A resident of Goa for about five years Sudeep Chakravarti, captures and delineates the essence of this city in his latest work of fiction Once Upon A Time In Aparanta (Penguin India 2008). A man of myriad achievements and interests, as invigorating as scuba diving, for instance, this may be his third novel (after Tin Fish in 2005 and Red Sun, Travels in Naxalite Country in 2007), but Chakravarti holds an extensive record in journalism spanning over 20 years. Having worked with organisations like The Asian Wall Street Journal, Sunday (which also owns Businessworld), India Today and Hindustan Times the author is currently visiting faculty at the Manipal Institute of Communications, University of Manipal. As he continues to be irate and forthright in his condemnation of naxalism and its ramifications in India's present context, Chakravarti has penned his prose about 'real' events categorised as non-fiction with as much scrutiny and research as he has with his seemingly fictional narratives. In an e-mail interview with BW Online's Alokita Datta, Sudeep Chakravarti discusses his ideas on literature, aspects concerning his novels and the reigning issues of 'Maoist rebellions' gripping the country.
In what ways do you feel your journalistic experience enrich your novel writing process?
In two primary ways. One is the detailing, and the awareness and appreciation of the son et lumiere nature of life. As a journalist — as reporter, writer and editor — I have been driven by the need to transport my readers to where the 'story' is. Perhaps this ability has transfused my present life as a writer of novels as well as narrative non-fiction.
I have also had the privilege of travelling much, and seeing much in over 20 years as a media person. One learns not only about places and people, but attitudes, histories, politics, joys, hopes, loves, tragedies, chaos. At some level, it seeps in. Writing stories is so often a distillate of experience.
With a proverbially fairy tale beginning, Once Upon A Time In Aparanta abounds in a host of myths, legends, fables amidst other ideas and issues. What has been the underlying reason to bring out this book?
This novel is meant to question the idea of "paradise" and what happens when a self-proclaimed "paradise" comes to face itself in the mirror. I have been captivated by Goa from my first visit in the mid-1980s. In 2004, I finally moved here, among other things, to begin writing this book.
Through Once Upon a Time in Aparanta I have attempted to capture this churn of present-day Goa, its charm and follies, its greed and grouses, its colourful characters and peerless natural beauty, and its seamy-side that can rival any banana republic. But tiny Goa, self-proclaimed party-zone to the world, is a lot more than all this, and more than merely a courtesan. Goa and Once Upon a Time in Aparanta present a leitmotif for similar places in Asia and around the world, which set out to seduce the world on its terms, but are often trapped and ravaged by it.
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You have consistently and vehemently voiced your opinions about State atrocities on naxalites, and the lives of 'political prisoners' like Binayak Sen. In the light of your earlier non-fiction work Red Sun, from Naxalism to Maoism, how do you think the conceptualisation and implications of these terms have changed over the last 40 years?
A small correction: I have consistently and vehemently voiced my opinion about State atrocities on innocent people and people who ought to be protected by the rule of law, not the rule of the gun. And, in voicing this, I have somewhat earned the ire of Maoists as well. Binayak Sen is not a Maoist; he has merely upset the government of Chhattisgarh by exposing their wrongs, and for that they have thrown a very heavy book at him, jailed him, and would dearly love to throw away the keys.
The essence of Naxalbari, the movement that began in 1967 with farmers fighting landlords in a tiny patch of rural Bengal abutting the Himalayan foothills and tea gardens, still lives as a reality check for India. It lives more than 30 years after the government killed off several thousand idealistic, often naïve armed activists with annihilation of the "class enemy" as their primary goal — and tortured and scared the rest into submission and assimilation. So much so, that while present-day armed revolutionaries call themselves Maoists, in public discourse they continue to be interchangeably known as Naxals, or Naxalites.
As India crows about economic growth rates of between 8 and 9 per cent a year, as it aspires to a place in the Security Council of the UN, and to become a back office to the world, the idea represented by violent protests has evolved and increased. Indeed, to such an extent that leftwing rebellion has spread from a small cluster of villages in the Dooars region of West Bengal, to 14 states with varying degrees of extreme leftwing activity and threat perception, according to the Ministry of Home Affairs. (To this list if one were to add Jammu & Kashmir, Nagaland, Manipur, Tripura, Meghalaya, and Assam, then the number of "peaceful" states, as it were, would be down to eight.)
We need to consider why a person would place his or her life on the line against the undeniable might of India's state apparatus, driven to pick up a shovel, or axe, or spear, or a gun to defend their position and aspiration. To kill.
Maoism is not our greatest internal security threat. Poverty, non-governance and corruption continue to be the greatest threats to internal security. Maoist rebels merely mirror India's own failings as a nation. Their presence suggests abdication by the state in an area that equals a third of India. Forty years since Naxalbari, and rebels are fighting for the same rights, the same issues. How hollow can 'development' be?
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Your first novel Tin Fish ostensibly deals with the experiences of adolescent boys in an elite boarding school. However, the context of the Emergency period, Indira Gandhi and all that it commenced sharply probes through. Is it a subjective take on history that you like to represent in your work?
Thank you very much for using the word 'ostensibly'; you've cut to the bone of Tin Fish. Indeed, I tried to tell a larger story than merely one of boys in an elite boarding school. My novels have a mix of the objective and subjective, and that is natural for a work of fiction where thoughts and ideas are conveyed by characters in a particular time/place zone. In my non-fiction work, however, I maintain objectivity throughout — though I must admit that my sense outrage does slip through now and then.
Either way, with both fiction and non-fiction, what I certainly try to do is make a point. I attempt to convey are issues of the human condition that I feel strongly about, and much of it is built on the colourful, charming, endearing and yet tragic tumult that is India. I'm one of those who chose to stay back in India even as my peers left. I stayed back because I have dreams and beliefs of India — but these are not blinkered dreams and beliefs. My India is a torn India, a confused India, an achieving India, a thieving India, a powerful India, a weak India, a rapturous India, a gritty India.
And this is the India I try to represent in my stories, through a telling of history and politics — of yearnings, if you will. Sometimes, it makes me angry to think what we have squandered in opportunities, and what even respected leaders like Indira Gandhi have frittered away with unbridled megalomania. I speak my mind. And I write, so my readers can join me in such travels.
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Are there are fundamental differences or similarities in writing fiction and non-fiction. Do both require research and documentation in a similar manner? How was your experience considering your earlier work was a non-fiction?
I believe that both fiction and non-fiction require a great degree of discipline and research. And yes, they can often be quite similar in preliminary preparation. Even in fiction, a setting, an idea is based on knowledge and a certain awareness of milieu, though the manner of delivery is, of course, can be vastly different that in a work of non-fiction.
I plan to continue pursuing both fiction and non-fiction works. I have no difficulty in wearing these two very different hats. For me, the great joy is in telling a story, to be able to engage readers. And this joy is priceless.
Are you familiar with the work of contemporary Indian authors? Who are the writers you find inspiring?
I greatly respect the works of several contemporary Indian authors, but I find none, to use your words, "inspiring" in perhaps the way you mean it. It is inspiring enough to be in the same universe as them. It is inspiring when one of them attends a book reading of mine, or tells me they like what I have written. It feels absolutely wonderful, so fulfilling. It's a vindication, in a sense, of the path I have chosen these past five years.
What are your forthcoming projects?
I am in the process of completing the Tin Fish trilogy. When I have completed that, I have ideas for two more novels. As for non-fiction, I have three works in progress. This should keep me busy for some time!
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Storyteller And His Notes 
