interview
‘Ghettoism can be dangerous’

Divakaruni’s first book of short stories Arranged Marriage won the 1996 American Book Award

One of the best-known names in the contemporary Indian writing in English, US-based Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni is also the founder of Maitri, a support service for South Asian women on the West Coast. A prize-winning writer and teacher at Houston University, Divakaruni, she introduced her latest book Queen of Dreams recently in Kolkata. In an interview to Ranjita Biswas, she says that the trauma and the triumphs of living in an alien land, combined with her own roots in Bengal, help her weave magic realism into her works, some of which are autobiographical. Excerpts.

I started putting down my thoughts on paper out of loneliness while I was studying in America. I was very close to my grandfather and when he died, I couldn’t visit home. I started scribbling those thoughts. Later, when I was volunteering for a shelter home in California, I came across married women from the subcontinent in lonely and traumatised situations. I remember an Indian woman who initially refused to talk but then showed her back, which was lacerated with beatings by her husband. Her cry of helplessness haunted me: ‘Who cares for me? I have to go back to my husband.’ She did go back, never leaving her name or phone number, and I never met her again. These experiences churned within me and books like Arranged Marriage came out of these experiences.

Don’t you feel such experiences give just the woman’s point of view and could make you portray one-sided characters?

As a writer I have to show complexities. Through my writings I hope to bring out people in different situations and not just one-dimensional beings. And it’s not that women are not perpetrators. In my book Sister of My Heart, it’s the mother-in-law who creates all sorts of trouble.

Definitely. Things are changing. There are also many more support groups, and more networking.

How do organisations like yours support abused women?
There are safe houses, which are out of bounds for perpetrators. The lawmakers also help us when we bring these cases to their notice. We network to move the woman to another location. For example, we may contact Apne Ghar, another support group in Chicago. We also give emergency money to her, help her to get enrolled in a course or school if she wants to, or find a job. And don’t think domestic violence is confined to Asian women only; there are Chinese, Japanese, in fact, women from all regions asking for help.

Now we have formed the ‘Asians against Domestic Violence’ organisation for better coordination and to bring all Asian women in distress under one umbrella.

Do you have male members in the organisation?

Yes, we do have male members. They help us with administrative work, raising funds, etc. But for contacting women or counselling them, only women are in charge.

You are now taking up characters from the Mahabharata, for your next story.

I have always been fascinated by the epic, the characters, and the whole gamut of emotions. It’s going to be a story narrated through Draupadi’s eyes, told in the first person. I also want to examine other women characters, like Kunti’s, for example.

Are you apprehensive that your bestseller The Mistress of Spices might lose its flavour in its adaptation for Gurinder Chadha’s film? Her attempt at Bollywoodising Pride and Prejudice has largely been panned.
I’m not apprehensive. I realise that a novel and a film are different mediums. As artistes, we need to respect other artistes. It also needs a lot of courage to take risks to experiment and interpret known literary works.

Have you had a say in the script?

Yes, I am a consultant for the screenplay. But as one artiste to another, I want to give due respect to her and don’t want to interfere.

You have lived in the US for more than two decades or so, do you still feel like an outsider?
It’s not as simple as that. America is a country formed by diverse communities from different countries. Overall, the country is very hospitable and gives opportunities to grow. Saying that, I’d also say I’m not a ‘white’ immigrant; a South Asian’s experience is different than say a European immigrant’s. Which is not necessarily a bad thing. At least as a writer I can see the differences and draw on the experience to put into my work.

At the same time there’s quite lot of ghettoisation. Isn’t it important to assimilate to the local culture?

Ghettoisation is dangerous. It’s important to be in the mainstream when one decides to make a foreign country one’s own. Otherwise, justifiably perhaps, they would say, oh, you’ve only come to make money. This also leads to distrust. Living in another country is such an opportunity to learn, at least it has been for me. At the same time, it doesn’t mean you have to forget about your cultural roots. The two can co-exist. It’s not easy, especially in times of conflict. In my latest work Queen of Dreams I reflect on the effect of 9/11 on the minority community. We saw many from the Sikh community being attacked who had made the US their home.

Most diaspora films, which reflect the dilemma of immigrants, seem so clichéd.

The human story is the same, isn’t it? The same concerns, the same things that make people happy, or sad. As somebody said, there are only two things for the writer to write on — love and death. The artiste’s job is to present these same concerns in individual ways. It’s complicated and tough. Being an artiste, I am less critical today because I know how difficult it is. — TWF

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