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When Bidisha took herself off to Venice for a year, she thought a spell in the city would make writing her third novel, Venetian Masters, a breeze. But her stay in La Serenissima was different, reports Suzi Feay
So whatever did happen to Bidisha, the beautifully belligerent, fiercely intelligent, mono-monikered teenage author who burst brashly on to the literary scene with Seahorses, the novel she’d written at the age of just 16? Her latest book, Venetian Masters is a meditation on that most haunting and evocative of places, La Serenissima: Venice. Like everybody who writes about the city, she talks about uncovering the "real" Venice, but at least she has a better claim than most. She had the best entr`E9e possible into secretive Venetian society: an imposing Grand Canal address and a friendship with a member of a venerable, old-money family. Though she later moved out of their grand palazzo, she carried on socialising with and observing Venetians and provides a fascinating glimpse into a largely hidden world.
"Venetian Masters was absolutely accidental. It was sod’s law that it was the diary I wrote effortlessly that turned into the book." It was, she says, "a beautiful lesson to learn". "Yes, my friends knew I was writing a diary every day because I asked them a few things. I don’t think the parental duo knew and I hope they don’t find out... I’m hoping their arrogance is such that they wouldn’t even deign to read a book by me. And it hasn’t come out in Italian." "It was painful – those final days when I was staying with Stefania’s parents and Lucrezia would ask a very simple question: would you like some wine? Half an hour later I was still slowly decoding every nuance of her voice. Is it good to have the wine or is it bad? If I have the wine, do I have to pay for it, or is it that they’re making a gesture to me to welcome me into the family? Or is it that they don’t want me to have the wine? And when I complimented the food, Lucrezia would scowl, because that wasn’t my place. It meant I was treating her like the cook." Bidisha eventually left Venice under the stormcloud of their disapproval, but what, I ask, had she actually done wrong? She heaves a sigh at the pettiness of it all. "I think they thought when I went back to stay at the apartment, I should pay rent. The joke is that whenever I tried to pay rent, because they were so unable to talk about money, they waved me away even though it was perfectly obvious that that was what they wanted. That’s what makes them so much like characters in a Henry James novel. Surely it wasn’t just about the money? But the pain was worth it because of the comic aspects. When you write about something, you redeem it. It wasn’t funny at the time. I remember ringing my mum and saying, ‘Lucrezia is downstairs being really strange, and I can feel the hate vibes emanating up!’ But then when I wrote about it, I thought, come on, this is hilarious! It was such an insight into a particular kind of rich family that exists all over the world. Rich families are the sa me in India, I know that." But if the heights of society proved a disillusionment, street life was little better. A fanatical runner, Bidisha regularly pounded the pavements, an unfamiliar sight to the "don’t stress, never break a sweat" Venetians. "Oh my God, I got sexually harassed six or seven times a day. The sexual harassment, and the racial harassment that I witnessed, were endemic. It happened to me because I was small and alone and young, but that doesn’t excuse the absolutely compulsive nature of it, to the point where it was as though the sexual harassers had an illness. It was hideous and there was nothing admiring about it. We’re not talking about Italian chivalry or gallantry. It comes from hatred." With her lightly coloured skin, couldn’t she pass as Italian, I ask. Bidisha grins. "In summer I could pass, but not in winter. After about the middle of October they all magically turn milky-pale again, and I stuck out." She was hampered at the beginning by having very little knowledge of Italian. For all the grief and aggro, though, Venice changed her and she still misses it. "I came back different and a lot more able to let things ride. It was down to being forced into a slower pace of life. It’s not that I went with great expectations and was disappointed, it’s just that the picture I had was made more complex. Today was so sunny and so cold that it reminded me of Venice and I got a pang. That crispness and brightness that makes you want to just sit outside and drink coffee. It sounds shallow, but actually it’s the way to live and calm your own mind. OK, if you’ve done it for 60 years, you’ve probably wasted your life... but in Venice I realised that I was so focused on my career that I had hung myself with my own rope." — By arrangement with The Independent
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Stuck in a creative
impasse, she met "Stefania" (not her real name, for reasons
which become obvious) while studying for a Masters degree in London.
The blonde Venetian was a fish out of water, and the pair became fast
friends as Bidisha helped her explore and enjoy the city. Struggling
to write a follow-up novel, she eventually succumbed to Stefania’s
urgings and visited Venice, staying at the family’s luxurious
palazzo opposite San Eustachio on the Grand Canal. Utterly smitten,
and realising Venice would make the perfect, quiet place to live while
polishing her third novel, she returned, rented a flat and set to
work. But nothing turned out exactly as she expected. For a start, Venetian
Masters is not that novel. Also, Stefania’s grand and gracious
mother and father, initially so welcoming, gradually turned against
her in the funniest and most excruciating scenes in the book.