Award-winning author Anuradha Roy came out with her recent book The Earthspinner this year. Heavily influenced by the world of pottery, the book narrates the stories of its protagonists and how they fare in the society constantly changing.
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Roy has been nominated for many prestigious awards over the years. The long list of such nominations includes the Hindu Literary Prize, Man Booker Prize, Walter Scott Prize, International Dublin Literary Award, JCB Prize among many others. Speaking about her latest book with SheThePeople's Archana Pal Kulkarni, Roy said that writing to her is very much like pottery. She has been involved with pottery for years now.
She said, "You can't just slap a book together and expect it to become a bestseller. The revision of texts is my version of reshaping the clay so that you get to that perfect form and shape that you are looking for. I am sure that many people are doing it with much less effort but I need to work quite hard for it." Roy added that she does not stop revising her books before they go to press.
Anuradha Roy's childhood was spent in small and scenic places as her geologist father would take to many campsites where they lives in tents. Kulkarni asked Roy if the scenic landscapes described in her books are inspired by those locations. Roy said, "My first three years as a child were spent in the outdoors. We lived in Sikkim, Orissa, Bihar and the wilderness of other such places. My brother and I used to go climbing. That is the landscape I want in my head when I write. I also find it useful way to situate huge human dramas. A background that is not very distracting. Just like you put a painting on a bare wall, open space with room to grow. " She said that her father's geology is very much part of her book as the protagonist's father is also a geologist.
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The author's father gave Roy and her sibling the concept of deep time. In her words, it means, " It lends a completely different sense of all human endeavours. The earth has been going on for billion years and we are just a little whisper and blink on the face of the earth. "
The Earth Spinner mentions the terracotta horses that are made in many regions. Roy shared to make of such horse often 40 to 50 are needed.
Non-adherence to Conventional forms of Narration:
Kulkarni points out that Roy's book follows a unique style of narration. The author said that she takes inspiration from epistolary novels of 1920s. She mentioned the narration in the book Moby Dick and how it reads like encyclopedia entries. Roy said, " For me, the key is to be able to create a shape that is coherent and the flow that is not muddled. I like doubt in a novel but I don't want it to be just confusion in my own head which is being transferred to the page."
She also spoke of how her books deal with the pain of separation. The feeling of loss central to her stories and how her characters navigate that emotion.
Roy said, "I think loss is central to all our lives. We know from the start that we will lose people we care for. And now with the pandemic there is so much loss around us that it has become even more common. I know that from my earliest books its been a central theme. I think its a powerful question that literature generally tries to address. Loss comes to us in so many ways."
The dog named Chinna connects everyone in Roy's novel. The reader is also given the animal's perspective of the inflammable developments going in the narrative. With everything on the subjects such as politics and religion highlighted in the book the dog knows nothing about identities and yet her unites the characters. What was a made up character at first later come to Roy's real life. A taxi driver driver near her house adopted a street dog and as he could not take care of it while doing his duties, Roy and her family started to take care of it. Every day for eight hours the author babysits the dog at her house." I will it utterly bizarre that we are now babysitting eight hours a day and it feels as if the book has come to life. "
Submission to prescribed existence
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In her earlier interviews, Roy has talked about how she was trying to find the nerve to write about the socio-political issues. "The book is upfront about what it is saying. We know there are unhinged people out there with constant presence in our lives unfortunately. I can't deny that the thought of those people is bothersome and often scary but I think that when you are writing you cant be afraid and write. Its hard to be creative and cautious at the same time. You take the plunge and hope for the best but you write what you have to write. "
Her advice to aspiring writers:
Apart from continuous work to bring perfect shape to one's writing, Roy also thinks aspiring writers should read a lot. She said, "Please read a lot because that is how you become a writer. Creating rich sediment of other people's writing from which your own writing grows because no writer writes on their own. They write from what they have read.
Watch the video to know about Anuradha Roy's writing technique, the work she puts in for the names of her characters and much more:
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