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India Booked | Jaipur and Japan: A Kindred Contrast
100 Plays4 years ago
In the 14th episode of India Booked, author Anukrti Upadhyay takes us through the deserts of Rajasthan and the hot springs of Japan through her novel Kintsugi. In the same conversation, she connects contrasts betweenthe cultures of Jaipur and Japan and creates a delightful echo, all of her own.
Anukrti Upadhyay is also the author of the twin novellas Daura and Bhaunri, which have been commended for its independent characters and fresh narrative, and a short story collection in Hindi called Japani Sarai, making her one of the few bilingual writers in India.
Tune into this episode to hear her and host, Ayushi Mona discuss her inspiration for writing and her thoughts on how books belong more to the readers than the authors themselves. She paints a picture of the striking visual differences in the aesthetics of Japan and India, calling both the cultures “perfect foils to each other” and expresses how people, despite differences in cultures and traditions, are not very different from each other after all.
Tune in for a descriptive treat of an excerpt from the novel Kintsugi by the author herself, as she brings to life the people and the lanes of the Johri Bazar of Jaipur.
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Transcript
Introduction to Anukruti Upadhyay and Kintsugi
00:00:00
Speaker
in Japanese art of mending broken objects with gold. Kintsugi is also a novel written by Anakruti Upadhyay about young women who breach boundaries, overcome trauma, and challenge the social order about men surprised by women who are unconventional, unafraid, and independent.
00:00:19
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This is a gripping book that ties in together Japan and Jaipur and follows lives of multiple characters as they intersect and diverge, collide and break. Anukruti has also written two fascinating novellas, Dora and Bhari, based out of Japan as well as a short story collection in Hindi called Japani Sirai. Join us on this episode of India Booked to learn more about her books.
00:00:47
Speaker
Hi everyone, I am Ayushi Mona, your host on India Booked, a podcast where we talk about India through the lens of its literature and its authors. Today I am extremely kicked to have with me Anukruti. Anukruti has written three books in English and one in Hindi. She has degrees in Management and Literature as well as Law.
Anukruti's Bilingual Writing and Cultural Influences
00:01:13
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Annapruti writing is fascinating because she writes in both English and Hindi. Her twin novellas, the two married in 2019, Dora and Bhari, she's followed up with this recent publication and that's what we are going to talk about today. Annapruti, welcome to the show.
00:01:34
Speaker
Hi, Ayushy. Thank you very much for having me on India Booked. I am very pleased to be here to talk about the books and to share thoughts over about Kintsugi and Dora and Bori with your listeners. Anuprithi, you know, before we begin, I have to tell you that I recently had Vishish Kothari on the show.
00:01:58
Speaker
And I asked him for recommendations from writers who've written Rajasthan very evocatively or really well in their books. And he recommended both your novellas off the bat. And I told him that I'm recording an episode with Anukruti next week. And I'm definitely going to bring this up with her and tell her this.
00:02:23
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So you grew up in Rajasthan right Anuprati and how has that shaped your literary imagination?
00:02:30
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I'm so pleased that Vishish recommended me. Vishish and I interacted the first time at the Jaipur Literature Festival earlier this year in January, where we were in a session talking about Sri Vijay Dandeta, the legendary chronicler of Rajasthani folk tales and archivists of folk culture.
00:02:55
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So the way Rajasthani folk tales have sort of permeated in the collective conscience of the people of the state and the way it has survived, you know, so for example, Vishish actually grew up in Kolkata and he has traveled the world, educated everywhere, but the fascination for those folk tales survived in him.
00:03:18
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For me, I actually grew up
Rajasthan's Influence on Anukruti's Writing
00:03:21
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in Jaipur. I lived all my life in Jaipur till I went to Hong Kong, where I worked for International Investment Banks for a number of years. So those four years in Jaipur, surrounded by the desert, surrounded by the stories and traditions,
00:03:41
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of the people from the desert, I think they just, you know, penetrated into my subconscious without my being aware that they had such a profound impression, such a profound impact on me. So when I started writing Dora, so I wrote Dora first and then Bori. When I started writing Dora, it all started with the image of a beautiful lush tree growing up, growing in a desert, parmeshed for water.
