‘A Novel Need Not Transcribe Reality’

Alokita Datta

It has been a journey across several worlds for Rana Dasgupta and one that has  been realised more often than less through the power of an expansive imagination. Despite being a globe trotter — born in Canterbury, England, having lived in the US and now in Delhi for the past 8 years or so — his travels are significantly dwarfed by the interplay of varied stories from places far and wide that enrich his fiction.

Dasgupta’s first novel Tokyo Cancelled(2005, Penguin India) takes place in a non-descript airport lounge and sees the culmination of a story cycle replete with cross cultural references and “absurd things” which represent the “totally magical times we live in”, ironic as it may sound. His latest novel Solo (Harper Collins, 2009) is an in-depth exploration of the life of a 100-year-old man in Bulgaria and his “rather ordinary obsessions and his incompetent human relationships”, trying to recollect his memories and leave a behind a meaningful legacy through his “fantastic imagination which redeems him to himself”.

In an interview with BW Online’s Alokita Datta, the author shares his thoughts ranging from his love of Bulgarian music, his ideas behind the creation of his second novel and the Indian literary sensibility.

What interested you about Bulgaria to contextualise your book Solo in that country?
There are a lot of dimensions to this. One is that I was really interested in Bulgarian music and there was Bulgarian music that became very popular in the 1990s which I found really amazing. I read through some of the history of Bulgarian music and found that the way history, music and politics interacted was totally incredible.

In the beginning of the 20th century Bulgaria was a part of the Ottoman Empire and, therefore, the music people heard was a combination of Turkish, Arabic and gypsy music. All this music was banned by the Communists. So the people of my character's (Ulrich) generation had their music taken away from them. They grew up in such a managed musical environment that people could be arrested for playing the wrong chords or the wrong melodies. When the Communist government fell all these old kinds of music came back. I wanted to make this point in my story.

In addition, I also wanted to write about a little country. I have lived in the US and India for a long time and they are such big countries and so obsessed with themselves and think they are the whole world. I found it interesting to write about a small country. Bulgaria has a population of 8 million and its whole history has always been determined by other countries around it and, thus, getting pulled into Russian history and German history without much of a choice. There is a section in the book where Bulgaria gets drawn into the Second World War and Ulrich's mother is very unhappy about it. I think this is a very poignant part of a small country's stories where just to survive they get caught in a terrible situation, destroyed and taken over by other countries.

So Ulrich's ambitions and failures mirror those of the country as well? Did you intend that they be intertwined?
Very much. Bulgaria is a setting which allows me to think about very intense human experiences. When you go through a long period of time and see yourself destroyed and put back together several times, what is it that remains behind, what is really you?, is the kind of questions Ulrich is struggling with. The history that Ulrich lives through is one where he as a character is destroyed several times. The world that he knows for one period of his life is completely destroyed and he has to remake it in order to live in another world.

The country started off the 20th century pretty well; the world we start with in this world is an optimistic one. People looking towards the future, building a big city, they think it is not going to be long before they start living in a great European city. The entire optimism is destroyed when Ulrich is still a boy, by the Balkan wars and the First World War. That optimism never returns. There is a fit between the character and the country. It is a country (as in India) where you cannot escape politics and history. You may want to be a great chemist but you are just pulled down by other things. You have to deal with your family's financial collapse or the fact that politics is tearing up society apart or the death of your best friends.

In the West, there has been this idea that life is a very private affair and you don't deal with politics. You just lead your life, have your little household and go about your business. I think this is a very small idea of life. Every human life is part of immense stories of history. Bulgaria is a place where no one can ignore that they are part of big stories. Families were getting ripped apart because some of them were fascist and others communists, people were denouncing their own spouses and parents to the communist government. Politics was in houses and in lives in a way I found quite productive as a feel for this character.

While representing the Bulgarian way of life did the lack of first-hand experience pose a problem?
There isn't a lot written about Bulgaria, you can't find a lot of details online, for instance. So, it is difficult to find out basic things like what brand of cigarettes do people smoke? Or what does the interior of a Bulgarian house look like? Do they drink tea or coffee in the morning? Which are all things the author has to know? I did go to research trips to Bulgaria and found out lots but there were still details that needed to be known. I wouldn't have written the book without having a close creative relationship with several Bulgarians who worked with me on various aspects and told me when things were just blatantly untrue.

Besides there are a lot of novelists who have written about places they don't come from, lots of people have become obsessed by places that are not their own. I think pure factual things are easy to overcome. The work of writing a novel is not to transcribe reality. A novel is something bigger than that. Dealing with the factual part of it is only a small part of the story. The big questions in writing a novel revolve around discovering, what this man's (Ulrich) personality is all about? What does it mean for him to grow old in the same house as his mother? How will he deal with the loss of his son? These are questions that do not require you to be in any particular place in the world. They are human questions...

Do you really feel these ideas could be understood and absorbed in any culture?
You are right, in the sense that the particular form these stories take is specific to Bulgaria. I think time will tell how this book is read in different places. For instance, I think this is a book that grows very easily in India because a lot of the themes are Indian. The ideas of living under a socialist government, themes of experiencing how your country does not produce the great things in the world feeling or giving up your own ambitions to support your family. Then the surprising intensity of post liberalisation is like that in post Communist Bulgaria, suddenly there is capitalism and it is raw and strong, producing new ambitions and financial minded people. So, I hope it would be easily read