NAGARKAR’S HEROIC VILLAINESS
Kiran Nagarkar first met Jasoda, the title character of his latest novel, in the late nineties. “I had no inkling at the time that I’d be living with this woman for almost 20 years,” he says. Due to hit shelves this month, Jasoda is the seventh novel by the Sahitya Akademi award winning author of Cuckold—and thus much-awaited. An acclaimed bilingual writer of plays, screenplays and critical essays on film, theatre and literature, Nagarkar has been compared favourably to Dostoevsky and Graham Greene. His signature style combines narrative sweep with searing wit, deep compassion and tremendous depth of detail. He talks about his protagonist, this powerhouse of a woman, as if she were in the room with him. The novel in which she lives is a mere 250 pages long, but her saga is as timeless as hunger, as relentless as lust. “Did
you know from the start that she’d be a murderer?” I ask. “Of course,” he says. The very first event in the novel, on page three, is a murder. Of a newborn, a girl. But, in Jasoda’s world, there’s no time for guilt, mourning or sorrow. This murder, like all the other murders and crimes in the book, is just one more event, neither the worst nor the most important. For Jasoda, there’s just enough time to go on living, that too, only by running continuously, day and night, through sandstorm and flood, across deserts and cities.
The novel grew out of two things, Nagarkar says. “One, this is a country which, despite abundant rivers, suffers from drought. The men have a way out: they commit suicide. The mothers have no way out: they have to manage alone, with their children. Two, men force women to murder their babies, because they say, ‘Who can afford to support a girl-child for whom one has to pay a neverending dowry?’ And this woman—absolutely heroic, exceptional in every sense—this woman will nevertheless murder her own daughters.”
So is Jasoda villain or saint? That, Nagarkar says, is the central conundrum of all our lives. “I had every intention of NOT writing this book,” he says. Just like he had no intention of writing Cuckold, a story set in the 17th century, about Mirabai’s husband. “I used to come to Delhi for the film festival. One night, I was sitting on a scooter, shivering—it was winter—and out of the blue, the thought appears in my head: ‘Here’s this woman, perhaps the most famous woman in all of India—but her husband is a hiatus in history’.” Three years later, as Cuckold was being published, Jasoda appeared in the wings.
She remained there until a friend read the first 70 pages of the abandoned novel and demanded it be completed. “Aren’t there occasions when we do things instinctively—or, to put it differently, instead of the author choosing the subject, doesn’t the subject sometimes choose her or him?” This quirk of happenstance might just as well be the story of Nagarkar’s entire literary career. In 1967, the late Dilip Chitre mentioned that he would be editing the Marathi magazine Abhiruchi. “I have no idea how or why, but I came home that night, sat down at the table and wrote my first short story in my mother tongue.” It was soon published.
The next day, “without a moment’s thought, I started writing Saat Sakkam Trechalis (Seven Sixes are 43).” He credits his Grade 3 tuition teacher, Chaphekar, with inspiring the title. “He was a Chitpavan Brahmin. They are famous for their withering wit. I was terrible at maths. He would say, ‘What blatant lies you tell me! That seven sixes are 43?!’” The book caused a sensation in Marathi literary circles for its acid humour, dark vision and discontinuous narrative. Published in the mid-’70s, it “provoked extreme rage and vicious putdowns”, says Nagarkar. “I remember reading a review, ‘He’s imitating Camus and Sartre!’ and ‘His name’s Kiran (sunbeam) but he pretends to be the sun itself!’”
Whereas Cuckold’s universe is rich with moral philosophy and ethical dilemmas, Jasoda pointedly lacks those qualities. What has changed in the 20 years between the two books? “I think of Jasoda as a heroine, but she would be shocked to hear that. Life does not offer her options.” She does what she believes she has to, not what she might want to, if she had reasonable choices.
Nagarkar grew up in Pune and Bombay. For some 30 years, starting in the late ’60s, he worked as a successful copywriter and creative director. Despite enormous critical acclaim and publishing success, however, he says, “the only succour you have is yourself. When someone likes my work, I’m truly grateful. If they can dig deeper into it, all the better.” He likens being an author to collaborative architecture. “I build half the bridge. The other half is the reader.”
The very first event in the novel is a murder. Of a newborn, a girl