'All Fiction Is Amalgam'

Even before it had been published and formally launched in India and elsewhere, The Bikini Murders (HarperCollins India, 2008) by Farrukh Dhondy managed to garner intense media attention for its controversial and uncanny mirroring of the life and crimes of Charles Shobraj, the internationally notorious murderer presently in Kathmandu jail. In Dhondy's "fictional departure" the author claims to investigate the psychology of the killer and his (relative lack of a) sense of morality rather than sketch the portrait of any particular individual.

A well known novelist, script and screenplay writer, Dhondy has an illustrious career as a writer, teacher with extensive expertise in television, film and theatre as well. In conversation with BW Online's Alokita Datta, the author elaborates his ideas on adapting his writing for various media, his ideas on the writing process and a retrospective glance at his recently resurrected work.

What was it that interested you write about a murderer to begin with?
I wanted to examine the mind of someone who kills someone. I met Charles Shobraj personally over a period of time. I couldn't write his story because I don't know it. If he committed any murders he wasn't telling anybody. Besides he is quite impersonal, you can't get much about his relationship with his mother or other things from him. So the book is a completely fictional departure but is a writer's examination of what it must feel and how people get in to killing which makes them a larger than life person. So you go in to international intrigue, it comes naturally to you.

It was just my fascination with that subject. Writers have, of course, written about real cases. Truman Capote wrote In Cold Blood. There are two books on the life of Charles Shobraj as well but I do not want to rely on those books.

But there are definite resemblances to Shobraj's life. Are you trying to say that they are entirely unintentional?
It is not intentional to capture him but as far as the coincidences are concerned, Shobraj was born in Vietnam during the war, went to Tihar jail and is now in Kathmandu jail as is my character, Johnson Thhat. But how he committed murders, all the women he meets have been invented. The book is not a biography of Charles Shobraj. For instance, I have met his ex Chantal quite a few times. But she is not in the book and neither is his Chinese wife I met in Paris. All fiction is amalgam. It starts with observation and then goes into the convenience of plot. If I had called my character Charles Shobraj it would mean that I knew how he committed murders which is a very complicated position, legal and otherwise to be in.

You begin the novel with an allusion to D.H Lawrence's poem The Snake….
Lawrence's poem is about looking at a creature that fascinates you. It is actually about the poet's own emotion as he looks at the creature. But I do feel that the writer should put themselves in their books, what Keats called 'Negative Capability'. Unless you write in a confessional mode something that a lot of people do. The works of Henry Miller is full of sex and mostly about how he feels. I am more classical in my approach where I feel I am not the centre of the Universe. There is, however, a way of writing about your reactions, perceptions of things. For instance, V.S. Naipaul in his travelogues writes about how he sees something. The main thing about reading a Naipaul book is discovering that you are using his formidable intellect which gives you insights into things you could never get from anywhere else.

In the course of the novel did you find yourself sympathising with or humanising your protagonist?
The character is human. Johnson is a human being and he is capable of doing this. It is not some animal, which is my standpoint that you and I can do it. Of course, we don't go around killing people. Once you get rid of the idea of Reason you don't need a reason to kill. I begin to understand how somebody is introduced to that life. You don't take a bad person and try and justify his actions. What you do is take a neutral person and discover how he became bad.

What have the reactions to the book been like so far?
The reactions I have got are people telling me — will you sell me the film rights?

Are there plans, since you have worked on film adaptations before, to do the same for any of your books?
I have written an adaptation of one strand of Poona Company which is my early autographical book. Some people had asked me for that so I have written a screenplay for that. Much earlier I had adapted six of my short stories some from Come To Mecca and East End At Your Feet for BBC. I have also just adapted V.S. Naipaul's A Bend In The River which is going to be made into a film. Other than that I continue to write for television. I recently adapted The Hunchback of Notre Dame (Victor Hugo) for television which is still in the process. Also I have adapted A House for Mr. Biswas (Naipaul) which is also an ongoing project. We have found a director.

Are there fundamental differences between writing for film (since you have written screenplays for Mangal Pandey: The Rising, Split Wide Open, etc.) and writing in a literary manner?
There are differences in craft, in the level of concentration and purpose. In a film you can put the blame on somebody else, actors, director. In a book you take responsibility yourself. In a film you write the script and they bully you into changing it till they get what they want. It's the same everywhere, Bollywood or Hollywood.

Do the technical differences interfere with the creative process?
No, I think you get used to it.Writing is personally very satisfying. Some writers however, cannot write scripts and screenplays and some scriptwriters can't write novels. I have trained myself to do both. I did not do it for artistic reasons though.

Your earlier work Poona Company is being re launched this year. Hypothetically if you had to rewrite the stories, would you have done it any differently?
Yes, I probably would have but I don't want to write it again. It was written by a man of a certain age about a boy of that age. The memories were fresh and compelling. I am not compelled to write about it now. I do think of different sorts of stories of Poona (Pune). They do echo back to Poona Company. But I haven't read the book since then. I think I was much cleverer then than I am now. I seem to have lost that youthful wit, probably deliberately lost. I write simpler prose now.

What are your immediate projects for the future?
Firstly, there is the film adaptation of Naipaul’s book A Bend in the River. A film called Carpet Boy which will be my original screenplay based on a real story about bonded labour. The director of the film is Giles Nuttgens who was The director of photography in all of Deepa Mehta’s projects and has worked in Star Wars. The director for A Bend In The River is Hugh Hudson the critically acclaimed director of Chariots of Fire. With regard to books I have finished a translation of Rumi’s poems, a 13th century Persian poet into English, which shall be published by HarperCollins What appalled me were the poor translations of his work available in bookstores. Rumi is quite a departure for me. I don’t write poetry or verse rather.

alokita dot datta at gmail dot com