Writing herself

Indian novelist Namita Gokhale is here to talk about the female side of the literary world.

By BARRY DAVIS
Namita Gokhale 370 (photo credit: courtesy)
Namita Gokhale 370
(photo credit: courtesy)
Namita Gokhale says she is delighted to be coming back here. The 57-year-old Indian writer’s previous visit to these shores was three years ago, and she went back home with a new friend.
“[Israeli novelist] Zeruya Shalev is a very dear friend of mine,” she says. “We had a discussion when she was in India and the last time I was in Israel. [Later], I was associated with the Joseph Conrad [literary] Festival in Poland, and we invited Zeruya to take part. We hit it off immediately.”
Unfortunately Gokhale and Shalev will miss out on seeing one another when the former participates in the Words on Water – India & Israel in Conversation next week, the literary section of this year’s Celebrating India in Israel cultural season.
“Zeruya will be away while I am in Israel,” says Gokhale, “but I am sure our paths will cross again in the not-too-distant future.”
Shalev’s absence notwithstanding, Gokhale will be in good company at the twoday event, which will take place on Thursday at the University of Haifa and on Friday at Jerusalem’s Mishkenot Sha’ananim. The lineup includes compatriot writer Amish Tripathi, whose “Shiva Trilogy” is a bestselling series; historian and author Mushirul Hasan; popular Israeli literary figures Gabi Nitzan and Sarai Shavit; Tel Aviv University East Asian Studies lecturer Dr. Ronie Parciack; literature journalist Shiri Lev-Ari; and writer and playwright Savyon Liebrecht. Gokhale will team up with Liebrecht to discuss the female side of the literary world, in a conversation entitled “Chronicling Women.”
In addition to her friendship with Shalev and several other Israeli writers, Gokhale says she feels a particularly strong affinity with Israeli culture.
“I can’t say exactly why that is so,” she says. “Of course there is a very strong Jewish community in India – it is minuscule, but it is there – and there is no history of conflict between Israel and India. Apart from that, we are two very ancient cultures. The Jewish culture is one of the oldest living cultures.”
Gokhale shot to fame, and achieved a certain degree of notoriety, when her 1984 debut novel, Paro: Dreams of Passion, created a sensation due to its candid sexual humor. Critics described the eponymous female character as “a heroic temptress, alluring and rapacious.”
PARO LIVES LIFE on the wilder side of the sexual divide, but eventually opts for a more conventional route through life.
In fact, recalls Gokhale, she and Shalev discussed that book at a conference the last time the former was in Israel – though she notes that the dialogue there did not develop quite the way she and Shalev planned.
“The person who introduced the session obviously felt a bit uncomfortable with the idea of these two large women discussing their sexuality, so he sort of watered it down. He said the session was about human relationships, or something like that,” she recalls with a laugh. “I told him that wasn’t the topic, and that it was about sexuality.”
She may be able to take a humorous look back at that experience, but Gokhale takes her craft, and the subjects about which she writes, very seriously.
“This is something I feel very strongly about,” she says. “The sexual experiences of women writers are different compared with the way men write about sexual experiences. In many parts of the world, women have been suppressed and repressed as writers, but also with a huge amount of self-censorship. Writing about your body and writing about your sexuality is about reclaiming the arena of your body as material. It is important to deal with this and then move on.”
Of course, the proof of the pudding is in the eating, and one can’t argue with the sales figures of her entertaining debut delivery.
“It is still in print, and a new generation of readers seems to enjoy it and find it funny,” she notes, adding that despite India’s image as a generally conservative society, there weren’t too many people up in arms over Paro.
“I think they were surprised that someone who looks an upper-middle-class housewife, who looks like she comes from a so-called good family, would write such a book. They couldn’t work out what was wrong with me, to write a book like that. Yes, it did produce quite a large amount of shock and alarm, but there are other writers who have faced much more serious repercussions.”
In the interim, she has been busy, writing an Indian mythology-based tome called The Book of Shiva, another called In Search of Sita: Revisiting Mythology, and a junior version of the Sanskrit epic The Mahabharata. She also produced a sequel to her first book, called Priya, as well as a collection of short stories. All told, to date, she has published 11 books.
She is unrepentant about any furor she may have caused with Paro; she says she is determined to stay true to her own credo and express her opinions and feelings in her writing, come what may.
“I wrote my first book in the first person feminine, and I tried to write my second novel in a masculine voice. But it didn’t work until I got back to my female voice,” she says.
This return to her own gender followed Gods, Graves and Grandmother, in which, she explains, “I tried to write like an androgynous man-woman, someone who is above all this [sexual identity].”
She observes that “you have to be yourself. Otherwise you simply cannot create. I spent all that time saying I am not a woman writer, but I am.”
Of course, there are exceptions.
“Tolstoy wrote about women better than any woman ever did,” Gokhale notes, “so I wanted to be like that – not like Tolstoy, but to have that facility.”
So, are there are any taboos, any Rubicons that must not be crossed? “I think there are red lines, but they are the red lines of the individuals who write them,” the author continues.
“India is a much more liberal society than people from the outside think. India is a very diverse society, and there is nothing that hasn’t been written about before, whether it is extreme sexuality – you have the Kama Sutra – hedonism or whatever.”
Yet there are plenty of sensitive spots, too.
“The other part of it is that Indians have this great freedom to feel offended,” she says “When you write for one-and-a-half billion people, you have to realize that any one of them may be offended by what you say. So there are plenty of conflicting situations. You just have to get on and do whatever feels right.”
For more information about Words on Water – India & Israel in Conversation: www.celebratingindiaisrael.com