How anti-CAA protests & a diary sparked Shabnam Minwalla's young-adult novel 'Zen'

Shabnam Minwalla has spent most of her life with words. It began with her editing her school magazine, then working as a journalist with The Times of India. She has also written non-fiction. What she most enjoys is writing fiction for children, young adults and, on occasion, adults too. Her first book, The Six Spellmakers Of Dorabji Street, was critically acclaimed and won many awards. Apart from the Nimmi series, her books for younger readers include The Shy Supergirl, Lucky Girl, and When Jaya Met Urmila. Her books for young adults include What Maya Saw, Saira Zariwala is Afraid, and Murder At Daisy Apartments, all of which have won awards. Shabnam has also written short stories in a number of anthologies, multiple picture books, and a non-fiction book called Colaba. But we are here to discuss her latest book, a young-adult novel called Zen. It is part romance, part history, part fiction, part politics, and it has been greeted with wonderful reviews. It reflects her deep love for the city of Mumbai. "Even now, when I fill any forms for my daughters or for myself, for religion I put Indian," she tells TOI Bookmark. "And it caused a bit of a furore at one of the maternity hospitals when I delivered my twins and the matron came bustling and said, 'Indian is not a religion.' I said, 'Indian is my religion. So, I'm sorry, but that is what it will be always." Jaya Bhattacharji Rose: You've written such a lot and your oeuvre is very varied. But Zen, burst upon the scene less than two months ago and has already gone into reprint. Why don't you give a snapshot of what Zen is about? Shabnam Minwalla: Well, Zen is, I think, many things and always difficult to put into a nutshell. But let me try. Maybe I'll talk about how Zen was born, just to explain why so many things came together in this particular way. I have a cousin and a few years ago she came to me with great excitement. While cleaning her cupboard, she had found the pages of a diary that her grandmother had left for her just a few days before the grandmother died. My cousin had not really read the diary at that point. She'd been too preoccupied. But when she looked at it, she realised that it was talking about the time when her grandmother was about 19 or 20, had just gotten engaged, and also seemed to be having a little romance with a boy who lived in her building, a Hindu boy. And the grandmother was a Muslim grandmother. I think both for my cousin and me, it opened her eyes because the stereotype of a Muslim woman in the 1930s, I would have assumed a very cloistered life, a very small world. But here was this woman who was navigating all the rules and regulations and you must do this and you must fast now and you must pray now, but had this vivid, huge imaginary world full of books and movies, and opinions, and walks out in the world, shopping for fabrics, getting her fortune told. It was revelatory. My cousin told me, 'Do something with this'. So there it was in my head. And I spoke to Sayoni at Penguin. We were having a conversation and it just sort of came up. And then around the same time, a little later, the anti-CAA protests were taking place. And again, I had another chat with Sayoni and was talking to her about how my daughters were suddenly looking at the world in a different way and how politics and newspaper headlines had suddenly become something personal, something that touched them in a way it hadn't earlier. And again, Sayoni said, 'Write a book.' And maybe because it was the same person who had talked to me about these two things suddenly in my head, the two stories came together. And I decided that I would do a book on a contemporary Zen who is drawn into the whole business of the CAA protests. And a Zen, her great grandmother, who lived in the 1930s and her world. I began to do a lot of research on the 1930s. And I realised that at that point, uppermost in everybody's mind was Independence and the birth of a new country that seemed inevitable, but still involves a struggle ahead. And so while my contemporary Zen became involved in the sort of the chaos and protests and sort of anxiety about the modern India, the Zainab of the 1930s became involved in the freedom struggle in a sense. Of course, both fall in love, both navigate their families and family expectations, and both realise ways to be true to themselves. So that, I think, is really the story of Zen. Well, yes, on the face of it, that is the story. But the way you describe, for instance, yourself in the acknowledgments, where you say that 'My family is Bohra Muslim, Parsi, Tamil Brahmin, Bengali...' Basically you're a melting pot, you're Indian. Yes, absolutely. Even now, when I fill any forms for my daughters or for myself, for religion I put Indian. And it caused a bit of a furore at one of the maternity hospitals when I delivered my twins and the matron came bustling and said, 'Indian is not a religion.' So, I said, 'Indian is my religion. I'm sorry, but that is what it will be always. 104105972This is part two of a conversation with award-winning children and young-adult writer Shabnam Minwalla. in part one, she speaks about how Zen had been inspired by finding a grandmother's diary from the 1930s wherein the grandmother records her opinions, talks about movies and a fleeting romance. Shabnam created a book of fiction set in contemporary India and during the freedom struggle told, through the eyes of two characters, two women across generations. The manner in which these young girls navigate their lives and familial expectations and yet remain true to themselves is the backbone of the story. In part two, talks about creating an army of characters while the two lead characters, Zainab and Yash, actually carry the story upon their shoulders. She also discusses the purpose of fiction. Is it necessary to write in black and white only with a moral to the story? Can it not have grey areas? Isn't that what makes fiction powerful, where the readers think things out for themselves? She also feels that children are far more open than adults and that is where lies the magic in writing for a younger audience. Jaya Bhattacharji Rose: We, as adults, when we read this young-adult novel, of course we understand what you are doing. But when I have seen a teenagers read your novel I am astonished at the impact that you have created. They suddenly with their eyes shining turn around and say, 'Really?' nd then they ask these questions. Shabnam Minwalla: You can't make me happier