All the writing comes from some part of the self that is asking you to heal it with words: Jerry Pinto on his new book 'The Education of Yuri'

In a candid session at the Times LitFest, author and poet Jerry Pinto was seen in conversation with journalist and translator Antara Dev Sen recently. The session was named after Jerry Pinto’s latest book, 'The Education of Yuri' which is about adolescence in urban India. It is a work of fiction that traverses love and loss to adolescence and politics.Beginning the session, Aantara Dev Sen said, “This is a book about growing up and it's a coming-of-age novel. On a scale of 0 to 10, how much of Yuri is Jerry?” To this Pinto replied, “All the writing that we do, however alien and distant it may seem, comes from some part of the self that is asking you to heal it with words. Yuri comes from memory and desire. You mix memory and desire and what you get is a cauldron, and from that cauldron you dry out whatever comes bubbling out to make it into a book. So all of Yuri is me and some of me is Yuri."Dev Sen then remarked that Pinto's books have an enormous simplicity of language which leads to very complicated and deep thoughts, which is a gift. Responding to it, Pinto said, “I can write complex and erudite thoughts which conceal what I want to say just like anyone else but then I can kill them also."Next talking about the use of Hindi language in Pinto's book, Dev Sen remarked, “In this particular book the language that you use i.e. Hindi, is not accessible to everybody. In the early part of the book you were bringing in the meaning in next few sentences for the readers to understand. But later on, you just give that up." Commenting on this, the author shared his view point for deliberately writing so in his book. “If anybody didn’t get the Hindi lines written by me, I’d be saddened. I want to say that I take my space here as an Indian writer of English, who is recording the multiplicity and variety of the sounds he hears. The languages of India are our collective heritage... I didn't feel like anyone was excluded. I feel that I’m bringing you the taste of my city.”Dev sen then steered the conversation towards translations and Pinto's works. To this, Pinto spoke about his recent translation work, Damodar Mauzo’s Konkani novel which he translated from Konkani to English. “It is a lovely return home because Konkani is the language of my memory-- of my grandmother singing to me, the rippling music of Konkani in the background in Goa. But it was a home that has changed slightly because it wasn’t North Goa Konkani which I’m used to, it was South Goa Konkani,” he said about translating the book.He further added, “No writer ever gets as intimate with the text as a translator does. The translator has to unpick every single line.”