Silicon saga
Chetna Keer Banerjee

Author Usha K.R. makes India’s Silicon Valley the backdrop of her new novel, Monkey-man

CITY-centric works of fiction are few and far between. Usha K. R’s Monkey-man is one such book that uses Bengaluru as the backdrop but goes beyond its IT image to bring alive worlds lost within the folds of the fast and furious metropolis. Here, she shares how the past and present coalesce to create this new novel:

I did not consciously set out to sentimentalise the past or decry modernity. The novel reflects the changes in Bangalore through the lives of the characters, in the way that they have dealt with the imperceptible changes in their environment. In this process, the city comes through as a space of rapid decay as well as new opportunity.

Coming to the titular protagonist, how did you conceive the idea of a Monkey-man and what is it a metaphor for?

My ideas for this novel started coming together around the year 2000 and after. (In fact, at one time I was thinking seriously about two novels – my previous one, A Girl and a River, and this one, Monkey-man.) The changes wrought by globalisation and privatisation had been playing out through the 1980s and 90s, challenging the Nehruvian era ideals of self-sufficiency, frugality, discretion and economy. There was more money, more wealth in evidence. The Internet had shrunk the world—think what email did. On a more concrete level, at this time, there were several newspaper reports of strange beast-like creatures, even UFOs being sighted all over the country – the Delhi monkey-man made a big splash. This mystery was never satisfactorily resolved. So, I thought to myself, that rapid change in people’s lives, in the rhythm of whole societies and cities could well have an inexplicable spin-off, some kind of physical manifestation, and this creature could be it. Thus, was born my ‘monkey-man’.

It is multi-layered in that I had to integrate realistic stories of four characters over a span of about 40 years, with markers of a changing city and with an unreal creature and make the whole thing plausible. To achieve that, I had to think of a structure that would blend the realistic and fantastic elements and convince the reader about the trajectory of the novel.

While the novel is specific to Bangalore, it reflects on changes that have taken place all over India. In fact, in many cities in the world, globalisation has been, as the word suggests, a global phenomenon. Though the effects may have played out differently in different societies, economies and cities, there is a common universal core that increasing privatisation, interdependence of economies and communication technologies have effected. And the appeal of fiction lies in being able to see the universal in the local.

I think that of all Indian cities, the pace of change has been the fastest and most obvious in Bangalore, which changed from a sleepy ‘pensioner’s paradise,’ with people trundling about on bicycles and buses, to the glitzy ‘Silicon Valley’ with its posh penthouse flats and SUVs, and IT companies bringing in a new wave of migrants, in the space of 10 years. The spin-offs of these changes provide fertile ground for a writer of fiction and, unlike the other Indian metros, Bangalore is just being examined now.

My readings so far have elicited a good response. What a writer wants is serious engagement from a reader or worthwhile reviewer, and not just praise or offhand dismissal.

Monkey-man is my fourth novel and I can see myself growing with each one. My first two novels Sojourn and The Chosen had a straightforward linear narration; ‘with The Chosen I could see that my characters had grown more complex. A Girl and a River was a historical novel set in the Independence movement, which had two narrative strands, the past and the present interweaving, one strand narrated in the first person and the other in the third. With Monkey-man, I had both realistic and fantastic elements, which had to mingle convincingly. Also, I knew that the pace had to be much faster though I was telling the stories of four people, their points of intercrossing had to be light and they had to connect with the mysterious creature – I had to provide enough realistic ballast to make the fantasy creature fly. I think as writers write more, they grow more confident of their readers and are willing to take risks.

I wrote the book in 2007-2008. The actual writing took me about six months but I had been thinking about it since 2000.

I worked on two books almost simultaneously, so right now I haven’t started on anything. As for working in another genre, it has to grow organically from your work, it is not possible to graft another mode artificially on to your writing. But with Monkey-man I realised that different novels suggest themselves to you differently and you have to be open to influences.

While there are various sources of information now, and there is serious competition for the printed book, I think the reading habit will not go away. If anything, one medium will feed into another — the Internet into print — and people will be reading more, but in different media.

Blogs are becoming more streamlined and sophisticated than when they first began, and they provide the space for a lengthier and more serious engagement with writing, than newspapers and magazines. But still, writing is a private occupation and it’s difficult for old school writers to get used to the openness and off-the-cuff responses that blogs promote. I think universities, schools and colleges must try to integrate this vast output of writing more formally into their courses and there should be more interaction between writers and educational institutions and academia.

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