The Call of the Sea

Sea, beach, sand and the blinding sunlight can suddenly feel like a tomb, when death smiles at you and beckons you in its cosy embrace - I had this experience.

 

I had woken up at nine. I am on holidays in Bibione near the sea in north-east part of Italy, so there is nothing strange about waking up at nine. And it was a Saturday morning. But I have always insisted that I am incapable of sleeping till late and that I must go to bed at ten and wake up at five in the morning. This is my natural rhythm of life, I say.

Perhaps, over the past few years, my sleeping and waking hours depend upon my computer and internet? Early morning is the time for reading emails, writing blogs, reading on internet. And, here in Bibione I have no internet, so I don’t have any incentive to wake up earlier.

After a lazy coffee and cereals, I put on my swimming costume and a t-shirt, Nadia was wearing her two piece swim suit and off we went to the coast. It takes about ten minutes to reach the seaside and every day we follow the same routine - a walk towards the light house of Bibione and back to the beach for a swim, before coming back home for lunch and afternoon siesta.

Yesterday was no different. It is liberating to wear swim suits and walk in the city centre where other persons are more or less in the same state of undress. The sky was bright blue and there was not even a tiniest bit of cloud floating up there. But it was not hot, there was a nice cool breeze.

It was almost 10.30 when we had started from home and by the time we reached the light house it was almost mid day.

 

I asked Nadia to climb on some rocks in the beginning of the sea, so that I could take her pictures. While I was clicking her pictures, I remember thinking that those pictures were like love letters. Probably all marriages go through this process that starts from love, goes trough a process of friction, discussions, fights and mutual adjustments and then finally finds its groove, where you understand each other and in spite of all the differences, love each other’s company.

In front of the light house, we asked someone to take our picture. Every year, in front of the light house, we ask someone to take our picture. Looking at these pictures from the past 26 years, I can see how age has been changing us.

 

 

 
As we walked back, I remember that we looked at a family with a dog that was walking towards us and we talked about the absolutely cuddly dog. And it was almost as an afterthought, when I realised that the lady in the group was topless. How quickly you get used to the human bodies, and why do fundamentalists of different religions make such a hoo-ha about nude female bodies, I had thought.

Back at the beach, it was time to go for the swim. The water was slightly cold and absolutely transparent. Putting the head under the water, I felt that I was floating in the beautiful green coloured world. I could see Nadia swimming close by but there were not many other persons swimming at that time. Probably people were going back for lunch since it must have been around 1 PM.

 
I was floating in the water, when I heard Nadia call me. “Don’t go near the boulders, they are sharp and cut you”, she called. I had drifted close to the boulders. I dived in and swam away from the boulders. As I came up for air, I saw that I had not moved away but rather I had become a little closer to the boulders. I tried to feel the ground with my feet but it was too deep and I couldn’t touch the ground. I could feel the strong current pushing me towards the boulders, so I tried again, making big powerful strokes to move away. Again, as I raised up my head from water, I saw that I had made little headway. Suddenly I panicked. I could feel the sea as something living, surrounding me from all sides and pulling me inside.

Nadia was swimming towards me and I told her to stay away and not to come closer in that strong current. “Go towards the boulders, let the current take you, go the other side of the boulders”, she cried, sensing my panic. I followed her advice, going towards the boulders and slowly got up on a boulder just underneath the water surface. The surface of the boulder was full of sharp cutting edges but I did manage to go over it. Nadia on the other hand, had gone beyond the tip of the boulders and passed to the other side. “This means it can be done and the current is not that bad”, I thought and slowly the panic passed.

After five minutes, when I had got back my breath, I moved gingerly over the boulders underneath the water surface and then dived in, swimming away from them without any problems.

Perhaps I had not been in mortal danger and it was all panic and if I had shouted, life guard would have heard me or other persons swimming not so far would have heard me and would have saved me. But for me, that sensation of being pulled inside the sea, feeling the sea as a living being surrounding me and laughing at me and tempting me to go and loose myself in its wonderful green world, were very real and if Nadia had not been there, perhaps that panic could have ended differently.

Defeating fundamentalism in India

The new issue of Outlook magazine from India has a wonderful essay by the historian and writer Ramachandra Guha about the chances of India to become a superpower.

