A Woman's Worth

Delhi-based author Manju Kapur, 60, is almost obsessed with what goes on in a woman's life. For, why else would Kapur write four novels exploring the lives of Indian women set in different contexts? Her first novel Difficult Daughters is set against the backdrop of the Partition and revolves around the life of a young woman who is in love with a married man. Her second book, A Married Woman is about the trials and tribulations of a married woman and runs parallel to the communal unrest in India, which eventually led to the destruction of the Babri Masjid. Her third novel Home, is about people across three generations in a joint family juxtaposed by events of the Partition. Kapur's latest book is The Immigrant, where she explores the lives of immigrants in the India of the 1970s fresh with the trauma of Emergency rule. In the drawing room of one of the finest addresses in Lutyen's Delhi and over a cool glass of lassi, Kapur speaks to BW Online's Sanjitha Rao Chaini on her latest novel, the reason behind women-oriented plots, and about her realist fiction style of writing.

You have taken a break now. Do you plan to go back to teaching?
That's a hard question. I was on leave last year. This is my second year. I can't teach any longer. I have done it for 14 years. It has become so demanding. And the writing is also becoming more demanding. The past two years, when I was teaching before -- I decided to just go on leave and see -- I couldn't juggle these two worlds anymore. We are allowed five years' extra-ordinary leave. We are only paid if we take leave to study.

All the four novels you have written revolves around women. What inspires you to write about women?
Women are what I know best. I think women need to be written about. See, nobody asks why do you write about men. And I don't only write about women, I write about their family, the men in their lives, their relationships, the children... And I am a woman, I teach at a women's college. I have daughters. That's what I know and that knowledge is reflected in what I write.

Your observation and detailing is very apt. How do you get it so right?
That's a novelist's job. If you are setting out to write this kind of stuff, you better be real and believable. Otherwise, who's going to want to read it...

Your books focus on events in everyday life. So, is this the trend these days to write about believable concepts and instances?
I don't know about trends. There is always an audience for this kind of writing. Because, people want to relate to something that they recognise. People read books for several reasons - entertainment, fantasy, escape... I think realist fiction has an enduring appeal And it is not as if I set out to write realist fiction, I didn't. But it is what -- after trial and error -- came to fit the kind of stories I wanted to tell. This seemed to be the best manner in which to tell them. And so, I have tried to hone this craft to make it as seemless as possible, as transparent as possible, to bring the character as close to the character as possible without too much authorial intervention, without attracting too much attention to the author in that sense.

Don't you think people's expecation could be beyond this?
Judging by the figures, I know people do like this kind of writing.

You seem to write about people's lives based in Delhi and then link it to major events. for instance, Babri Masjid is mentioned in Married Woman and then the Emergency in The Immigrant?
It's because people don't live in isolation. And also, this is something I felt strongly about. And that is kind of a fall out from the concerns I had in my first book which dealt with the Partition. In that sense, Babri Masjid is a legacy of that kind of hatred that was there to a certain extent when India was being divided.

Emergency was something I remembered well. In fact, because I wanted to write about the Emergency and because I knew the Canada in the 1970s that I wrote this. This is a story of immigrants and I wanted to show the kind of desperation many middle class people had and their desire to leave their country. Not only because they wanted to advance in some way, but also because it seemed so impossible to make any kind of meaningful life in India during those two years -- all kind of freedoms were curtailed. This was a very dark period in our country and I just wanted to talk about that.

What amount of your own experience is reflected in the books you have written so far?
See, it's no one person's experiences. Any relationship has confilcts and resolutions. And that's true of every relationship whether my own or whether observed. It's kind of put together and imagined and so on.

In Difficult Daughters, Home, and The Married Woman you have spoken of women within four walls. What about those super women who juggle between home and office?
I don't think there is any such thing as super woman. Any woman who juggles between jobs and home is walking on a tight rope. It just means that we are doing both things. I believe that at home all kinds of outside forces are reflected -- economic, political, gender-based or financial. What happens in a home reflects, to some extent, the mores or the values of that society. So, if a woman thinks she has to get married, that is not an idea she is plucking out of the blue. It comes from certain social recognition that if you are married you are more recognised, you have a better time, this is the way to be, this is what is expected and all this is coming from the society. So, when you talk about the home, you really are talking about a whole section, a whole society in a way.

In each book something on the outside impinges on these lines overtly, either the Babri Masjid or in Home, which in a way is my more domestic book. For instance, there is the bye laws, the corruption and the family has to deal with all this in a routine way.

In The Immigrant, both Nina and Ananda have affairs. So, is this a reflection on the current state of marriage as an institution?
See, it doesn't reflect on the marriage as an institution. If they have affairs, it reflects certain lax in their marriage. It's really the lack of openness, dissatisfaction with each other that breaks a marriage. It is not the extra marital affair per se that breaks the marriage. It's what goes on inside it which is usually a lot of things.

On a lighter note, have you actually visited B-26, the protagonist's address?
No, I just made that up (laughs).

Are you working on any book at the moment?
Yes, my next books about an adopted girl child.

Is there any message in the books you write?
I don't have 'a' message. I don't think writers have any messsages. What I have tried to do is create awareness, especially because I am living in India. You know the woman's lot is hard, it's not easy. A woman has to deal so many things especially things with sexuality which is hard to talk about. I wish to make people really aware that this is what it is like and now what? Whether to stand up for a stronger sense of self or accept the status quo -- and that is something the women in my books do try and resist.

sanjitha 'at' apb 'dot' in