I sat sipping coffee and opposite me was the delicate-looking lady, with a smile that reminds me of the Mona Lisa, petite but firm, her personality exuding creativity and confidence. “This looks a little strange,” she said, her eyes sparkling with impish laughter as her glistening green lime soda arrived. Anjum Hasan, an acclaimed name in the Indian literary map, was taking a little time out just before the launch of her second novel Neti, Neti by Roli Books at the Crossword last week.
An author’s life gets busy as the time of the launch of a book nears. “I am still trying to figure out the business aspect of a book. It isn’t really enough, especially nowadays, to just write a book!” she said as she settled down.
Neti, Neti picks up from where ‘Lunatic in my Head’, Anjum’s first novel, left off the character of Sophie Das. Although Sophie, like her creator, has travelled from the picturesque and smaller city of Shillong to the rapidly-transforming and busy world of Bangalore, Anjum would like to keep the parallel only till there.
The writer said, “I am the creator. I can’t be the character. I mean, Sophie is not writing the story, is she? I have always been conscious of the fact that it’s a different person, and think of what her, not my, responses would be.” She added, “I am definitely more ambitious than Sophie.”
Well, for this ambitious writer, it is important to be read, and that is one of the reasons why she cannot give as much time to poetry as she does to fiction. “There are not enough readers at all. There are less for poetry. I feel there are so many things I want to say that can be said better in fiction and that will be read by more people. Poetry is something you do more for yourself.” Also, since fiction is all-consuming, she gets back to poetry only occasionally.
A writer’s task is an arduous one. Anjum has spent four years with the Sophie of Neti, Neti and the moment her final draft was ready, she began sketching her next work. She said, “Most of a writer’s life consists of the unglamorous, lonely and often very hard process of just sitting down and writing day after day. I think when you start out as a writer you’re conscious of the importance of regimentation but after some years it becomes part of you. Like Don Delillo says, at some point ‘…discipline no longer seemed something outside me that urged the reluctant body into the room… Discipline is inseparable from what I do.’” Her Swedish writer husband Zac O’ Yeah is the first critic of her works and she has reached that level of trust with him to take even the negative feedback from him in the right spirit.
But no writer goes without that famous, or infamous, block. “When I get blocked I step back and look at what I’m doing. What am I trying to achieve in a particular scene or with a particular character? That often does the trick — asking oneself questions about motivations. Writing is a lot about psychology — you need to dig deep and then you’ll strike gold.”
Anjum does go deep. She relishes describing minute details. In Neti, Neti, you will find Sophie’s imaginative and fantasy world, her sense of unbelonging, her shrinking choices, her love for the baby Mani that reveals her sensitivity as vivid as her more “functional, but endearing” boyfriend Swami and his love for cars. Bangalore, which is more than just a neutral background in the story, and the fast-rising middle class with brittle ideologies also come alive in every detail.
Although writing occupies the better part of her life, Anjum takes time off when she can. She likes to walk in the open, anywhere green and without traffic, and to cook simple meals at the end of a working day. We hope that the Bangalore caught in the web of evolution that she captures in Neti, Neti will have enough open spaces to offer her.
[A recent story on Anjum after the release of her second novel Neti, Neti]
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