Writer Tania James talks about the strange and wonderful influences on her stories

Between arrival and departure

Writer Tania James talks about the strange and wonderful influences on her stories — from chanced-upon radio programmes to a misplaced nostalgia

    TANIA James does not have an obviously Indian name. But the imprint of India in her works has earned her praise as a “refreshingly authentic voice”. Her first novel, Atlas of Unknowns (2009), was hailed as an “insightful study of leave-taking and homecoming”. Aerogrammes, her new collection of short stories published in May this year already has critics comparing her to the masters of the craft. The immigrant experience — her parents moved to the United States from Kerala — influences much of her writing, but she cannot remember ever suffering from any kind of NRI angst. “In fact, as a kid, I was probably more afflicted by the other end of the NRI spectrum of emotion, which is misplaced nostalgia. I do feel a strong emotional connection, but more than this, I’m just really curious about India and that’s perhaps what keeps me coming back,” she says.
    We hear her novel involves ‘wild elephants and those who tangle with them’. Excerpts from an interview…
    They say first novels are mostly autobiographical. How far is that true in your case? Looking back, I was probably pushing against that expectation, by choosing to write about characters and settings that felt somehow distant to me in many ways. Still the book is full of details taken from my own experiences, family anecdotes, etc, none of which really propel the plot. In a way, all of my fiction is autobiographical; I’m constantly drawing from my own life, though not always directly.
    In Atlas of Unknowns, one of the most moving descriptions is of a girl from Kumarakom, Kerala, trying to fit into the bewildering, alien and sophisticated milieu of New York. Have you ever struggled to fit in anywhere, especially in the US? I suspect most writers have that ‘outsidery’ sense; it’s what gives us the vantage to write about the world. In the section you mentioned, Anju is 17, an age at which fitting in, especially within the sealed biodome that is school, is a high stakes issue. I’m sure I felt that way in high school as well, though I wasn’t burdened by the same level of cultural insecurity that she feels, as there were eight Indian-American students in our class of 45, a relatively high percentage. In other words, being Indian was no big deal. My insecurity had more to do with the big, ugly minivan that my sister and I took to school every day, rather than ethnicity.
    The stories in Aerogrammes present a wide variety of people, places, and times. Was there a lot of research involved? Is there an interesting story behind the birth of one of the short stories? The greatest amount of research went into Lion & Panther in London, which concerns two Punjabi wrestlers at the turn of the 20th century. What to do with Henry, which concerns an abandoned chimpanzee, began with a radio programme I had heard about a chimpanzee who had been raised with a human family and then, as an adult, was donated to a zoo.There are many such stories of human-raised wild animals, who actually believe themselves to be human. That dual identity — of man and animal — was fascinating to me.
    You were a student of filmmaking at Harvard. If one of your stories were to be made into a film, would you (like Salman Rushdie) like to actively participate in it? Sure! The Rushdie-Deepa Mehta team seems an unbeatable combo. I can’t wait to see Midnight’s Children.
    Which events of your childhood do you find yourself frequently revisiting? Do any of them involve India? I can’t think of any singular event, but I do often revisit sibling and family relationships. I think I’ll always be compelled by the theatre of family, and the coexistence of deep love and loyalty with darker elements, like resentment, jealousy, secrecy.
    Of the two figures of the reader and the storyteller, whom do you identify with more? That’s a really good question, and I’m afraid I can’t give you a straightforward answer. I will say that over the years, my reader self has been over-contaminated by my storyteller self. While reading, I find myself focusing on how the storyteller did what she did, trying to deconstruct the story. But a very good story will turn off my storyteller side, so that I’m consumed by the book, and it’s such a pleasure to be purely and completely a reader.
    We heard that you got married recently, and there were some Bollywood elements in the proceedings. Would you like to tell us about it? Ha! Well, in America, they say that the wedding is the bride’s one day to feel like a princess. I’d say, for Indian-American weddings, it’s the bride’s one day to feel like Madhuri Dixit. So yes, let’s just say there was a dance number involved.

Tania’s favourite Indian diaspora writers are VS Naipaul, Bharati Mukherjee and Michael Ondaatje (of Sri Lankan descent)