Kavery Nambisan On Memory, Imagination, And Writing From Intimacy

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Excerpts from the interview:
Q: How did this book come about?
A: Most of my books start with a character..., not anybody specific but someone from a village in the 1920s. That is what I was picturing in my mind: living in a village, growing there and then emerging from the village during that period, which coincides with the beginning of the independence struggle, India's struggle. And I thought what would happen to a young man who heard about this... but it was all very vague in my mind. So I started by first creating that village. And that is how I thought of the parents, and then Devaraya came into being. Creating this village of Kesarugattu, which means the village of mud, was a very interesting experience... The initial chapters go very deep into the social fabric of village life and the complexities and the frictions and the companionship...

Q: What were the creative liberties you took?Is it possible to have a universal blueprint of a village or caste structures?
A: I think they are special to each place... People a hundred years ago took for granted that this hierarchy was necessary. And when anybody tried to break that hierarchy and did anything outside of it, there would be repercussions... The castes coexisted peacefully when people respected the boundaries, that was important for the upper castes. And upper castes don't mind permeating other castes, but they don't want others to rise... Devaraya himself is a Brahmin, but there is another Brahmin character who is the priest in the temple. And he has got very rigid notions and he cannot tolerate any intrusion. There is an instance in the book where a girl of about nine and her dog breach certain things that are sacred to the religion unwittingly. But the repercussions are very severe, on both. I imagined these stories. But because I work intimately with village people, I have seen the type of exploitation, injustice that happens. And people think it is all right, that is not considered injustice. It is like showing a person his or her proper place.

Q: How much research did you do?
A: I did very little research. If you know something intimately, then you sit back and let your imagination work. That means you let yourself go into those houses and you sit with your characters. You know, you're eavesdropping on what they think, what they will do. When I landed upon this idea of this whole tragic thing that happens about Devaraya, that came to me in a sort of a flash... It is not a historic book, but history is always there in the foreground and in the background and so is caste. We cannot forget these two things in the course of that period of India's history. And also it amazes me to think that we don't pay enough attention to it... After I write everything, I will usually go back if I have mentioned dates or talked about a certain thing in history, I want to make sure that it is correct... I felt that the south had been ignored in fiction. Most of our leaders that we know of come from northern and western states. I did some amount of reading about that, like about Periyar Ramaswamy Iyer. There were many, many ordinary people in the south who gave up college, who gave up their jobs, they joined the freedom movement. Many were killed, many suffered, went to prison.

Q: It was remarkable that you managed to carry memories across.
A: My father was in politics and he had joined the freedom movement at a very young age. He had gone to prison. So although I was not born at that time,... sometimes you’d hear him talk about it, how they were punished, what was done, what the food was like. And I heard how the big leaders like Rajagopalachari or Kamaraj and Nehru, when they were in prison, would take classes for the younger people. They taught them economics, history, science. Those people took it upon themselves because they knew these young people had dropped out of college or left their jobs to join the struggle. And I've heard my father say that was the best education for him. So these were realities which I've used in the book in a different way.

Q: Fiction lends itself to be a great repository of these historical details, lived memories, testimonies.
A: At one of my readings in Bengaluru, there were a lot of old people. And many of them came to me later and said how much of it they remembered. They were telling me things I had heard about, but they had lived through it, and they loved the book because it brought back memories for them.

Q: How did you switch so beautifully between the male and the female voices?
A: I do spend a lot of time with the characters... I really try to give them space and I become a fly on the wall... Then only do I get that thing of a natural ‘what would this person do in such a situation?’ Not me, because otherwise I'll be foisting my ideas and ideology on them. That is why when certain characters do things and I wouldn't want them to do it, I'll say, ‘oh no, please don't do it’. But you know that that person is meant to do it... I feel for a writer it is very important to be able to deal with gender and not just identify on your side of your gender... And it's when you understand the opposite that you better understand yourself also because the two are so intimately involved with each other through life. I feel there is a certain level of asexuality maybe that you have to bring into the writing at the same time conscious of gender and its implications.

Q: What were the titles you discussed and how did this get selected?
A: I didn't discuss any other titles. A lot of people did ask me, ‘why Rising Sons?’ It was like some people felt the whole story was about men. But I feel I had no particular reason for anything. Like, I do have books in which male protagonists operate and I have also many in which it's a female. But I think the story demands something and I do it. And ‘Rising Sons’, for me, was generational because there are so many people. There is Devaraya himself who has to rise. There are his two sons, his friends. To rise and do something was the domain of men during those years. Women held the fort, many of them did step into other types of work, but generally it was the men. And I think if you can understand the men, then you can understand what the women go through.