than that because really that was the point of this book, to ask them to think. The other thing how did you create this army of characters each one with such a distinctive voice? The way you bridge gaps, or you create the polarisation, or you create these children who have inherited blindly the bias and prejudices of the elders around them. And yet through that some of these children breakthrough. How did you create each character so distinctly? Actually, Zen and Menka is her best friend. She is a person with very strong views, very strong opinions and great deal of push and determination. The interesting thing is my protagonist began as Menka, and then I realised I can't live in the head of this character for 150,000 words because she so unlike me. I feel the more interesting protagonists are those who find themselves, who find their voices and who are not already completely sold on a single ideology. But the character of the best friend was a very important character for me. She was somebody I wanted to write about. It was just not just somebody I could see breaking through her opinions to fall in love with somebody so different. So, in a way, I switched things around and Zen became my protagonist. The larger friend group, they are all based on people I know. The two boys, Indranil is the clever guy but also shares Menka's determined views but he is the one who always has a witty remark. I think for a book of this type you need people who add a slight light touch, because everything can't just be opinions and politics. So, I wanted somebody with that kind of... I know a lot of people. One of the joys of being a journalist is I think encountering a lot of people who talk in this very amusing way. So, Indranil was easy. Zen's family in a sense wrote itself. I felt that Zen needed a sister who was incredibly supportive and Abha just walked out to of the pages, fully formed, laughing and carefree and loving. I think she was my easiest character, my happiest character. Whenever I was writing about her I felt calm and happy. Zen's parents --- of course, we are parents, we know how parents feel. So, in a way, Dhara is my voice. If my daughter was going through what Zen was going through I would react like Dhara, no question. Yash's family.... I think we all know Deepak Desai in various shapes and forms. We've all encountered people like him before. He, again, was an easy character to write, but I had to work very hard to make him rounded in a sense and not just this cardboard cut-out character. Maybe he has to some extent anyway become like that, I don't know. I spent a lot of time and energy softening the edges for him, but I don't know if I entirely succeeded. Yash's sister Ria, she never appears physically in the book. She is just a voice sitting far away in America and a bunch of messages on the phone. But she is the person that Yash turns to. Yash is a quiet person. Zen is not a person who opens up easily but she still has this amazing support system around her. Yash, in a sense, being a boy, I felt he needed somebody he could talk to and Ria seemed the obvious person. She was a difficult character to write partly because again I did not want her to be this stereotypical liberal activist but because she does not physically come on the pages at all it was a little difficult to moderate her and make her into a well-rounded character and I hope I have succeeded. Zainab's family.... Writing about the 1930s was tricky because I have not lived in those days. So what I did was read the newspapers. Thoroughly. I read the newspapers for the entire year of 1935 and into few months of 1936. To understand the politics to understand what life was like: Did people have a fridge? Did people have a telephone did? Did people go around in cars? Did girls go around walking around the streets without chaperones? None of this is what I knew. The newspapers helped. I asked people who do research in local history. I talked to a lot of older people too about their memories to put this together. But the essential template of the Bohra family is of course something that was handed out to me in my history. I knew that it would be fairly big and sprawling and I knew that in Zainab's case I had to give her a large number of siblings because her world was so much smaller than Zen's because she didn't go to school or college, she did not have those obvious ways of interacting with the larger world. So I gave her the bhai Faizullah, who is the freedom fighter, the person who is always anxious and worried and determined to change the world. Her other brother is a dandy because in those days that was the jazz era it was the time of parties and picnics and you look for a certain group of living in Bombay, Indians and non-Indians, it was like a really party era and I wanted that element to trickle into the book. Especially because they lived in Colaba and if you read Naresh Fernandes's Taj Mahal Foxtrot you will know that Colaba in a sense was the centre of the jazz age of Bombay. When you walked the gallis of Colaba you could hear jazz trickling down. I wanted to create that mood, because there was the freedom struggle on one side and there was all this music and western culture which was very predominant on the other. It was everywhere -- the movies playing at Regal, the new year celebrations. The Bombay of that time was truly an international city, and that was something I wanted to bring in. And of course Fatima, Zainab's sister, is an important character. Partly because they share such an antagonistic relationship and partly because she unexpectedly does carry the plot forward. I won't talk more about her because she does unexpected things and I'd like the reader to discover that. So, because the world of Zainab of the 1930s was a smaller world, her siblings became very important. And her sister-in-law Asma... It took me a lot of time to find out did that Bohra women in the 1930s go to college? Would it be credible to say that Asma had attended college? I had to read about eight academic papers to find the answer. But it's been such an enriching experience to put together this cast of characters, so I'm really happy that you feel that they are interesting in their own right and that their web of relationships sort of works. For the full conversation, listen to the podcast (Jaya Bhattacharji Rose, co-founder, Ace Literary Consulting and Associate Professor, School of Modern Media Studies, UPES University, has been associated with the publishing industry since the early 1990s) Audio production: Prateek Kapoor