One of India's best known writers in English, Vikram Seth has received laurels abroad and at home. A recipient of the Padma Shri, Pravasi Bharatiya Samman, WH Smith Literary Award and Crossword Book Award, his world of writing strikes a fine balance between fiction and poetry. While 'A Suitable Boy' (1993) contributed to Vikram's success as a writer, his oeuvre includes 'The Golden Gate' (1986), 'An Equal Music' (1999) and poetry collections, 'Mappings' (1980) and 'All You Who Sleep Tonight' (1990) among others.
Vikram, who is also known for his travelogues 'From Heaven Lake: Travels Through Sinkiang and Tibet (1983)' and 'The Rivered Earth', identifies himself as a bisexual and has been very vocal about the Supreme Court's recent order recriminalising gay sex. In an interview with SUCHAYAN MANDAL, Vikram Seth talks about this, politics and his writing.
The Supreme Court recently recriminalised gay sex between consenting adults. You have rejected this judgment. What can be done in your view to negate this verdict?
It needs to be remembered that judges are human too. It's difficult for them to admit that they are wrong. They won't say that, yes, they have done something unjust, unprincipled, and unconstitutional. I wasn't utterly surprised. But it was a residual hope that the people will do a decent thing.
The law cannot come between love of two people. But what it can do is make people's life miserable, self-hating and suicidal. Love should be a course of happiness and fulfillment. It's not something that you would sneer at. You cannot do anything about that. These are very deep-seated attitudes. The gays who can be bullied by their peers and religious fanatics shouldn't lose faith in themselves and the power of love. Life is hard ahead. This behaviour is perfectly natural. And they shouldn't lose faith in the possibility of justice.
Bal Gangadhar Tilak believed Swaraj is the right to choose the Indian way of behaving. You see, Ayappa was born out of the sexual congress of Shiv and Vishnu. Everything from the 3000 year tradition of Hijras to Kamasutra to Khajuraho to Baburnama to poems of Mir is Indian, and not this 1861 law that came from the British and which is now not only being applied by the judges in the name of Bharatiya Sanskriti but also the so-called patriotic decent party, BJP. Homosexuality is very natural across the world. No one who is straight will turn gay or vice versa but to take something that is foreign and abase you before it and to impose cruelty on 60 million Indians is unconscionable.
You studied economics. What made you start writing fiction?
(laughs) Well, do you choose your profession or does your profession choose you? It's like love! All my training was in economics but I just wanted to write. The fact is, I feel blessed! I am not a very decisive or determined person, but I'm obsessed. If poetry comes to me, it's very difficult not to write. I have spent 11 years in not getting a PhD in economics. I don't think economics has influenced my writing style but it has certainly influenced the content of what I write. An emotional quotient of a character is as important as how an economic condition of the character can be changed. If you look at the way the world changes, both in macrocosm and in microcosm, economics is vital.
Take for example, in 'A Suitable Boy', the Zamindari abolition had a huge effect on many people. Like the patronages, the musicians and everything related to this suddenly disappeared. The land holders when they went to claim their lands were put off from the Patwaris' records. So economics in a way has helped to shape my ideas.
You were born in Kolkata. How much do you think the city has changed or evolved?
I went there recently. My name is Amit in my birth certificate as 'Shesher Kobita' had an effect on my mother. I shouldn't have felt happy going to Calcutta but I feel happy. Since I was conceived there and born there, there must be some umbilical nexus with Calcutta. When I go there, people fondly greet me but I don't deserve it! And it hasn't changed much.
You are working on the sequel to The Suitable Boy. Is your new book titled The Suitable Girl, and would you mind telling us a little about it?
I won't like to talk much on that. But yes unlike 'A Suitable Boy', which starts in 1952, 'Suitable Girl' won't start in 1953 but will be based in present day. It might be 2010 or 11 and end when I put my pen down, who knows may be after the general election! (laughs)
Talking about sequel, there will be characters from 'A Suitable Boy', like if someone was 10 then is 40 now and someone who was 30 might have died. Lata, who got married at 20-21, is now 80, but that doesn't mean she will go backward. There are characters who are dead but are discussed like, 'Babuji kaha karte the' (Babuji used to say). Life expectancy has increased, so a 70-year-old is taking care of his 90-year-old parents. So there's a kind of continuity.
It took many years to come into 'A Suitable Girl' because I don't want to be bored. Publishers had asked me to write A Suitable Girl, then an Unsuitable Boy and an Unsuitable Girl ~ but it would have surely bored the reader. I wanted to think what would Lata think if she was in present now.
How did your relation with music grow?
You see, whether you listen to a raag for 4 hours or you read a book of 1500 pages, it doesn't feel like being heavily imposed. I am carried away by music. I was trained in Indian classical music. But I became more and more interested in Western classical singing. In the evening, when I wanted to be by myself, I found that the moment I started playing an Indian musical instrument or singing an Indian song, I was drawn back into the world of my novel. It wasn't a form of relaxation, but work by other means. That's when I began singing Schubert songs. I didn't know them well then, but I love them now.
What do you think of the current state of Indian writing in English, particularly the corporates turned writers like Chetan Bhagat who are ruling the fiction market in India?
I have read one of Chetan's books and liked his writing. But I have no clue how he can possibly like the great supremo leader of the BJP. I simply don't get it! But I personally like him! But that doesn't mean I subscribe to the politics of someone who is in support of a party which takes the most inhuman position on matters that are intrinsic to being an Indian.
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