parents in their old age. For me personally, life has become less tough during the last years. On the one hand my family responsibilities are less, on the other I quit my job to have more time to move and write. I also do not agree that life has become tougher in Delhi. I vividly remember times when power cuts were more, roads worse, cars rickety, food supplies very basic, and there were no freezers, air-conditioners, washing-machines, etc. and I moved around on foot or by three-wheelers. What bugs me now, however, is that, due to distance and traffic density, it has become more and more nerve-wrecking and time consuming to visit friends or cultural events in the evening. Having spent my youth in a cold country, I appreciate the warmth, the blue sky, even the heat of Delhi to an extent.

I have lost my colour-consciousness long ago. Neither do I regard myself as "white", nor others as dark. For me everybody is first and foremost a human being. To be German helped me get employment in the German Embassy, but it also prevented me from being eligible for other assignments. After I opted for writing, I decided to focus on writing for an Indian audience, since my own "otherness" seems to be of interest here. I was often stunned at the positive feedback I received.

I was very young when I was confronted with all those negative reports about India my parents and their friends had somehow managed to collect. My knowledge was limited, my desire to learn unlimited. I just refused to believe that a land could be that bad if so many people lived there and even managed to multiply at a tremendous rate. In my imagination the really bad places would be those where life could not be sustained. In fact, my curiosity was tickled by those reports to such an extent that I just had to come over to find out myself. My second book On the Rocks deals with various relationships which had taken an odd turn. I try to step into the shoes of all protagonists and imagine how they might have got involved in the events and developments life dished out to them.