 

Guha argues that there are a number of factors which will not allow India to become a superpower, including the threat from the violence of extreme left Maoist groups known as Naxalites, the threat of religious fundamentalism especially from Hindu conservatives, lack of a principled party from centre especially in congress party, the large and increasing gap among the rich and the poor. He also argues that perhaps India need not aim for becoming a superpower but try to be a country that makes sure that all of its citizens can live with dignity. 

Guha is a wonderful writer, very easy to read, and logical. He also adds that special point of view of historians that is usually missing from such debates - these debates are usually dominated by economists and financial experts. I also liked that Guha has quoted his teacher Dharma Kumar in his essay. However, there is a part of the essay that provoked some reflections from me. Here is that part:

There is, indeed, a reassertion of religious orthodoxy in all faiths in modern India—among Muslims and Christians as well as Sikhs and Hindus (and even, as it happens, among Jains). It is the illiberal tendencies in all these religions that, at the present juncture, are in the ascendant. The mullahs who abuse Sania Mirza or Taslima Nasreen, and the Sikh hardliners who terrorise the Dera Sacha Sauda, are also wholly opposed to the spirit of the Indian Constitution. But simply by virtue of numbers—Hindus are, after all, more than 80 per cent of India’s population—and their much wider political influence, Hindu bigotry is indisputably the most dangerous of them all.

I feel that religious fundamentalism is one crucial area in which we see a marked deterioration in India over the past couple of decades. Increasingly all religions take rigid stand against any debate and their more conservative members, they increasingly make shrill threats and often attack property and persons to beat them into fearful obedience. 

 

With Globalisation, perhaps it is inevitable that the narrow conservatism of monotheistic religions that insist on only their view of world as dictated by their prophet in their sacred book being the correct way, also infects the Indian way of thinking, that has over millenniums evolved into acceptance of contradictions and different world views, religious views and social norms. Thus today conservative persons from different religions in India are increasingly trying to browbeat everyone into their view of sacred and just.

Attracting bigger numbers of followers is equally important for the power of the religious leaders, while in today's world, new technologies and social changes can make religious affinities weaker and decrease that power. Promoting conservative views to attract specific groups of followers can thus be a deliberate strategy by religious leaders and political parties.

 

Should We Single Out Hindutva and Remain Silent About the Rest? 

However, perhaps we also need to reflect more on the reasons behind the increasing support to Hindutva, about which Guha laments. During my journeys in India, I have been surprised more than once to find persons I knew as reasonable and open minded persons, are increasingly pessimistic about a dialogue with Muslims and expressing at least some support or understanding about Hindu conservatives. They may not condone the violence of Bajrang Dal or Vishwa Hindu Parishad but they perceive that State has given in to the obscurantists from Islam and other religions and that rights of Hindus are being eroded or are being treated unjustly.

There are saner educated, thinking persons who feel that there is a large part of Indian academics, activists, writers, who have double standards, "They are very vocal in denouncing the evils of Hindu bigotry but are silent about bigots from other religions".

Perhaps it is correct that by sheer numbers Hindu bigotry is indeed more dangerous but the strategy of condemning only Hindu fundamentalists, may not be the best way to go about it!

 

I personally feel that fundamentalists and bigots of all religions are same, they have same narrow and fearful way of thinking, fighting against all changes perceived as attacks on traditions, and it does not matter that they are Hindu, Muslims or Christians or Sikhs, or whatever. But every time the State gives into or plays silent spectator, not raising a single finger to stop the attacks on legality and human rights enshrined in the Indian constitution, it creates a vicious circle, where some more persons from that religion get converted to the cause of fundamentalism, as they see that fundamentalism pays. At the same time, persons from other religions feel offended and some of them move towards their own fundamentalisms, while moderate voices of all sides become more fearful and silent.

Every time the State allows a Taslima to be made a prisoner and exiled while her attackers roam free and make death threats in TV and State Assembly, every time the State allows goons to ransack libraries and destroy manuscripts, or threaten a person like M. F. Hussein, India becomes weaker, fundamentalists become more confident and reasonable persons are forced to withdraw in their shells.

Conclusions 

Let me conclude by saying that it is dangerous to single out only the Hindu fundamentalists, and not fight the bigots of all the different religions. Liberals, if they speak out only against Hindus, will help in spreading their message that see, they only criticise our religion, they are happy with Muslim/Christian/Sikh bigots.