00:04:11
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So that that image of the tree and the contrast with the desert was where I started the writing from and as I wrote.
00:04:22
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all the visuals from the desert, all the memories from my growing up years in Rajasthan, they just came flooding back. Even things that I did not consciously recall experiencing or seeing, it was like a montage playing in my head. And
00:04:47
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It surprised me and it overwhelmed me to realize how much the desert meant for me and how much Rajasthan and its traditions and lore is meant for me.
Literature Set in Rural Rajasthan
00:05:03
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And in both Dora and Puri, they just took over. They, as you know, Dora and Puri are both located in rural Rajasthan. After I wrote them and my publisher Udayan Mitra and I, we were discussing
00:05:20
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He said, can you recommend any other books which are written about Google Rajasthan and I originally in English and I thought and thought and I couldn't recall even a single one and he said because he is not aware of any either. So there's not a lot of original literature in English with Rajasthan
00:05:44
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as the locate or as the rural traditions as the center. That surprised me and saddened me to a degree because it's a very colorful state. It's a state which has history and tradition.
00:06:01
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Anupruti, we spoke about how Rajasthan has influenced your literary imagination. And in Dora, you portray this very idealistic, poetic, young district collector, right? And it's very interesting because we don't normally think of Dhanis
00:06:17
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or there's a certain touristy perception of Rajasthan in the mind of an average Indian, right? And that perception is not really linked to literature. So, when, while you were writing, how did you sort of, were you thinking that, oh, I must manifest Rajasthan in a particular way or does the story sort of take over and Rajasthan is just a setting for you?
00:06:44
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That's a very interesting question. I did not consciously try to portray Rajasthan but when I began writing and I realised that this story was actually a desert story, this was really more about the desert and Rajasthan and its people than I had initially visualised
00:07:09
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The folklore and the music and the food, the culture and traditions, they just, just wove organically to the story. You know, a lot of the local color of Rajasthan, the dhanis, the dresses of people, the very specific problems of nomads,
00:07:34
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who are treated as outcasts by the people who lead a more settled, more conventional lives and are treated poorly by the administration. Those problems just seem to grow into the story without my volition. Also, I'm an intuitive writer.
Feminism and Character Development in Anukruti's Work
00:07:56
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I do not plan and I never write an outline. So it was a curious experience to see how these images and these features just emerged into the story. The other interesting thing was that when I was writing about the Sarangya in Dora, one of the key characters who take the story forward,
00:08:25
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The song story that the Sarangya tells the district collector, that song story just emerged in one whole vision. So it's not really a folk story. It's a story that I imagined. It just came intact in one entire vision. And it was quite an interesting experience to write it because
00:09:08
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Deeds with the lives of women, right? So the visual imagery there, right? Like, you have to feed the cattle, you have to, you know, bhajra rotis are being made hot, right? And the kind of lives of Rajasthani women as well. Because, you know, wherever there is underrepresentation culturally,
00:09:13
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It comes across as a folk story, but in fact, it isn't. I don't know whether I managed to answer the question.
00:09:27
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There's one level down, there's a representation of women there. And you bought that out in your other book. And I'm just thinking that how did this, you know, sort of, I know this is known for also being a patriarchal land, right? Like much of our country, of course. What is it that fascinates you about the depiction of these women? And you've written and spoken about it before, but I thought I'll ask you again.
00:09:57
Speaker
Hello, thank you for asking. Again, it came as a surprise after I finished Bali, how strong Bali emerged. And later on, readers and people who read Bali have called it a feminist novel. They've said that it's a very strong feminist voice. When I was writing it,
00:10:22
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I was just telling a story of a nomadic woman. I did not consciously make an effort to create a character who breaches boundaries or who is looking to make a feminist statement. But again, the story shaped that way. And that's because
00:10:43
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In the very difficult terrain of Rajasthan, the Rajasthani women are very hardy. If you see them, they are the ones who do really, really hard labor. They fetch water and still there are many villages where there's no water and no electricity.
00:11:03
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They walk for miles to fetch water. They work in the farms, and the nomad women travel with their families, with their clans, and they lead a really difficult life. And yet, they are so filled with the joy of living that you see spilling out in their colorful dresses, their love for ornaments.
