Minakshi’s poetic epistle on love

By Dilshan Boange

[Part 2]

Lovers like You and I is the debut novel of the New Delhi based writer Minakshi Thakur who is also a Hindi and English bilingual poet. In this concluding instalment of her interview with the Sunday Observer’s Montage, Minakshi talks about her first novel; its inception, how she textured the text, and what she sees ahead of her on her path as a writer.

Excerpts:

Minakshi Thakur

Question: Your debut novel Lovers Like You and I was shortlisted for the Tibor Jones South Asia Prize 2013. Firstly tell us how does it feel to become a published novelist?

Answer: I submitted my manuscript just for a lark; I wasn’t expecting to be shortlisted or win.

Sometimes we do things because we feel we are not trying hard enough, using our time well enough; we apply ourselves in directions or apply for things we don’t really badly want. I guess I wanted to tell myself that I was doing something for my book. But I am grateful the jury thought my manuscript good enough for the shortlist. I am thankful even if I didn’t win.

I think a lot of people have a first novel, I’d like to see if I can write a second and better one. But the book looks nice, it smells lovely, and that feels good.

Inspiration

Q: How did you set about this work? Was there a spark of inspiration that created a moment of epiphany? How was the narrative planned and structured?

A: I wrote the first draft of this novel almost nine years ago. It started as a poem. The poem then decided it wanted to be someone bigger and prosaic. And poems don’t listen to you, they come when they like, they choose how they want to grow and what they want to become. As for the narrative structure, I wrote the book as a series of very short chapters in a nonlinear sequence. They almost seem like disjointed chapters at first glance.

I wanted to show how strong emotions like love or hatred can affect our lives, fracture it.

This novel is intrinsically bilingual, and lyrical, almost an extension of my poetry as you will see when you read it.

Q: The theme you selected for your novel is ‘love’. A topic that is very vast and timeless.

I think love is perhaps the most elusive of human emotions when it comes to being given ‘a definition’. Would you say that your novel captures what your vision of exploring how love can be defined or understood through characters?

Many moods of love

A: Love, of course, is the most talked about feeling or subject, and yet it can never be talk about enough or defined in absolute terms. I have tried to explore its many moods through people and through the different ways in which they have found or lost love. These are people from different walks of life, various age groups. I have tried to touch this emotion which can only be felt; I have attempted to make it more tangible by illuminating its texture.

Q: Lovers Like You and I looks at, what I personally feel is a timely observation about how the advent of the digital age has changed the ‘picture’ of what marks the monuments of a love affair between two people –love letters.

There is perhaps a ‘generation gap’ developing in this respect on what defines the experience and memory of a love affair. Is it a ‘romanticism’ of the enchantments of love relationships in the world before email and text messages? Tell us about this aspect you bring out in your book.

A: This is a book about relationships and how they shape us, affect us, make us the people we become. This is also a book about being young, about exulting over love and suffering for it. It’s about artistes and their fragile temperaments, their penchant for both affection and isolation.

Gesture

I tried to write a quiet, lyrical book because it’s set in a time not so long ago where we communicated subtly but powerfully; even a slight gesture conveyed a lot. I have not tried to romanticise the idea of love or how people loved in those times. Love was and will always be naturally and inherently enchanting; it is so even now.

My father gifted me my first mobile phone on my 21st birthday, the year I graduated from college. A year before that we got a dial-up Internet connection at home. Those two things drastically changed the way I communicated. I stopped writing postcards to cousins and friends, and thereafter, the emails got shorter and shallower year after year.We began to communicate more, chat more, share with many more people, make a lot more noise, but also talk more ‘at’ each other than ‘to’ or ‘with’ each other, if you sit back and think about it. That to me was a juncture that altered our world view and how we interact and engage with people we care for. Things changed so fast and so rapidly since then. Up until the nineties, so much was told, quietly and yet powerfully, even where telling was at a loss.

Plotline

Q: Characterisations can be a rather tough job, I’m sure you’ll agree, quite apart from creating the plotline. What was the inspiration for your protagonist Nayan? Was she created through a true to life character resembling a particular person you actually know, or is she a mix of various people you have come across?

A: Nayan is a mix of some women I have known, women I have read about or seen in movies. I wanted to design her like a raga. I wanted her to be poetic, I wanted her to thirst for love and life.

I wanted her to be observant so she could explore what makes two people come together and grow apart. Also while you’re creating a character, you have to step into its shoes every once in a while to imagine and build its life or character, so I became Nayan several times during the writing of this novel. I sang the songs she sang, I loved the man she loved. Likewise I had to live the other characters too. I feel most strongly for and closest to Maithili, the Nepalese bride.

Q: Would you say that your novel would appeal more to a regional readership who can relate to the cultural setting and nuances more easily than a western readership?

A: The novel is intrinsically bilingual in nature. It will definitely appeal more to Indian/Asian readership. I didn’t have an audience in mind while writing it.

But at a certain level, it’s also a simple, universal story that anyone may relate to. Let me say it this way: there’s a love letter in it for everyone.

Q: How do you see your journey ahead as a writer? What would possibly be your themes to explore and focus on, in future works?

A: Languages interest me. Their sounds, syllables, words and texture make me wonder at them, admire them; I savour their music. So I guess I’ll continue to write in both languages – perhaps more poetry than prose given that I have a full time job as an editor. I am working on another novel. Let’s see where it goes and how much time it takes me to finish it.

I’d like to explore the themes of urban India, its politics and people and how they deal with the crazy business of life.

The word ‘perception’ fascinates me a lot; I’d like to write about things that happen to you and me – things that are extraordinary in their ordinariness. The other thing that I want to attempt is to write a good book about music. There is very little content on music in English in India –it could be a musical biography or just a biography of music in India.