 

It will weaken India's Ganga-Jamuni culture and it will increase religious bigotry. In my opinion, we must speak out against all the different kinds of bigots.  

National GLBT Pride 2008 in Bologna

I am back from a long and tiring journey in Mongolia. I still need to sort out hundreds of pictures that I took during this trip and to write a blog-post about it.

 

Back in Bologna, I was right in time for the annual national Gay-Lesbian_Bisexual_Transsexual (GLBT) pride march that was held here today.

 

It was a huge rally and people had come from all over Italy with floats blaring music and showing dances or other body assets, as is usual in LGBTQ events.

 

It was lot of fun and I marched with the parade in the last part, starting from Salara where the Arci-gay and Arci-lesbica of Bologna have their office, up to Piazza 8 Agosto, where the parade concluded. I had asked Nadia to come with me, it is a question of human rights I had told her, but she thought that it was too hot and probably it was going to be too noisy, so finally I went alone.

 

Nadia was right, it was very noisy with loud music and lot of young persons drinking and dancing. There were gay couples and there were lesbian couples. Some even had their children with them. There were also transsexuals and transgender persons. There were sex-workers with red parasols. And there were lot of hetero couples and even persons in wheel-chairs as well.

 

In Piazza 8 Agosto there were speeches by presidents of different LGBTQ organisations. I liked the speech by the President of MIT (Association of Transsexuals and Transgender persons). "Even among the different alternate sexuality identities, we are forgotten and discriminated", she said. I also liked her reference to the often forgotten "human right to orgasm".

 

There were other human rights organisations as well. For example, those talking of immigrants and gypsy (Rom) children. There were some South Asian looking men but I don't know if they were there to express their right to sexuality or only for curiosity. I didn't see any south Asian looking women in the march.

 

 

 

***

Dr Binayak Sen

I am deeply anguished that even after more than a year, a person like Dr Bianayak Sen continues to languish in a jail. Is is unbelievable that a person like him, who has spent his life working with the most marginalised rural groups in Chattisgarh through community health programmes has been labelled a "naxalite courier" and put into jail.

It was in May 2007 that Dr Mira Shiva had told me about it and I thought it was a mistake and that soon, courts will realise that this is only some kind of frame-up or cooked-up charges by persons irritated by Dr Binayak Sen's insistence on truth and human rights for every one including for persons killed in "encounters" and jailed as Naxalites.

 

I am aware that Naxalites say that they are fighting for the poor and oppressed, but in my experience, they are brutally violent and equally oppressive towards all those who do not believe in their ideology.

I personally do not believe in or even accept the Naxalite ideology and I completely reject their violence, yet I thought that what Binayak was doing is the only option for a doctor and should be conduct of all persons who live by their conscience - you have to ask for respect of law and respect of human rights for everyone.

Yet, in spite of knowing that this is a blatant lie, the state continues to insist that Binayak was not really a doctor, he was a Naxalite courier and treats him like a criminal. I hope that the highest authorities in India will take immediate action and free Binayak and ensure that he is given justice.

There is an article about Dr Binayak Sen in recent issue of Outlook. I hope all newspapers and journals will write about him and what he symbolises. If a person like him can be framed, jailed and denied justice, I shudder to think of what happens to common persons in India. The poor and marginalised tribals in India, what hope can they have for justice in India?

After the sunset: Roberto & Sonali story

Note September 2025: This post was originally written in May 2008. Since then I have kept on making changes in it, especially in terms of adding things. Over the years I have continued to collect a lot more information about Sonali-Rossellini story. I have also been in contact with Raja Dasgupta, Sonali's elder son, as well as with some of other persons from their families and friends.

 

I feel that all the books written on this theme are mostly about Roberto Rossellini while Sonali appears as a minor element in them, while her husband Harisadhan is completely missing. I am working on a book that looks at from the point of view of Sonali and her family, aiming to finalise it by 2026. For example, now I am aware that to be a child growing up in the Rossellini household was traumatic and most children of Roberto with his different women, including Sonali's children, had difficult lives.

 

For my book, I am looking for information about Sonali's life in Rome during 1990s and early 2000s - if you knew Sonali or her children and are willing to talk to me, do contact me. If you have any additional information about this story that you can share, send me an email at: sunil.deepak(at)gmail.com (substitute (at) with @ in the email) or contact me through Facebook or Twitter or Instagram, through the links in the column on the right.

