In a 2011 interview, the late Indian American author spoke about her works, India and the diaspora life.
By Aastha Bhatt
Renowned Indian American author Bharati Mukherjee passed away in New York on Wednesday at 76. The Kolkata-born writer, who left India for the United States half a century ago, chronicled both the Indian diaspora and India. She has been called, along with Salman Rushdie, one of the “token spokesmodels for the Indian diaspora.” Her 2011 book Miss New India was described by the New York Times as “a kind of parable for the new” India. Mukherjee, author of several critically acclaimed novels, including The Tiger’s Daughter, Desirable Daughters and The Tree Bride, spoke to Aastha Bhatt in December 2011. We are republishing the excerpts here with permission.
Q: Let’s start with your most recent book. Many of your works have been about people living outside India. Miss New India is based in India, and it is the story of Anjali Bose, an Indian girl. Why did you choose Bangalore as the locale?
A: I used to go to Bangalore — I still do — very frequently because I have a first cousin who has a home there. And in 2004, I was watching the influx of large numbers of people from other states. That migration was as traumatic and as exhilarating and liberating as the journey that I and many other Indians made to North America. These young women, who are coming [to Bangalore] from these smaller towns, for the first time in their lives, they were outside the stranglehold of family and guilt and shame and reputation. And they were making a lot more money than their fathers, retired fathers, especially, made. [There’s] tension between the parents’ generation, who aren’t going to turn down a condo bought for them by the working daughters, but still want to control the [daughters’] lives.
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Q: Is there a character, or event that inspired you?
A: I am interested in the psychological, emotional, personal consequences of globalization. In the novel, much of the violence and corruption [forms] the underbelly of globalization. Homes have been [sold], farm lands have been annexed in order for more and more [corporate] campuses to be built. I have a theme in which the feminists in the call center outsourcing jobs are harassed sometimes by young men who feel that they don’t have any jobs — their fathers’ jobs — to inherit, farming, or whatever. At the same time, they don’t have the social skills, or the English fluency to take the jobs that the young women like Anjali [the main character in the novel] have. To me that is the collateral damage of globalization and globalized economy. But I don’t want to minimize the sense of empowerment. The collateral gain is the women. I think a lot of the post-colonial critics of Indian origin in the U.S. are so anxious to attack the whole phenomenon of globalization, culture and economics, that they are unwilling to credit the empowerment of women that globalized economy has made possible. Now, where it will go, we don’t know. Culture is always moving, it is not fixed. No one has any idea.
Q: You have never lived in rural India. Was it difficult for you to write a story about a girl who was raised in a traditional and lower middle class set up? How did you get into the psyche of such a person?
A: A writer’s job is to inhabit other lives, other souls. I like to think of myself as an actor. You know there are two kinds of actors: the DeNeros — Robert DeNero — whose facial impression and body language changes, depending on the roles they play; and there are the John Waynes, who is always John Wayne. So as a writer, once the idea of the novel and the character has developed, I lift the lid of my laptop and I become the persons I am writing about.
Q: When you were writing, did you ever think about your story becoming the characters’ story, some connections somewhere?
A: No, I was only thinking of how much more dramatic in a way the process of dislocation and relocation is within India, how much harder it is within India than abroad. It is more intense in India. You don’t have to worry about the traditions back home in the States.
Q: You have written about two different Indias: one, traditional and rural, which still believes in cast and class culture …
A: I am a little reluctant to say rural. I am calling them tertiary city. The numbers are so large.
Q: And the other side is typified by the call centers, which is highly Westernized. How did you do your research on these diverse and conflicting Indias for the book?
A: It started with a phone call I received, for getting a credit card renewed. Her accent was so obviously an Indian speaking English. But the name was different. At that time, many U.S. corporations had specific instructions that they should assume American, easy-to-pronounce names because of the political fallout here against outsourcing over loss of U.S. jobs and all that. She then started talking to me a little bit more than she was supposed to. And I thought what an interesting situation! American during the work hours, and then go home and then be Bangalorean, Indian. Because I was lucky enough to have this first cousin, who has a retirement home in Bangalore, I was able to make several trips to the city. I was watching the changes gradually. In the interviews, I not only talked to the actual customer support agents, but the women who train [them].
Q: Is it not difficult for you to write about India the more you live away from the country?
A: Not at all. I go to India every year. All my relatives, except my older sister, who is a widow, live in India. I go mainly for family.
Q: A few months ago, at the Brooklyn Book Fair, you said that India is now a place where the pursuit of individual happiness is now possible… Why do you think it is possible now, and it was nota decade or a couple of decades ago?
A: Because now it is alright to articulate that “I matter, matter to myself, and am entitled to pursue happiness.” Before that, even 20 years ago, even if you felt it that way, you kept it to yourself. You had to pretend that “We” matter, that my family and kids [matter]. There is no question either of leaving your hometown and going somewhere else without being made to feel that it is a loss.
Q: As an Indian in the United States, has the immigrant experience changed for you over the years?
A: Yes, when I came here [in 1961], I was on a foreign student visa, and I was pulled out of it because I married an American. At that time, we still had quota system for Indians. There were so few Indians that I would be tempted to say hello to a stranger, which I would never have done back in Kolkata. I had also felt, for the first time in my life, an Indian, rather than a Bengali-a sense of national identity. Now because of the numbers, I find that Gujaratis hang out with Gujaratis, Bengalis with Bengalis, Tamils with Tamils, and so on.
Q: Who is your favorite Indian American writer?
A: I guess I would have to say Salman Rushdie. I don’t know whether I can call him American. He lives in both the U.S. and Britain. There is absolutely no doubt that he changed the parameters of Indian writing in English, with Midnight’s Children.
Q: What are some your favorite works by Indian immigrant writers?
A: Siddhartha Mukherjee’s nonfiction about cancer (The Emperor of All Maladies: A Biography of Cancer), I think it is absolutely brilliant. Another interesting book is, Solo, a novel by [Indo-British writer] Rana Dasgupta. It is set in Bulgaria. It is fascinating.
Q: How would you rate the works of Indian American writers in general?
A: I think that not many Indian immigrant writers take risks in terms of character or innovation. I would have expected, by now, people who were born here, or came when they were very young children, who went to school here to be writing about their experience. But I find them going back and inventing village life in India because it is much easier to sell it to the American crowd. (Global India Newswire)