In Conversation With Author Jahnavi Barua

Interview/ Profile

Jahnavi Barua: ‘People don’t appreciate what they have until they have lost it. We don’t realize how precious home is until we are forced to relocate. Home is that place in the world where you get loved and accepted for who you are.’

The author of three critically acclaimed books talks about her latest book, Undertow, longlisted for the JCB Literature prize in 2020.

Next Door, her debut collection of short stories was longlisted for the Frank O’Connor International Short Story Award. Her second book, Rebirth, was shortlisted for the Man Asian Literary Prize and the Commonwealth Writers’ Prize.

Undertow tells the story of the emotional turmoils of a family as it goes through disintegration. Set against the backdrop of political unrest in Assam, the story is told through the dynamic relationships of an estranged family, and the intertwined lives of three generations of its women — Usha, Rukmini, and Loya. Barua explores how the emotional trauma of estrangement shapes the lives of multiple generations.

Excerpts from the Interview:

What is your favourite genre?

My favourite genre is Short Fiction. Even as a child, given a chance, I would pick up short fiction. Whenever I am reading, I will read one novel and have one short fiction tucked away. So whenever I take a break from the novel, I read short fiction. I think it is a very powerful genre. The impact a short story has on a reader is even more powerful than a novel. All of us have read short stories as children, perhaps as part of our school curriculum, and we never forget the impact short stories have on us.

What are you currently reading?

I am reading No Presents Please by Jayant Kaikini, translated from Kannada by Tejaswini Niranjana. It is a collection of short stories set in Mumbai. I strongly recommend you to read it.

Some of the underlying themes In Undertow and Rebirth are the themes of home and belonging. Could you elaborate on that?

Growing up, I moved a lot. I think by the time I was in my early thirties, I had moved ten cities. The constant moving around, accompanied by several physical and mental adjustments, made me realize how precious home was. I found myself envying my cousins who were living in Assam, surrounded by the same friends and teachers they had grown up with. People don’t appreciate what they have until they have lost it. We don’t realize how precious home is until we are forced to relocate. A home is a place — a place you belong to, a place you study in, home as in the physical house which we get attached to, and home as people, friends and neighbours that become home. Home is that place in the world where you get loved and accepted for who you are.

Is your book, to some extent, autobiographical?

At some level, every author is present in their work. Orhan Pamuk says you can not express something if you have never felt it, if you have not been through the pain. I have journeyed so much, and I know what it is to be searching for a home. I bring that experience to my fiction. But no author would pick up facts from their life, or incidents. Because that would be too easy. Fiction is a work of imagination. We use our experience. No real person or incident comes into my work.

Would you agree that the rift between Usha and Rukmini had deeper roots? And that Rukmini’s decision to marry outside her caste and her motherland was only part of it?

Yes, it did not start at the point of marriage. Passages from the book indicate that it all started very early, perhaps in Rukmini’s childhood. There were many reasons for this. As you remember, Rukmini had always admired her mother for being an excellent woman and a great homemaker. What she could not condone was how autocratic and manipulative Usha was on many levels. She would look after you with the understanding that you would give in completely to her. Rukmini, despite being a very quiet person, had a backbone. She refused to allow her mother undisputed say in her life. And women are very intuitive. So, Usha picked that up very quickly that while Tarun and Arun would give into her, but Rukmini would not. Usha had a very black and white view of people, and once she figured out that Rukmini was not going to allow her to control her in the same manner, she almost completely ignored her for the rest of her life.

You have written about the trauma of estrangement and exile, and how it shapes the lives of multiple generations of a family. I believe this story encourages us to shun the insider-outsider narrative that exiles people into loneliness. Can you tell us more about this?

Deciding to lose a son or a daughter just because they have taken the decision to marry outside of their community- my generation saw a lot of it, my mother’s generation saw even more of it. Hopefully, your generation and the generation after you will see less and less of it. While there are differences, is it worth focusing so much on them that you lose a loved one? This is the question that is put up in Undertow. This is the question running through the book. It is the question Loya goes to Guwahati to ask her grandfather, “ Would you lose your daughter? Was it worth it?”