 

Thanks for your collaboration.   

 

***

Introduction

 

I had heard in the past about the famous Italian film director Roberto Rossellini and his Indian wife, Sonali. But I hadn’t really thought about it in any way. It had all happened when I was a baby and I hadn’t even realised that at that time there was a big scandal about their affair.

 

Roberto Rossellini had become famous for his films in the 1940s. He would have been mostly forgotten by general public, had it not been for his affair with the Hollywood star Ingrid Bergman in early 1950s, which had made him an international celebrity. His affair with Bergman had created a big scandal because she was married and the mother of a small baby. Rossellini had gone to stay in their home as a guest and in the end run off with the woman.

 

Rossellini's affair with Sonali was similar - she was married and had small children, and her film-director husband, Harisadhan, hero-worshipped him as an idol. 

I rediscovered their story a few days ago when I read an article about the new book of Dileep Padgaonkar (Under her spell: Roberto Rossellini in India, Viking, 2008) at the Jabberwock blog, and read about the Roberto-Sonali love story. Jabberwock had written: “It was a relationship that caused an uproar in the Indian press at the time, Baburao Patel’s invective being only the most florid example of the many reports that appeared in newspapers and magazines. Eventually, Rossellini had to leave the country under duress... Perhaps Under her Spell is just a little too dry and restrained though, given that at the centre of this story is a tempestuous affair that complicated the lives of many people. We don't really learn that much about the Roberto-Sonali relationship, what drew them to each other and how the bond gradually deepened, and Padgaonkar is also reticent about their later years together.” 

Sonali-Rossellini Affair 

Reading the review of Padgaonkar's book, stimulated my curiosity so I looked around on internet for more information about this story. It had all happened in 1957. Roberto Rossellini had come to India in December 1956.

At that time, Roberto was 51 and Sonali was 29 years old. She was married to Harisadhan Dasgupta, a respected documentary film director, 33 years old at that time, who was a close friend and associate of Satyajit Roy. She had two children when this happened, her younger son Arjun was only a few months old.

The reports said that Sonali had arrived late one night at Taj Mahal hotel with her younger son in her arms.

 

Pandit Nehru, India’s prime minister at that time, who had invited Roberto to India for making a film, had helped the three of them to leave India for Rome, where they had got married and Roberto had legally adopted Sonali’s younger son. In India, Harisadhan Dasgupta had reacted by registering a police FIR for his missing wife. Later Roberto & Sonali had a daughter, Raffaella. Roberto died 20 years later, in 1977. 

Questions in My Mind 

The more information I found, the more intrigued I was. Sonali, Roberto, Harisadhan and their children, had all been part of deep emotional cyclone but I was most curious about Sonali. She had two sons, but she could take only one son with her. That must have been terrible for her as a mother. It must have been equally terrible for the son who was left with his father. Kind of Sophie’s choice, except that this was no fiction.

How did Harisadhan feel about his wife not just leaving him for another man, older man at that, taking their son with her? How did they settle it, since Sonali couldn’t have married Roberto without a proper divorce from Harisadan? And how could Roberto legally adopt Sonali’s younger son, without her ex-husband’s consent? So this means that after their escape from India, Sonali and Roberto must have been in contact with Harisadhan in some way.

I remember my first journey to Italy in late nineteen seventies. There were very few foreigners living in Italy, there were no Asian shops, no Bengali communities, few who spoke English. How did Sonali fit in there? 

Usually when lovers meet, they stand against the setting sun and it is supposed to end with “and they lived happy and content ever after...”, yet that is where marriages begin. So after the sunset, once the flash bulbs stopped, once the level of ho-ha lowered, how did Sonali feel? How did the young boy feel, once he grew up and realised he had a father and elder brother in India?

 

I could not find the answers to these questions on internet. Padgaonkar's book did not talk about these. So I decided to dig in deeper. 

Searching for Additional Information  

All these questions were going around in my head as I searched for answers. I could piece together many things because I could search in English and Italian, as well as some minor sources in Spanish and French that gave crucial information. This search was exclusively through internet.

 

I didn’t find much about the emotional part of this story and perhaps it is better that way since I can imagine that even after all these years, many of these memories must be still very painful for all those who are still alive. Roberto died in 1977. Harisadhan Dasgupta died in 1996 or around that. Sonali's son, Arjun/Gil died in 2008 and Sonali died in 2014. However, their other children are around and probably they carry the scars of this event.