00:11:27
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their love for adorning, their carts, their camels, their oxen. So that that will to celebrate life amidst all their hardships, to me, epitomizes the strength of Rajasani women. And that emerged in Bali
00:11:51
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The other sort of important factor which I realized after writing Bodhi, not during the writing process, after writing I realized that she's also the complete opposite of the passive damsel in distress portrayed in the folk tales of Rajasthan.
00:12:15
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you know, the man waits for, you know, Maru waits for Dhola to come and rescue her and take her away. And this, you know, Padmavati, though she, you know, later on commits Johar, but she also waits for Ratan Singh to come find her.
00:12:34
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So they do not have a personality which asserts itself. They are objects of adoration. They are objects of love. But Bhaori is completely opposite. She's the asserter. She's the seeker. She's the one who falls in love with her husband. But that I only realized after I finished writing the book.
Cultural Fusion in Kintsugi
00:13:04
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interesting and um and again uh both uh in kintsugi also right and and when i my perception you know no kriti when i picked up kintsugi was that oh this is not going to have anything to do with india it'll be very immersed in japanese culture obviously due to the title of the book right but both leela and mina right and and the whole tying it back to jefford is something you've done so if you could just
00:13:34
Speaker
Tell us a bit about your new book and perhaps read a bit from it and what was the process of writing that like for you? Sure. Kim Sukhee was, as you've rightly said, it has a different feel and flow from the other two books that I've written.
00:13:57
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Also, it reads in a different manner. It's not folklorish. It's not tied to rural Rajasthan. But it's very much located, or at least a significant part of it is located in Jaipur, in the walled city of Old Jaipur, where old tradition still lives.
00:14:25
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Japan, to me, the two cultures, the culture of Jaipur, you know, full of snaking lanes and crowds and overwhelming colors and smells and noise just contrasts so sharply.
00:14:43
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with Japan, which is such an organized, neat, arranged culture where even nature is manipulated, is bent in a way by artists, by people, by landscapers, by writers to all harmonize. So the two cultures to me are just like perfect foils to each other.
00:15:13
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which is, you know, in many ways colorful and chaotic, and the other that is so organized but once you scratch the surface you see the repression, you see hidden things.
00:15:28
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which emerged in subtle ways. The way Kintsugi happened was I visited Hakone for the first time and that was my first experience of a Japanese onsen, you know, a Japanese hot spring. Hakone is located in the mountains near Tokyo and there is a hot spring, it's a very popular hot spring resort actually, but
00:15:56
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that experience of hot water bubbling from under earth when all around is cool and misty and green that just that contrast was
00:16:13
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was too strong for me to not want to capture it. So I began writing in Hakone and Mina and Yuri just emerged from some hidden place, I guess, just organically came out to tell their stories. When I finished writing that first piece, I realized that I'm not done, that there is more.
00:16:39
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And that's how Kintsugi progressed. With each part, I realized that there was one person left who had more to say. So Mina, Yuri, Haruko, Leela, Hajime, and Prakash, they all sort of wanted to say something or wanted to show something. And that's how their different stories
00:17:02
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which are all interlinked, their lives which touch each other, which mar each other, and how each of them copes with the herds and how each of them heals, whether it heals well or not so well.
00:17:21
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is the underlying theme of Kintsugi, at least the way I see it. But I also feel that it's not the writer's place to talk about what the book's theme is or what the book says or what the reader should look for in the book. In fact, it's for the readers to tell me what they read into it.
00:17:41
Speaker
Because stories actually do not belong to the writers once they've written it, belong to the readers. They are owned by the readers. So what you read in Kintsugi is actually what Kintsugi is about. That's such an eloquent thing to say. And I know, I'm sorry, I'm just jumping in the middle and asked you to read an excerpt.
Personal Experiences and Cultural Links Between India and Japan
00:18:06
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But I really want to understand your fascination with Japan, you know, Anukruti, because I think while you visited Japan like a gazillion times, and I think you have a personal relationship because your husband worked for a Japanese bank or something along those lines. I remember coming across something like that. But what is it that fascinates you so much about Japanese culture?
