“If you write the truth, you are a rebel,” says acclaimed Hindi novelist Mridula Garg, popularly known for questioning societal stigmas in her literary compositions.
Her novels, Chittkobra, Anitya, and The Last Email, along with essays, plays, and her memoir Ve Nayab Auratein, Garg have been written without fear of consequence. However, the author points out that her writing is often not planned. “As soon as I know the first word, the first sentence, I start writing. I don’t keep diaries. All the memories flood back when I write,” she tells TMS, speaking about the movie Qissa Be-Lagam, directed by filmmaker and poet, Sangeeta Gupta, keeping the writer at the centre of her project.
The film took nearly a decade to complete, beginning with footage of Garg receiving the Sahitya Akademi Award in 2014. Gupta, who has known the writer for over 20 years, deliberately chose not to create a conventional biography. The title ‘Qissa Be-Lagam’ — literally “untamed tale” — is a representation of Garg’s fierce independence and refusal to conform.
Memoir in motion
Gupta calls herself a voracious reader of literature, particularly of Hindi books and magazines. “I had read many of Mridula Garg’s novels and stories, and was deeply impressed by her non-conformist attitude towards life and society,” the filmmaker says, adding, “When I came to Delhi for my posting, I invited her to one of my art exhibitions, and gradually we became close friends.” The friendship has lasted for two decades now.
Gupta's filmmaking journey kicked off in 2012 with her first documentary on the art critic Keshav Malik. The film, Qissa Be-Lagam uses clips from Garg’s podcasts, old award ceremonies, and literary events. Hence, the documentary feels more like a visual memoir of the writer’s life.
Writing without labels
Garg is concerned about the decline in Hindi readership. She started her career in the 1970s, and she remembers a time when Hindi literature was widely read, even in engineering colleges. “Now, very few read in Hindi. Everyone wants to read pulp fiction in English. But I sense young readers are getting bored with that, and they’re back to reading good literature in Indian languages,” the novelist notes. Additionally, according to her, writers have a duty to save language from becoming jargon.
On whether she feels responsible as a woman writer, Garg stresses that there is no such thing as “women’s writing”, but there is writing. She further adds, “Each writer has different ideas, language, and themes. My responsibility is towards writing and language, not towards women writers as a group.”
In literature, she believes, critics have become more tolerant of unconventional narratives. “Politically, however, we are in a very poor state. Freedom of expression is shrinking, everything is seen as hurting religious sentiments. Literature, journalism, language — none of it matters to those in power.”
Despite her criticism, she insists that writers and artists must keep compassion alive, and that it is the writers’ duty to write in a way that readers learn compassion and tolerance. “If you lose them [readers], you lose everything.”