Rossellini's Film-Work in India

In 1956, Ingrid Bergman had restarted work in Hollywood with films like Anastasia, for which she received an Oscar and probably her relationship with Roberto was in crisis.

According to Palmira, Roberto’s gardener’s wife, Ingrid was supposed to go to India, to join Roberto in 1957. Instead, she decided to do a film with Lars Schmidt, who later became her third husband, while Roberto came back from India with Sonali.

Roberto was in India for almost 11 months, refusing to look at famous monuments and rather preferring to take a non-exotic view of India, by looking at lives of common persons.

 

The Indian stay of Roberto led to two works, a documentary film “India – Matri Bhumi” (1959) and a TV mini-series “India vista da Rossellini” (India seen by Rossellini, 1959) broadcasted in Italy and France. The mini-series "India seen by Rossellini" broadcast in 10 episodes was produced jointly by India, Italy and France.

The episodes of the TV series were titled: India without myths, Bombay Gateway to India, Architecture & costumes of Bombay, Varsova, Towards the south, Lagoons of Malabar, Kerala, Hirakud dam on river Mahadi, Pandit Nehru & Animals in India.

“India – Matri Bhumi” was a film in 4 parts. The first part took a lyrical look at the daily life of a mahout (elephant handler). Part two was about an East Bengal refugee who is working on a dam and after the work is finished, he is relocated to another construction site. Part three was about an elderly person contemplating nature in a jungle and finally, part four is about a monkey owner dying from heat and the monkey looking for another owner. 

Sonali's Life in Italy 

Palmira, Roberto’s gardener’s wife said: “Sonali was more solitary compared to Ingrid. However friendship between Ingrid and Roberto remained. Even after their divorce, Ingrid came with her third husband Lars to the Rossellini villa. At that time, Roberto’s financial situation was not good and the villa had been indebted to the bank which had given credit to Roberto. Ingrid even asked Lars to buy that villa to help Roberto.”

 

Sonali was an aspiring actress when she had got married to Harisadhan Dasgupta. She had studied at Shantiniketan university and Bimal Roy was her mama (mother's brother). 

Conclusion

It was a love story between Rossellini and Sonali, with a happy ending, or so it would seem.

 

Yet, that happy ending was inextricably linked with pain and suffering for many of the protagonists. It would make for a wonderful novel, one of those melodramatic tomes that we feel are so unbelievable.

*****

Raiders of the lost Poppies

My friend Mariangela lives in Rimini.

 

A couple of weeks ago she was travelling to Asti and was going to pass thorugh Bologna. "Are there poppy flowers in Bologna?", she asked me in an email.

 

I read her email while I was in a conference in Genova. Shit, this year I had forgotten all about poppy flowers, I thought to myself! It is our old ritual. When she comes to see me in Bologna we go to look at them.

 

There used to be this old field near our house that would get full of red poppy flowers in April-May. I had been there with Mariangela. They mowed that field down two years ago and since then I hadn't ever seen large expanses of poppy flowers.

 

So I needed to go around and search for some poppy flowers before she came to see me.

 

Poppy or the Pappaverum Somniferum is supposed to be that plant that can be used to make opium. For getting opium you you need the milk of the ripe dry fruit. That is the reason, why you need a special permission to grow poppy plants in Italy. Some people say that to get opium you need another variety of poppy and not these common flowers that we have, that is why no one bothers with these. Perhaps you also need the hotter sun of equator. I am not sure about that but you can usually see the bright red poppy flowers along railway tracks and highways, where it grows as a weed, in our part of Italy.

The black poppy seeds are used commonly as decoration on bread and give off a lovely aroma. I am not sure if those can be recovered from these flowers, I usually buy them in Asian shops.

 

I am going to look for poppy flowers one of these days, I told myself. Finally, today was my the day of operation poppy-flowers.

I decided to go out beyond Ca' Bianca for my morning walk with our dog, Brando, to the part where there are some farm-houses.

 

He is getting old, our Brando, and likes to go over his usual walking routes and usually if I try to pull him in some new directions, he usually does his Angad ji show, pointing his feet and refusing to move. However, today I was in no mood to give in to him and kept on pulling him till he gave in.

