Mistress of tales

Strong women characters have been an important part of Chitra Banerjee Devakaruni’s books. In an interview with Shoma A. Chatterji, she talks about her life as an Indian writer settled in the US and her work. Excerpts:

Chitra Banerjee Devakaruni’s work is widely known in the literary circle, having been published in over 50 magazines, including the Atlantic Monthly and The New Yorker, and being included in over 50 anthologies. Her fiction has been translated into 13 languages, including Dutch, Hebrew and Japanese. Two of her works, The Mistress of Spices and Sister of My Heart, have been made into films by Gurinder Chadha and Paul Berges and Suhasini Mani Ratnam, respectively, as a telefilm.

I teach creative writing at the University of Houston. The course is ranked second in the USA in any creative writing programme. I also serve on the board of non-profit organisations like Maitri in the San Francisco Bay Area and Daya in Houston. Both organisations help South Asian and South Asian American women who find themselves in abusive or domestic violence situations.

Writing, teaching and working with these women fulfils me in different ways. It’s all about juggling my time that becomes easier with Murthy, my husband, who despite having a demanding job in the corporate world, is extremely supportive. So far as my work with troubled women goes, I am very clear that none of the women’s issues enter directly into my writing because I respect their confidentiality. Some ideas and impressions do carry over into my writing in an indirect way though.

Aishwarya Rai and Anupam Kher in a still from The Mistress of Spices based on Devakaruni’s book of the same name

You can call it natural. It’s an interesting choice because I am deeply concerned about how immigration has changed me as a person and how it has changed other women similarly placed. When I shifted from San Francisco Bay to Houston, I lost direct touch with Maitri and began to connect with Daya. I discovered that domestic violence was quite widespread all over the US within the immigrant community, though the Indian context is not reported much. I am happy that we have been effective with support in different ways such as marital counseling, job training for those who need it, financial support for those who are forced to walk out, scholarships for deserving women and most importantly, networking with other community organisations. Earlier, we faced a lot of opposition from the local community. But we explained that we were only trying to lend women in distress a helping hand and do not intend to break families. Now, they understand and even help.

I liked the stories in the Mahabharata that my grandfather narrated to me when I was a kid. I have been thinking about this epic for a long time. I realised that the focus is entirely on the men. The men were in public action, the men handled weapons and fought wars, took political decisions while the women remained in the background, their stories untold. I was not a writer then but I wanted to turn it around with Panchali (Draupadi) as the protagonist, giving her a voice to narrate the same stories from her point of view. I had always been very interested in her character. She is a strong woman with a mind of her own. She is not prepared to tolerate abuse and humiliation under any circumstances and rises in attack. I worked at the novel for four long years. The main research material came from my mother who would send books from Kolkata. The university library was another source and Internet research is very helpful these days. I spoke to scholars who specialised on South Asia. The novel is based on scholarly texts, popular texts and novels that related to the epic in some way or another. The novel is a follow-up of my interest in myths and folklore but it also a real departure because I wanted to do something different.

Overall, I am satisfied. The imagined book, I have discovered, is always more than the real one. For me, that becomes an impetus for the next book. I never look back on a book I have already done. I write in the mornings twice a week when I go straight to my writing desk. The flow is not always there but that is just a part of the entire work that makes a writer’s life. Much of my professional time is taken up by my teaching schedules. I teach around 25 to 30 students doing their Masters, or their doctoral studies in creative writing.

I am thinking about four new novels at the same time. Then I will zero in on one and take it from there. Then, filmmaker Jagmohan Mundra has bought the film rights of a short story that was part of my collection Arranged Marriage. He has chosen The Maid Servant’s Story and I am collaborating with him on the script. —TWF

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