The writer as a loner

Getting a prize is like a ripe mango falling into your lap when you sit under a shady tree or getting a gift at a party. It feels good but I...

Getting a prize is like a ripe mango falling into your lap when you sit under a shady tree or getting a gift at a party. It feels good but I believe there is no point in investing emotions in things like prizes. The huge emphasis on prizes is a product of the way the media works.8221;

For 37-year-old Vikram Chandra, author of Love and Longing in Bombay, whose second book which won him the Commonwealth Writer8217;s Prize, accolades may not mean much. But try as he may, he cannot get away from the fact that it is prizes like this one 8211; his book beat Arundhati Roy8217;s much-touted Booker winner 8211; which attract attention and readers. 8220;I know, it8217;s a funny situation,8221; he admits wryly.

And for someone who got into writing by chance, the slightly-built Chandra has certainly been attracting attention. He was at Columbia University8217;s film school when he came across Colonel J S Skinner8217;s life, which inspired him to take to writing his first book Red Earth Pouring Rain. Today, Chandra, who prefers to call himself a semi-expatriate, teaches creative writing at Washington DC but lives in Mumbai.

8220;Writing is a lonely process 8211; it8217;s an investigation into yourself. I usually have a landscape in mind and know I am moving there. I like complicated characters, layered in terms of plots, turns and twists and a kind of beauty that gives aesthetic pleasure,8221; he says.

Chandra8217;s fascination with narrative is obvious. 8220;Sometimes characters develop a mind of their own and resist changes. Narrative has its own vitality and mine needs space.8221; That, Chandra believes, is the reason why he is not comfortable writing poetry. But it has not stopped him from toying with the idea of writing a screenplay for a Hindi film. For a Bollywood film? 8220;Yeah, with naach gaana,8221; he smiles.

Bollywood flicks have greatly influenced him since his school days. 8220;I was expelled from Mayo College when the authorities caught me coming back from seeing Dharam Veer the fifth time, but they allowed me to return for my board exams,8221; he chuckles.

Besides, as Chandra says, 8220;I come from quite a filmi family.8221; Mom Kamna Chandra has written screenplays of Prem Rog, Chandni, 1942 8211; A love story and Kareeb, among others, while his sisters are Tanuja director of the Bollywood flick, Dushman and Anupama the film journalist married to director Vidhu Vinod Chopra.

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But would a Bollywood potboiler be his style? Touched to the quick, Chandra retorts almost immediately, 8220;The distinction made between an art and a commercial film is a crude error. I think it finds its roots in the modern Indian discomfort with the idea of pleasure, a Puritanism that has invaded middle-class India.8221; If realistic fiction can involve extraordinary incidents, he wonders why films cannot do the same. 8220;I am not defending nonsense but do you have to bore the hell out of everyone?8221;

The Hindi film will have to wait. Chandra is busy working on his next book, a novel based on a character Sartaj Singh, who appears in one of the short stories in Love and Longing in Bombay. But he is not telling much. 8220;I am a little superstitious in these matters,8221; he smiles sheepishly.