00:18:35
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Yeah, it's like saying why we love someone. It's a very difficult question to answer, right? It comes from places that are unfathomed. If you are asked to dissect your feeling, it becomes a difficult exercise of taking parts apart. When you take bits apart, they don't resemble the whole, right? But I'll try, never the test.
00:19:01
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This is such a beautiful explanation. Now I feel like I should not have asked this and perhaps, you know, ask you a different question. I should probably ask you that what is it that you find in terms of similarities in culture between Japan and India and what's so different?
00:19:20
Speaker
Sure, so one connecting link obviously is Buddhism. Buddhism went to Japan from India via China. There are practicing Buddhists there. There are fascinating temples dedicated to Buddha. There is the highest seated Buddha cast in bronze in Nara, in the old Japanese capital.
00:19:43
Speaker
And the Buddhist traditions are part of many of their literary master's writings from Akutagawa to Tanizaki to more modern writers, though increasingly it seems that the religious influence in Japan has been receding. So what's the Buddhist linkage? The other I felt was
00:20:10
Speaker
You know, people are not so different despite differences in cultures, in languages, in races because Japan, you know, it's a different race. But despite all that, essentially we react in the same way to same stimulus. What we do differently is how we express our reactions to that stimulus.
00:20:36
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So I found, and it's such a, you know, my knowledge of Japan, I feel it's so superficial that I hesitate in saying anything about it. But I do find that the politeness, you know, the extreme politeness, the self-effacing politeness of the Japanese culture is, I find an echo in the,
00:21:03
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In the Rajasthali tradition of hospitality, especially in Shekharwati, also in Jaipur, you find locals extremely hospitable and very polite. So I found that faint echo in the culture I grew up.
00:21:23
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where I find a complete differences in the sense of aesthetics. So the Japanese aesthetic is so distinct, it's so spare and they try to make it minimal. They try to reduce the adornments and they bring everything
00:21:51
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with the minimum of expression. So they can express a lot with just one flower and one stone. And their zen gardens are just stone gardens, you know, a few spare plants. And the paintings there would work
00:22:10
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the wood block prints, which are a great part of the Japanese, the way their haikus are expressing everything in three lines.
00:22:25
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That's where I guess I thought the Rajasthani culture differed. We like to adorn, we like to embellish. We couldn't address a person without like five adjectives. And our jewelry, if you see the Rajasthani jewelry, it is so dense with design. I found this contradiction. But like I said, I found people everywhere are the same. If you ask them for help, they'll help you.
00:22:53
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If you try to assimilate and get accepted, eventually will accept you. However, because of the distinctive cultures, both I would say both Rajasthan and Japan,
00:23:08
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they would still sort of hold you at arms length. You can live in Jaipur all your life and be never part of the real soul or real life of the city because you don't belong to it. You've not lived there for generations. You don't know the life of the inner city. You don't know the traditions that are followed and you can never penetrate the Harelis. And same goes for Japan. You can spend a lifetime there and you could just be an outsider. That's so true.
00:23:38
Speaker
And it's so universal, you know, I am so glad you spoke of this Anukrati because a lot of literature really is about finding ourselves in what people who are distinctively different lives from us have written about, right? Or who portrayed distinctively different lives from what they themselves have or what we have.
00:24:01
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and yet we find ourselves immersed in literature and more beautiful for it. I'm actually really really glad that you got this perspective and I think it's very meaningful because it goes beyond obvious
00:24:18
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economic or social-cultural differences and it's really about the humanity at the core. Since you know I jumped in and I took this conversation on a completely different tangent, can I please request you to read and accept?
Writing Diverse Characters
00:24:32
Speaker
I'm so sorry.
00:24:33
Speaker
Not at all. Yes, I will read an excerpt. But before that, I would just like to add one more thought. Those who have read Kintsugi said, it is very courageous to write about characters who are not Indian. Because as you know, Kintsugi has Japanese characters. So three of the main characters are Japanese.
00:24:57
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Or rather, one is pure Japanese, the other two are American Japanese. And I've seen reactions saying, oh, that was to write about people who do not come from our own culture or country, or with whom you have not... My familiarity with both American and Japanese culture is through travel, right? So I've not lived in those countries. And they said it's a daring thing to do.
