Patiala as peg
Humra Quraishi

Reema Moudgil’s new novel, Perfect Eight, is a tribute to
small-town India, especially her native Patiala city

Journalist-writer-artist Reema Moudgil grew up in Patiala and now lives in Bangalore. She has been working as a journalist since 1994. She also worked as an RJ with World Space and was represented by her paintings at a multi-media show in New York in November last. She also edited Chicken Soup for the Indian Woman's Soul ...

Perfect Eight (Tranquebar) is Reema’s debut novel. And it takes you on a journey spread over several decades, across varied locales, focussing on many upheavals, happenings, settings and trends ...

Excerpts from an interview:

Actually, the seed was there, wiggling to sprout for a long time. I had heard stories of the Partition from my nani, my mother and personally, it remains in my heart as possibly the definitive tragedy India has faced because I really wonder at the logic of hacking a country in two halves so that it can become a whole. It was not just a physical hacking, but an emotional one and we have not been whole since then and yes, there are mini-Partitions happening today in every mohalla, every city, every state over language, religion, caste, sub-castes. I have seen terrorism in Punjab from close quarters and so the question was, where and when does this end because there will be a time when there will be nothing left to divide and everyone will be in a minority. But nothing came from a plan. I just wrote what came to me first and the rest emerged from that. My attempt was not to write a blatantly political book, but to see how political tragedies like the Partition, riots etc affect individual lives. I believe that displacement and violence create a ripple effect on families and affect many generations.

Are there particular patches from your own life webbed in this story?

The geography in the book is mine, not the history. I am not Ira and this is not my story. My mom did not lose her family in Lahore, she came to India with her parents and siblings.I have lived in Patiala, in Bengaluru, in Missamari.Ambrosa is a fictitious place spun out of all the places in Himachal I have been to as a kid. Papu is, however, a lot like my father. Like many nameless, faceless Indians, he lived the idea of secularism till the day he died. Respecting all faiths was not an ideology for him but a way of life. The eve teasing and the bus assault really happened to me but they do not define the book and are just episodes.

Not really, because it was not my intention to weave it all in to make a political statement. I have looked at these things from the perspective of a family and every episode that you mention was as organic as the personal story of Ira and Ma.

I lived mostly in Patiala and it is a beautiful city brimming with a culture and a way of life that is not borrowed from shopping malls. It has real warmth, individuality and an amazingly robust, naturally healthy belief in secularism, which goes beyond pontificating. I feel intellectuals who write long essays on what is wrong with India should live in small towns to see what is right. It is the ordinary Indian who makes this country work despite corruption, political manipulation and injustices like the 1984 riots and counting. The book is my tribute to that India and especially to Patiala, which will always be home no matter where I go.

I just feel that if you are a writer, you will react to everything. It is your destiny to feel everything, the good and the bad and you can't escape it. And when you feel something strongly enough, you will write about it.

Fiction cannot exist in a vacuum. It is the stuff of life and as a writer, humanity and its concerns provoke and sadden and excite me. I cannot write about vampires and imaginary worlds though I really admire writers who have the imagination to do that.

This is a sign of a larger affliction where everyone thinks that their political, religious, cultural, moral beliefs are better than those of others. This is a country where parents kill their kids for 'honour' and women are raped and killed for saying 'NO,' so books being burnt should not come as a surprise. I also have an issue with many enlightened, ideological bullies in the media who wag their fingers and their pens in the face of the nation and create more divisions than solutions.

No, I am never going to pretend while writing that it is my job as a writer to question the idea of India. I think the idea of India is one of assimilation and inclusion and our architecture, food, language, music, literature beautifully sums up that harmony. My book is about faith in that India where a man who reads Bhagwadagita brings up his daughter on Faiz and Sahir and where a Hindu and a Muslim can build a life together against all odds and these are not romantic, naive ideas. I have seen this India. A writer's job is not just to negate but to create hope. Yes, there are faultlines in Kashmir, in the North-East, in the way tragedies like 1984 riots and the riots in Gujarat have been handled. No one is addressing the plight of Kashmiri Pandits and the agony and frustration of Kashmiri mothers who have lost their kids to stray bullets and kids who have lost all faith in democracy and face the army with stones and hopeless anger. But this is the failure of the political systems governing the country. These are not the failures of ordinary Indians who would rather go each day to work than start a riot.

I have been brought up on the Bronte sisters, Margaret Mitchell, Hardy, Colleen McCullough, Du Maurier, George Eliot, Ayn Rand and the one thing I have learnt from them is to tell a story like you were living it and to never write without conviction.

There are stories to be told and am waiting for them to haunt me to a point where it would be impossible to ignore them.

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