At the turn of the 20th century, Assam was witness to one of its darkest chapters in its recent conflict-ridden history. Set in the backdrop of secret killings, Aruni Kashyap’s The House with a Thousand Stories is the story of a teenaged boy from Guwahati who encounters life-changing experiences during two visits to his ancestral village. The debutant novelist tells Ritwik Sharma how his writing sets no boundaries and emerges from the positives of the Assamese experience. Excerpts from an email interview:
For an author writing in English, telling a story about Assam or the northeast would possibly put an additional burden of having to clear myths and misconceptions among people elsewhere in India, considering there’s scant cultural exposure and understanding of the region. Did you sense this while writing the novel?
I didn’t write the novel to clear myths and misconceptions or represent this or that aspect of Assam; it was written because I felt compelled to tell a story. Everything else the book does, or perceived to be doing, is because of the kind of person and reader I am.
See, some people have said that they are very happy it represents an authentic picture of the Assamese village and I am grateful they think so. But there are some things in the book that would be perceived as “inaccurate representation”. For example, in an Assamese wedding, a groom’s mother is not supposed to go with the borjatris. In the novel, the groom’s mother goes; she is present when the wedding rituals are conducted. People might be quick to point that out as an error. But in the case of this wedding, the mother went there — for various reasons that I just chose not to explain in the book.
When I write fiction, I don’t represent any one, any community, any place. I would leave that to my non-fiction, perhaps. Today, I am writing fiction set in Assam while tomorrow if I feel like, I would set my stories in the Antarctica. There are no boundaries in fiction, it is a free place.
Did you consciously try to convey to the readers, including the Assamese, that it is the rural populace who have borne the brunt of terrorism/counter-terrorism in Assam?
The village is there in the novel because the story demands it. I wasn’t consciously trying to convey any message. However, I totally agree when you say that Assam’s rural areas have faced the brunt of our conflict at a much higher scale than the urban areas.
You have said earlier that you gave vent to much anger while writing the novel. Why did you feel the need to restrain yourself and infuse more hope in the story? Did this alter the plot radically?
It didn’t alter the plot at all, but it decided the way the story was going to unfold. When I wrote this book, I was very angry with the Indian state and the insurgents. Their violence, their terror, was becoming too central in the narrative. Characters went into long monologues against human rights violations. I wanted to erase those because the book is about the characters, not about the army or the insurgents. The life of common people is more meaningful for me and to underscore that, one has to write outside that gaze of these suffocating forces, be less angry. My fiction emerges from the pleasure, from the joy, I take in the Assamese experience, not because I am pained and disappointed.
Given the open-ended nature of the story, are you planning a sequel?
No, not at all. I am not a fan of sequels. But Mayong is my Macondo. I will surely write fiction set in this region again and again (but sometimes, I will set my stories in the Antarctica too!) As a poet, writer and translator, do you set yourself specific goals?
I translate when I get time but I don’t set myself deadlines when I write fiction and poetry. I wait for the words to reach me. You almost hear them, when it happens. But I try to write a bit of fiction everyday — something.