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| Anuradha Roy at Zoom meet, Margao Book Club, Goa |
-Brian Mendonca
It was a singular pleasure to have author Anuradha Roy on board with us this evening for the Saturday online book reading session of the Margao Book Club in Goa. Indeed, these are the virtues of online meets when we can connect with authors - and readers - wherever they may be!
Anuradha was joining us from Ranikhet in Uttarakhand in North India. I told Anuradha I felt pretty much in Ranikhet myself because I was reading her book The Folded Earth (2011) set in Ranikhet. Of course the hideaway in the hills came more alive to me as I seemed to have visited it during my travels in OUP, Delhi to Haldwani and Kathgodam. I like the part in the book where the author says you are either a hill person or a sea person.
The discussion was vibrant. Earthspinner (2021) reminded me of three novels. The first was Abandon by Pico Iyer where the protaganist goes in search of a lost manuscript of Rumi and meets love on the sidelines. The second was Bapsi Sidhwa's Ice Candy Man for the part when Akka ferrets out the details of Elango's obsession like the Ice Candy Man's beguiling of Lenny to reveal where her ayah Shanta is hiding.
City of Djinns by William Dalrymple was invoked because the scene when Elango is turned away because it is too unsafe to tarry, is like the terror of the anti-Sikh riots of 1984 in Mongolpuri, Delhi. The tragic loss of life and the mayhem of the mob dredged up the spectre of Partition.
Savia said it was an important book as it advocated respect for all faiths, specially in the time of love jihad. She lamented the fact that there no groups to raise the voice of sanity. I offered that it was specially to be hailed because it stood for the underdog (pun intended), the voiceless, the dispossessed. As readers we connect with that aspect. She speaks for us.
Roy went to great lengths to understand the potter's art. She was inspired by the Ayyanar horses of Tamil Nadu. She grew up in Hyderabad. She travelled to Kolkata and Delhi to see the potters' work first hand. She saw pottery as redemptive. It animated her descriptions of the potter at work in the novel.
Elango passes on his technique of pottery to Sarayu. Yet their relationship is Platonic. This is the guru shishya parampara reflected Savia. Roy said that Sarayu is still to understand her feelings. The void created by her father's passing was beautifully brought out, felt Siona. Like Sarayu, Roy too lost her father at 19.
Commenting on the aptness of the title by Siona, Roy said there were many options, but a time came when she knew that 'Earthspinner' would be the one to carry her vison forward. The neologism acknowledges the earth as one of the four primary elements - the others being water, wind and fire. Roy, a potter herself, offered the insight that all the four elements are used in pottery. The prescience of Kabir was never far away:
On the use of swear words which vilify women Roy shared that it rose from experience because that is the way women are often looked at in Delhi. Savia said that one should not prettify a novel. Women writers use male expletives to redress the imbalance of power. Women sometimes resort to insanity or illness to articulate traumatic episodes in their life. She had weaved in an episode of such nature in her novel Let Me Tell You About Quinta said Savia.
Marion spoke about how she was deeply moved when Elango says goodbye to Chinna the dog knowing he will not see him again. Roy shared her own experience of deciding not to visit her dog now in the hands of a caregiver in the US, because it would open too many wounds. In a sense the novel is about closure. We go to great lengths not to hurt anyone - and ourselves.
But, as Savia sagely put it, Chinna gets by. 'He adopts a community' was the way she put it so beautifully, hastening to give an example of a dog near a temple which she walks by, who has done the same.
Elango's avatar in England and Sarayu meeting him seemed fortuitous. However Roy felt that 'These things happen in life.' At her pottery studio where she steals away time to practise the lessons Elango taught her she always believes she will meet him someday. Roy felt that after the destruction of the horse Elango is never really happy in life.
I begged to differ. I said that because the horse was destroyed Elango rose like a phoenix in another continent to create many more horses, this time more colossal than the first. Like the unfinished symphony of Mahler, a creative impulse unable to take wing will break the dam and set itself free.
Marion, who had listened to the audio book, noted the lesbian relationship of Karin. Roy said that Karin is searching for her path. Inclusivity is a constant presence in the novel. Marion appreciated Anuradha for writing about topics which were considered taboo. She was all praise for the cross-cultural impetus of the book. Roy promised her that a German translation was underway.
The volte face of Akka who proceeds to call out the horse as abominable is stunning. But Roy with great equanimity said that recent events have taught us that it is so. People change.
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Pic courtesy Brian Mendonca. Taken on Saturday, 14 Dec. 2021 during Zoom meet by MBC, Goa to discuss Anuradha Roy's Earthspinner (Hachette, 2021). Curated by Savia Viegas. Moderated by Brian Mendonca. Uppdated 13 Dec. 2021.
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