Anti-aesthetic but effective

Abha Dawesar's new book is different from her previous works because she took care not to be "eyeball-grabbing", Neha Bhatt learns.

Talking to readers and local journalists in Hyderabad and Bangalore, I got the feeling they are much more parochial than here, especially amongst the older generation,” observes Abha Dawesar. The author has just returned to Delhi after promoting her new book, Family Values, in southern India and says that she was surprised to find so many readers there who liked her works.

Dawesar’s writing is hardly conventional. Her earlier works have included Babyji, themed on alternate sexuality, and A Summer in Paris, a sensual novel merging art, literature and love in Paris. The 30-something author herself lives in New York, while spending a good many weeks in Paris every year. But she says that she makes sure to stay in touch with her roots in India through sporadic visits to the country. Ask her about dislocation and other such emotions and she says, unruffled, “I don’t feel like I’m being cut up. When I’m here, I’m here.”

Dawesar has been particular that her new book is first read in India — before it launches elsewhere. So how has the response been? “I’m surprised I found easy readership. Since the book plays with the concept of family, everybody who reads it is keen to know whether I am against a traditional family structure,” she says, adding an afterthought: “I explained to them that while I believe in a family that is very close-knit, it can become too close for comfort. But it is also your best support when you need it.”

In “unpalatable” prose, as she calls it, she writes about Boy, who, while living in a tiny space with his doctor parents, observes his extended family in public and private spaces. Events occur at levels far above what he can comprehend — power play, family rivalries — yet, due to such close proximity with adults for sizeable portions of his day, Boy understands far beyond his years. Thus he finds other boys his age far too silly to befriend.

At first, it isn’t easy to understand how Dawesar so consistently maintains her tone of complete detachment — a style that can be hard to take, as meticulous as it is. Her writing, though, is rich in detail and visual imagery and it helps that the surroundings are familiar — Delhi — though it could as well be any other Indian urban centre.

Her treatment is distinctly clinical and concise. An example: “Father will not let the Boy relieve himself in a corner or on a wall like many men do routinely. The Boy has caused enough trouble for the day. They are sitting there in that dank room covered with cobwebs as a direct consequence of the Boy’s actions.” This is where Dawesar scores. She creates a world which is hard-hitting and real, in moments too claustrophobic when put together in such a compact format and tangible structure, but it is peppered with hints of amusement that air the room. A few pages into the book, you catch on.

The distant narrative grows on you, as does a sense of attachment with the protagonist — Boy. Dawesar purposely changed the writing to read in present tense, changing her first draft which followed the regular past tense. “Writing in present is not elegant at all. But that’s how I wanted it — anti-aesthetic, without any embellishments.”

The political and social echoes in this book have been condensed into a short period of time, though these sounds have been heard over decades. “Issues such as corruption, scandals and medical aid to the poor make their way into the life of this family, squeezing into their tiny apartment,” says Dawesar. The crux of the story, at least for the author, is — how we go about our days removed from occurrences, little realising that at smaller levels it isn’t as removed from the paths that we negotiate through our lives. “The tone of the book is such that the reader pauses, instead of being merely entertained,” she points out.

The author has been particular not to name any characters in the book, the ambiguity of which unsettles, but only in the beginning. Instead, you identify them by their nicknames — Six Fingers, Flunkie Junkie, Dr Z and so on. “These nicknames have been quite a spectacle of discussion. Many readers said it took them back to their childhood, when they would have similar names for adults around them based on a certain connection they made.” Despite the distance she maintains from each of the characters and the happenings, there is palpable affection for the Boy, through whose eyes she chose to tell the story. “He’s the only one in the story who does not have a stake in the proceedings. That’s why I found him to be the best protagonist. He observes events the way no adult would,” says Dawesar.

It is surprising she is able to write so intrinsically about a place that is so Indian and local, while living in another country, enveloped as she is in a completely different set of images and sensibilities. “I have lived half my life in India and the other half away. But I have never lost the connect. I belong to a generation of global citizens. Thanks to the Internet and mobile telephony, there really isn’t any distance. So, I don't feel like a diaspora writer.”

“In a sense,” she pauses to mention, “it is difficult to compare this book to the earlier ones.” She says it has taken great restraint to drop an elegant style, aesthetics and a regular format, which comes more easily to her. Given the events and setting of the book, she had to be particularly careful to not make the writing dramatic or eyeball-grabbing. “Every writer has his or her techniques to grab the attention of the reader. But each time I seemed to be going in that direction, I told myself, ‘I’m not going there.’ So it has been a departure from my other three books. It is driven by atmosphere and not characters. I usually begin to write when characters take shape in my head and the rest falls around them. But this one has been propelled by ideas only.”

The works of J M Coetzee, Elfriede Jelinek and Thomas Bernhard, she says, were stylistically inspiring while writing. She prefers to wind down by doing ink drawings, which she says help her escape the “universe of the book”. She also makes it a point to create in the kitchen and also squeeze in some film making. And then there is still time for... “I love walking, which is so difficult to do when I’m in India. But while I’m here, I love taking train journeys. I like to meet people on the way.” And fashion them into characters in another world.

FAMILY VALUES

Author: Abha Dawesar
Publisher: Penguin
Pages: 296
Price: Rs 325