 

And today no I-pod, no music to distract me, I decided. Nature demands proper attention or so, I thought. And so off we were. 

Different Kinds of Seeds

Just out of the house, and I got distracted by the Maple seeds. There were so many of them hanging from the tree almost like plastic butterflies. So I started looking around clicked the pictures of different looking seeds. Here are some examples. The maple seeds had wings like butterflies flying with acute angles.

 

In the next picture is what they call "albero falso di Giuda" or the 'false Jude's' tree, with dried beans like seeds. In autumn, these trees without any green leaves and only these dark brown seeds look slightly sinister, and make me think of Dracula myths. I also don't know why they call them false Jude and if there is a real Jude's tree as well?

 

I like the seeds of Lime trees with the strange wing that is pierced by the flowers. I have read of the subtle perfume of Lime but to me the flowers seem scentless.

Then I saw the Elm tree with round penny like wings holding a small seed in the middle, in the next picture. Though on the tree the seeds are bunched together like piles of pennies and it is not easy to make out the form of individual seed.

 

 

And Finally these rounded beans like seeds that look like jhumkas, rounded-bean like seeds that look like women's ear-rings. I don't know the name of this tree.

 

Roses

Then it was the turn of the roses. There were so many of them in the garden that we passed. Some of the housewives, going about their daily business of dusting and beating the carpets with sticks, looked at me with a suspicion as I tried to get a good angle to click their roses, but they were quickly mollified by the sight of Brando, who can look nice, cuddly and angelic when he is not busy barking at any rival dogs. There are already too many pictures on this post, so I am sparing you my roses-pics today.

Finally the Red Poppy-Flowers

Finally, I did find the poppy flowers finally just a little outside, on the road that goes along the wheat fields. There were not too many of them but enough for taking some pictures.

 

 

Disgusted dog

It was a lovely morning and our morning walk lasted almost one and half hour. Unfortunately Brando didn't appreciate it and seemed a bit annoyed at loosing his rhythm as I forced him to hold still while I clicked pictures of plants and flowers from different angles.

 

The return back to home after the poppy flowers was quick as Brando almost ran, understanding that I had completed my mission, pulling me along! If you think that he is too sweet or cute or small to pull people, you don't know him yet! (In the image below he is with my son)

*** 

 

 

Talking to Altaf Tyrewala

It was January 2008. We were in the north Italian city of Turin for a literature festival organised by an Italian literary foundation, Grinzane. There was a special session in this festival about India and thus many Indian authors were invited. I was there as an Indian blogger and had helped in deciding whom to invite. 

 

I had asked Altaf Tyrewala for an interview and finally we got around doing it during a bus journey as we were going out for some lunch. As we sat down in the bus and I was fumbling with my recorder, Altaf said that he hadn’t liked being presented as a “Muslim writer from India”. I agreed with him completely, I would hate to be called a “Hindu writer from India”. I had had some discussions with the organisers and I knew they did it to refute any charges of ignoring the writers from Indian minorities, but I guess that doesn’t make it any easier!

He said, "When outside they call me in this way it saddens me. It is not enough that in a nation a minority has to be made self-conscious, even outside the country they are ... they didn’t mention the religious background of any other writer." 

 

Lavanya Shankaran, who was sitting behind us didn’t realise that it was an interview and I was recording it and so she also joined in the conversation. I was very happy since the discussion was very stimulating and I was imagining that my recorder is recording her voice as well. Unfortunately that was not the case, I can only hear some of her words. I vaguely remember what she said but that is not enough to re-construct her part of dialogue and I regret that immensely.

Here are some excerpts from the transcript of that discussion-recording. The symbols are AT for Altaf Tyrewala and SD for me, Sunil Deepak. 

SD: Tell me about the kind of things you like to read? 

AT: I like reading something that has been stripped to the bare essentials. I am almost incapable of enduring descriptions, etc. Anything that assumes that I don’t know ... I read the internet, I try to remain clued in to the world. What I like to read is something that I can not access as an information. 

SD: You don’t see that as a contradiction, wanting to be a writer and yet wishing to express yourself in as few words as possible? 

AT: (laughs) Yes, absolutely. I think that it is extremely damaging to my career. I won’t be able to churn out books every year. But this is something that I have to deal with as a writer, it is my challenge. This conflicting instinct in me, to speak and not to speak, these are two powerful impulses in me. To keep quiet because whatever has to be said, has already been said, and the other side, even while wishing to keep quiet, to find things to say. 

