The 1984 riots: 'An excavation of memory'

The riot creeps in like a mishap that ruins a thoroughly enjoyable trip, and disorients everyone who is a part of it, says Radhika Oberoi

Advertising professional and writer Radhika Oberoi's debut novel, Stillborn Season, takes the reader to the riot-torn Delhi of 1984, which she has recreated through detailed research. She tells Uttaran Das Gupta about her experiences. 

Edited excerpts: 

 Let us start by talking about the subject of your novel, the 1984 anti-Sikh riots after the assassination of former prime minister Indira Gandhi. Why did you write about this? 
 

In my novel, the first half is more a collection of childhood snapshots as well as grown-up conversations overheard by children, who go about their business in blissful oblivion. To them, the riot means nothing but unexpected school holidays, and an unusually hushed environment at home. 

I wrote it as an excursion into memory and its familiar, beloved labyrinth of gardens, schools, roads and intersections, candy brands, boxy television sets and newsreaders with gigantic roses tucked behind their ears, VCRs, black telephones and bulbous Ambassador cars. The riot creeps in like a mishap that ruins a thoroughly enjoyable trip, and disorients everyone who is a part of it. 

The second half is a sensible, sobering gaze at personal tragedies, a retrospective analysis, fact-gathering from a variety of sources and retelling history for the sake of the dead, perhaps as a requiem. 

What kind of political response did you expect, and what have you got till now? 

Stillborn Season is more an excavation of memory, an artistic endeavour than a political statement. It attempts, in some ways, to “…fuse political purpose and artistic purpose into one whole,” as George Orwell said. It does not name the assassinated prime minister or refer to any political party, although its fictive universe is peopled with Goodwill Ambassadors and Arriflex cameras, men in white kurta-pyjamas with caps like “capsized-boats” on their heads, rioters who shout, ‘Sardar ka bachcha murdabad!’ 

One does not expect a political response as much as one expects, and hopes for, an emotional one. 

The structure of your novel is quite experimental. Why did you choose this structure for your first novel?

I did this so that I could include a variety of voices — a young and somewhat narcissistic assistant professor, a vagabond who has perfected the art of begging, a prisoner whose monologue brings to mind the urgency of telegrams, a sub-inspector’s vernacular syntax. These multiple narratives often offer contradictory perspectives, and reinforce the chaos and unreliability of everything, including the news. Characters resurface then disappear, and the reader is left with a sense of loss, or betrayal, as their fates are inconclusive. 

What kind of research did you do for your book? 

I researched extensively, but I hope the labour hasn’t weighed the book down, or turned it into a documentation of events. 

For instance, an article in The Telegraph, “Where were you when Indira Gandhi was killed?” (by V Kumara Swamy), became the groundwork for the events in the Prologue. I also actually went and met Sanjiv Talreja, who was part of Peter Ustinov’s crew in Indira Gandhi’s garden. That’s how I know that the cameras deployed for the interview that never happened were Arriflex, and that the tape recorder was a Nagra III. 

Articles in United Press International Inc that describe Peter Ustinov’s predicament as he waited to interview Indira Gandhi, also helped recreate the few moments before her assassination.   

Amitav Ghosh’s 1995 essay from The New Yorker, “The Ghosts of Mrs Gandhi”, somewhat inspired the events of my first story, “The Assistant Professor”, although Sukant, the assistant professor, bears no resemblance to the protagonist in the essay. Raghu Rai’s A Life in the Day of Indira Gandhi was a treasure trove of details strewn across the book. For instance, her love for words such as “Chimborazo”. Another book, Indira Gandhi: Letters to an America Friend, a collection of correspondence with Dorothy Norman, was a charmingly anecdotal source of secondary research. 

For details about the riots in Delhi, I turned to Sanjay Suri’s seminal book, 1984: The Anti-Sikh Violence and After. I also referred to When a Tree Shook Delhi by Manoj Mitta and H S Phoolka, as well as several of Hartosh Singh Bal’s [journalistic] pieces, for chronicles of the violence and its aftermath. Members of the Delhi Sikh Gurdwara Management Committee’s (DSGMC) Legal Action Cell, in particular J S Jolly, allowed me to read files of affidavits. Several of those witness accounts resurface as fiction in my book. 

I also had long conversations with the widows of Tilak Vihar and went through archived newspapers and magazines at the Nehru Memorial Library, to recreate not only the riots, but also the era — its films, music and advertisements. I gazed for hours at the artefacts and personal belongings of Indira Gandhi at her former residence (now the Indira Gandhi Memorial Museum); those artefacts have found their way into the Epilogue: Q&A, which is a flight of fancy. 

Stillborn Season

Author: Radhika Oberoi

Publisher: Speaking Tiger 

Pages: 228

Price: Rs 350