Author Profile: Shashi Deshpande
As a teenager in Kerala I faithfully read the romantic short stories in the women's magazine my mother subscribed to even as I held them in a faint contempt. Love was a newly discovered emotion and I was vainly hoping to find echoes of it in what I read. The inept writer of run-of-the-mill romances gave me an abundance of mush. I loathed mush.
Amidst the treacle and the tears came a startling new voice. Someone called Shashi Deshpande had written a story called The Dim Corridor. Here was a story simmering with sexual undertones as it described the relationship between a young female teacher and her talented but difficult male pupil. Here was writing shorn of sentiment. The year, if I remember right, was 1972 and I still recall the phrase "coltish grace" used to describe the boy's movements. After that I would hopefully scan every issue of the magazine for the next story by this exciting new writer. The Intrusion affected me powerfully – so powerfully that it put me off arranged marriage forever.
The point about this anecdote is that I was convinced Shashi Deshpande was a man. In Kerala, Shashi is a common abbreviation for Shashidharan. My favourite playmate was a girl called Shashi but I didn't think on those lines. My reasoning was simple. Anyone who didn't write the maudlin stuff that women churned out in magazines had to be a man. You could forgive me for falling for that old stereotype. I was only 15.
Trying to figure out the gender of a writer from a piece of writing is an entirely futile exercise. And yet people do it all the time – people far older than 15 – just as they create categories such as "women's novels" or "women writers". It has been almost 40 years since this Sahitya Akademi award-winning novelist was first seen in print, long enough for her to acquire a set of pet peeves, prime among which is gender-stereotyping. She has said more than once that "Men" and "Women" are labels better suited to toilets than to fiction. Perhaps she should, the next time she is labelled a woman writer, quote one of her favourite authors Margaret Atwood who, in her anthology Murder In The Dark, has written a wicked essay called 'Women's Novels' — "Some people think a woman's novel is anything without politics in it. Some think it's anything about relationships… Some think it's anything that doesn't give you a broad, panoramic view of our exciting times."
That's another of Shashi's pet peeves: People associate male authors with grand themes spanning continents and centuries and dealing with major national and international events and so on, whereas women are said to prefer only "small" topics such as home and family. Shashi's novels (14 of them including four for children) do deal with the family, though. During the launch of her latest novel, In the Country Of Deceit, her friend the writer Githa Hariharan had referred to the "messy extended family" that her works centre on, and added, "House and home are central to her novels." Shashi does not relish this continuing emphasis on the family being the focus of her novels. "I write about people," she says impatiently, "about relationships."
The relationships of people in her novels are fractured and complex. Readers have spoken of how her world appears gloomy and claustrophobic; marital rape, loveless marriages and nervous breakdowns are not exactly the stuff of cheer. Some critics and academics speak dismissively of her work as dealing with the mindscapes of middle-class housewives. Whether you agree or not, you've got to hand it to her for her honesty of purpose. She will not pander to her audience or pick fashionable topics because they sell. She will write what she wants to write.
"Cussed" is how she describes herself. Don't expect her to throw in a tribal character to please the Marxists or a call centre worker to entice the young. It is perhaps the author's own voice that Kalyani echoes in Small Remedies when she describes classical musician Savitribai's uncompromising stand as "honesty". Bai refuses to sing bhajans even when it becomes the fashion to do so, even at the cost of losing some popularity. "Yes, this is how it is when you're writing a book as well," Kalyani muses. "I'm beginning to understand that it's not a question of planning, of deciding on the kind of book you're going to write."
Shashi's prose is spare, almost flat. She exercises great control over it and economises on words. Strangely, it lacks humour – strangely because despite her deceptively forbidding demeanour she is full of a wry wit when she speaks. She figures that the humour simply "didn't fit" the tenor of most of her novels and that is why it was absent. It is not the only aspect of her that is missing. Some authors wear their heart on their sleeve when they write. Shashi doesn't.
She is the kind of writer who immerses herself in her main characters, seeing herself as merely the medium through which they speak. She always writes in first person narrative but one should not mistake her characters' viewpoints for her own. What part of her self is reflected in them? Has she ever used writing as therapy to work out personal hurt? One is slightly taken aback by her answer: "Writing is continuous therapy." She gives the impression, she says, of being this happy, comfortable soul who has always had it good. But (although she doesn't want to talk about it) she was going through emotional "pain" even while she was she was busy creating works such as That Long Silence. If not for writing she could not have maintained her sanity, she says. "Even in my worst moments I wrote. Writing is catharsis."