SD: Writing is a creative expression and there are different ways of expressing creativity. Did you have to choose from different things you wanted to do or was writing the only thing that you wanted to do? 

AT: I have always wondered what it would be like to be a painter or a musician, but writing is something that goes beyond creative expression. It has become a way of life. It is not like an outburst of creative energy. I think that it is almost like it moulds your way of living. I am not a writer just when I am writing, I am a writer 24 hours a day. That is how I have found myself becoming. 

SD: You have written one book that has been published but may be you have written lot of other books that have not been published or that are still in your head. How do you decide what you are going to write and how long that process takes to actually come to do it? 

AT: (laughs) The first novel came out organically. I had this impulse to write, a deep desire and need to write. I was trying to understand how the conventional form of a novel would do justice to the kind of society and I kind of reality I grew up in and I realised that it wouldn’t and I had to innovate a new form. Terrifying though it was to write in a way that I had never read anything before, create a kind of structure that I had never seen before. What was your question? How long does it take... there is no telling, it can take months. Like the second novel is taking me more than 2 years to actually kick off. With the first novel I found a groove and once you find a groove ... I used to get a story done every two weeks and that was immensely satisfying. But I think that this incubation period is important, you have to wait to not to get carried away by a wrong thing o a notion that turns out to be false later on. I am just being patient and waiting ... when it comes you know it from the tips of your fingers, it is absolutely ... 

SD: When we were getting in the bus, you said something about your wife. Did she know you as a writer or as a person before you became ...? 

AT: I was a poor graduate student in America when we met. We were studying together. She thinks that I completely misrepresented myself (laughs) because I turned out to be a writer. But because she has seen me before I was a writer, she is an immensely grounding presence in my life. It would have been so easy to float up in this writerly universe ..but she keeps on reminding me that don’t forget ... 

Lavanya Shanker: That is very wise thing you are saying... sensible, to keep your feet on the ground ..it is important that the spouse is not a writer otherwise ... writers are whackoos (laughs)... very difficult to have another writer in the house... 

AT: Or even an artist you know, it would be ... 

SD: What does it mean “deciding to become a writer”? Perhaps it would be different for a woman, but for a young person to say “I have decided to be a writer”, how would the society react? I think that in Italy people let you live your life, perhaps your parents would say something but they can’t interfere with your decisions. But in India? 

AT: I guess I was smart.. I had enough foresight to know that if I wanted to be a writer I had better do it fast. I couldn’t do it when I was 30 or 35, when real life has completely taken over. I was twenty two when I decided that I wanted to be a writer and I left my job and started writing full time. At that age, I got certain degree of indulgence from my parents. It was like even if I screw up, let’s say by 25-26 I can go back to work. They were willing to allow me this kind of window of opportunity. If this book hadn’t done fairly well, I probably would have been still working, gotten back to a 9 to 5 job. Plus, I took a loan to write, I approached a bank for a loan. 

SD (laughs) And how was that? What was their reaction in the bank? 

AT: I didn’t tell them that it was for writing. I said that I was starting an e-learning business with internet and I need the money. I used that to write for 3-4 years, used it as my pocket money. I knew it was a matter of time. You have to know deep down what you want and you have to go after it. 

(Note: The discussions after this point had more interventions of Lavanya Shankaran but from here onwards quality of recording is not good, so I have excluded this part from the transcription. 

AT: What I meant was that I can never have single moment of oblivion, of unconsciousness or not being analytical or not processing or not forcing myself to certain amount of insight on everything that I go through.. what comes first is the mad impulse to create and it is a mad energy that starts getting channelled and focused on the thin line of what it means to be a more mature writer.

When I started writing, I realised that my initial stories were mainly about myself and my experience of the world. Only when I wrote story upon story, I realised that I was just a small aspect of this larger universe out there.

And then it was up to me to place myself, to position myself in different circumstances in my head, fictionally, and to ask what if I was that or what if I was there and lend myself to different situations fictionally to understand what it would be like ... it was an exercise in some degree of compassion, to really feel what it is to be someone else. Not just think of what it would be to be someone else but to actually feel it.

*** 

SD: At this point our bus reached the venue and so the interview was interrupted! I am really sorry that the part about Lavanya are missing from this interview.