'I find writers who navel-gaze exhaustive beyond belief'
Your book makes a few interesting references to certain aspects of literature -- apart from that attempted assassination of Salman Rushdie -- such as the gun hidden under The Heart of the Matter and Don Quixote. Were there specific reasons for the presence of these names in the novel?
This is another thing I deliberately don't do. When I was 18, there was a play by a famous Marathi writer, who used a stick throughout. All the critics went gaga about how this was a phallic symbol. Critics will go into anything. Everything is a metaphor.
It is because of this that I will have nothing to do with playwrights of the absurd. And I'm not talking about Camus here, but very big names -- my friends may want to lynch me for this -- like Samuel Beckett. I can't have anything to do with Waiting for Godot. I want my Madhabi Mukherjee in Charulata.
Maybe that's one of the reasons absurdist theatre died anyway.
Yes. It is the obviousness I dislike. I do not want to be so obvious. I know other authors would, and I can see their reasons for it. We think authors work out everything. A lot of authors do take credit for having worked out everything, and maybe some of them do. Kiran Nagarkar does not.
I do not set out to write symbolic stuff. Look at The Rime of the Ancient Mariner. I know it can take on an enormous amount of resonance -- it has that capacity. But I would still like to think that (Samuel Taylor) Coleridge just had a great story to tell. Because he is such a great writer, he had reasons for doing something, but there are always other interpretations that may not have been in his mind. Analysis is good, but I find writers who navel-gaze exhaustive beyond belief.
You have often spoken of your grandfather, who was ostracised. So were you, in a sense, by the so-called protectors of the Marathi ethos. Is this a family thing?
All the work was done by him; I have always said this. I have no claim to having worked at anything, except maybe for my writing. I did not break away from my fold at the cost that he did. There are journalists today, for example, who have taken the hard route and shown tremendous courage to arrive at what they believe in.
One I know very well went to Kashmir and came back to tell me 'If I was in their place, I would do much worse'. He was referring to that complete invasion of space the people of Kashmir have to deal with. They are educated, but no one will give them a job. Soldiers can walk into their homes and do as they please, at any time. The journalist felt that violation of the private space. This is what earning your stripes is. I have never earned mine in that sense.
Image: Shiv Sena activists burning an effigy of artist M F Husain during a protest in New Delhi on Feburary 26, 2006.
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