I connect this revelation to her careful avoidance of the personal when talking to the media. Is she of the opinion that readers need not be aware of the personal lives of the authors they read? She says that all that the readers need to know about her is in her books. Besides, she believes she has more than amply revealed her personal side in interviews. Opinions only, I remind her, never her experiences. "One's personal life is very private," she replies. Revealing it would make her feel vulnerable. She spells out two reasons for her reticence: personal details are irrelevant, and she wants to protect people's privacy. She does not want to hurt anyone. "I can't talk about my relationship with my parents," she says, giving an example. So don't expect her to write her memoirs! She will certainly destroy the notebook in which she scribbles notes, and as for her letters, she hasn't yet decided whether to destroy them as her favourite author Jane Austen did her many letters to her sister.
What comes through quite strongly in her writing is the regional milieu that nurtured her. The flavour of Dharwad permeates her creations. "Dharwad mannu (soil)" is the reason many people give for the amazingly rich crop of writers and classical musicians who have sprung from this part of Karnataka which borders Maharashtra and was once part of Bombay State. Shashi speaks of the intellectual climate of her early years; the education centre that Dharwad historically was; the publishers who ran after writers to publish whatever they wrote; the discussions and battles that her father the eminent Kannada writer Sriranga had with his illustrious fellow writers such as V.K. Gokak, D.R. Bendre, and the influential critic Keertinath Kurthkoti.
Dharwad and Kannada bring one to yet another of her pet peeves: the tiresome question she is often asked on why she writes in English and not an Indian language such as Kannada. Perhaps this can best be answered in the way playwright Mahesh Dattani did some years ago: that English is an Indian language and is mentioned in our Constitution as such.
Among the Indo-Anglian writers, or IWE as they came to be later known, there have been names that have gained greater fame than Shashi Deshpande, Indian authors who have written for an international audience. But one must see Shashi Deshpande in context, and not just in perspective. When she started writing, way back in 1969, hers was practically a lone voice. She was, all said and done, a pioneer.
Shashi Deshpande's Oeuvre:
Of her novels, the first, The Dark Holds no Terrors, was later re-published by The Feminist Press in the US. Then came Roots And Shadows, Come Up And Be Dead and (a novel that is out of print and which Shashi wishes would remain so) If I Die Today. That Long Silence won her the Sahitya Akademi award. A Matter of Time also was re-published by The Feminist Press. Next in line were The Binding Vine, Small Remedies, Moving on, and finally In the Country of Deceit where her subject is love and betrayal. The four children's books she has written are full-length novels, and among them The Hidden Treasure and The Narayanpur Incident (on the Quit India Movement) are still remembered fondly by many who are in their 30s today. Shashi has also written a large number of short stories and essays as well as translated works from other Indian languages into English.
C.K. Meena has authored Black Lentil Doughnuts and has recently released Dreams For The Dying published by Dronequill
Personalities 
Author Profile: Shashi Deshpande
That's another of Shashi's pet peeves: People associate male authors with grand themes spanning continents and centuries and dealing with major national and international events and so on, whereas women are said to prefer only "small" topics such as home and family. Shashi's novels (14 of them including four for children) do deal with the family, though. During the launch of her latest novel, In the Country Of Deceit, her friend the writer Githa Hariharan had referred to the "messy extended family" that her works centre on, and added, "House and home are central to her novels." Shashi does not relish this continuing emphasis on the family being the focus of her novels. "I write about people," she says impatiently, "about relationships.".jpg)
She is the kind of writer who immerses herself in her main characters, seeing herself as merely the medium through which they speak. She always writes in first person narrative but one should not mistake her characters' viewpoints for her own. What part of her self is reflected in them? Has she ever used writing as therapy to work out personal hurt? One is slightly taken aback by her answer: "Writing is continuous therapy." She gives the impression, she says, of being this happy, comfortable soul who has always had it good. But (although she doesn't want to talk about it) she was going through emotional "pain" even while she was she was busy creating works such as That Long Silence. If not for writing she could not have maintained her sanity, she says. "Even in my worst moments I wrote. Writing is catharsis."