The book poses a lot of questions, and so many of them are relevant to us. It is a very Indian story. So many of us have lost a loved one to such exiles. And I hope we see less and less of it, and we realise the futility of it.

Do you think the literary space in India has not been very inclusive of writings from the North East in the past? And do you think that is changing now?

I think this trend started changing a few years ago. A few years ago, many writers from North East India were beginning to get published by mainstream publishers. And through this many voices from the North East were heard all around the country, but there is still a long way to go before we see a long body of work emerging from that region.

What was your reason behind choosing ‘Undertow’ as the title for your book?

Undertow, by definition, is that current of water that you don’t see, and it usually goes in the opposite direction of the surface current. That is something very dangerous. You need to watch out for that. It is something you don’t anticipate very much like real life. We see what we see around us very superficially. Even if it is to do with our own families, you don’t know what is happening to a person’s mind below the surface. You don’t know what the dynamics are. And sometimes these little things, these little undercurrents that happen could be very dangerous to a person.

How did you begin your writing journey? When did you first decide to share your writing?

This is a question I have been asked a lot. I had taken a break to raise a family and I thought it would be temporary. My son was unwell and I ended up spending a lot of time at home. That is when I took to reading, and I read very widely. I did not have any time to read back when I was working for the hospital. I read widely, and something strange happened after reading the works of Alice Munroe. She is a Canadian short fiction writer. As I said before, I love short fiction. And there is something that happened, I can’t quite explain it. I had never experienced this kind of change after reading other authors. This change came about after reading her. Perhaps it was because of the topics she explores. She writes only from the place she is at. She doesn’t venture into the outside world. She writes from within a family, exploring the family dynamics and gender issues. And something within that triggered something in me and that’s when I began to write.

Reading Undertow and Next Door, I noticed that you write descriptive scenes to set the tone and to transport the reader to that place. And you also addressed issues such as patriarchy and politics in the same space. How did you find a balance in the book? How do you manage the perspectives of multiple protagonists?

Yes, my writing is rooted in place. My early collection of short stories was completely set in Assam. And later on in the novel (Undertow), the physical landscape shifts between Assam and Bangalore. If you take the example of the short story, when you are crafting fiction, you have all these elements to work with. Whenever I teach children to write, I take the example of cooking a curry. When you are cooking a curry, you have all these ingredients, right? So what are the ingredients in fiction? We have the setting, which is the place. We have characters, which animate the place. We have the conflict which is the journey, the plot. We have dialogue, mood, tone. We have all these elements to play with when we are cooking our curry of a short story. And any good cook will use the ingredients to their best advantage. So place, the physical setting, is such an important element. Place can contribute to, firstly, rooting the story.

Suppose it is a story about Assam, you understand what it involves, what it entails. So it roots the setting. And secondly, the place and setting can contribute to the mood of the story. If the story is set near the Brahmaputra, you can sense the motions, you have the sound of the river, the sounds of the birds. Any writer will use the place to their benefit to piece a picture in front of the reader. I also do that because I feel like apart from the technical aspect, place has a very huge bearing on us. Place impacts a person very profoundly whether you realize it or not.

Undertow is a beautiful coming together of the personal narrative and Assamese politics. There is a fine balance of both elements. How did you find that balance?

Undertow had two protagonists- Loya and Torun. One of the reasons it took me so long to write this book was because I was trying to balance them both to give both equal space and weight. I had to make sure that I am equally affectionate to both the characters. While this book explores a very personal journey, about personal relationships, about Loya’s search for home, and about Torun losing a spouse, about Torun losing the home he knows. But the characters don’t live in a vacuum. They live in Assam, and Assamese politics is very turbulent. It wasn’t the focus of my writing, yet you can’t ignore it. And the family politics played out on the stage of the larger politics. While it is about politics too, yet at the same time it is deeply intimate, deeply personal