00:25:28
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When I was writing, I never felt it was a daring thing to do because aren't we as a race, as a species, aren't we nomads? We started in one continent and we spread over every part of inhabitable earth.
00:25:45
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And to that extent, we are all literally, you know, one people, we changed and we adapted to wherever we were living. That doesn't mean that our intrinsic human quality changed. So from that, I will now read just a short piece from Ken Sugi.
00:26:08
Speaker
So this is from the first chapter titled Haruko. Haruko picked the long sharp takua and began painstaking task of filling brilliant glass enamel into the grooves of the design. It was this traditional enamel work, Mina Ka'in, of colors that brightened in fire which had brought her to Jaipur in the first place.
00:26:34
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She was waiting for a suitable project after completing her program at the design school back in New York. She had spent the semester in Belgium the previous year completing a GEM evaluation certification and had become interested in European enamels. Would you like to explore the Indian enamels? Her advisor had asked. It is very interesting, both the technique and the tradition.
00:26:58
Speaker
She had left Haruko books on the history of enamel work and Indian jewelry craft. The brighter, huge, and elaborate Indian enamel, worked in the intricate Champelevé style, had fascinated Haruko. An advisor had introduced her to Madanji, a fourth-generation bullsmith over the phone.
00:27:19
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I have to shop in the bazaar, the professor had told her. You'll find it all very different from the European jewelry units. The bazaar's back lanes are a network of tiny manufacturers. All ornaments are completely handcrafted, the professor had smiled. It's your type. I think you will like it." She did. The first few days, Madanji had shown Haruko around the narrow alleys of the jeweler's market in the old world city.
00:27:47
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He introduced her to the master artisans who each practiced one particular craft of stone setting or engraving or beadwork and worked for commissioning jewelers like him.
00:28:00
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But there aren't no sonars like his grandfather anymore, Madanji had boasted. Nandaramji, Madanji's grandfather, was goldsmith to the kings. Stories of him crafting perfectly fitting bracelets and waistbands for veiled princesses, of measurements taken from their shadows falling on the floor and walls of audience rooms, were part of ornament makers lore.
00:28:26
Speaker
When he died, princes had come to control with the family, and the royal women had sent some of the choicest pieces of their jewellery in memoriam. A few of the necklaces and bracelets were still displayed at the gaddi. Haruko admired the scheme symmetry of the heavy elaborate timanas and pajis, though crafting and wearing them would be difficult now.
00:28:49
Speaker
So this is from the first part and the first part is completely set in the veins of Johari Bazar, the jeweler's market in Jaipur.
00:29:03
Speaker
Lovely. Thank you so much, Anakruti. Anakruti, I have a few questions which are very generic, but it's something I always like to ask.
Recommendations and Reflections on Bilingual Writing
00:29:15
Speaker
If there's a book that you would like to recommend to the audience listening in, which you think really depicts India well, what book would you recommend to the listeners and why?
00:29:28
Speaker
Very interesting question. I don't think there is a book that at least that I have come across that can capture all the diversities of India. We are such a complex country. We are actually many nations within a nation. But I would recommend a Hindi book actually.
00:29:48
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because I think we've become too sort of Anglo-centric when it comes to literary discourse in many ways. A large part of truly Indian literature is being written in Hindi and other regional languages. So one book that I think, especially for urban readers and for readers who
00:30:10
Speaker
cannot spend time in in the in what's known as the Hindi belt of India is Parthi Pani Katha by Fani Svanatharita. It is a book that is set in the in Bihar in the areas where the river Kosi's flood plains are.
00:30:33
Speaker
perfect slice of life there. It captures people, language, dialect, music, the hardships of those people, the conflicts in villages, the rural life, and also the essential humanness of all of us.
00:30:58
Speaker
It captures all of that perfectly and it is written in such a lovely lyrical language. The craft is perfect, you know, stories intertwined from two different times and a lot of, you know, a lot of song stories woven into the narrative. So yeah, I would highly recommend that.
00:31:24
Speaker
I'm so glad that you brought this up because I'm going to ask you about your first book which was Jhapani Sarai. You wrote it in Hindi and it's very interesting because I mean for very obvious reasons you're one of the rare writers Anukruti who writes bilingually. And Jhapani Sarai was actually like read and appreciated by so many people.
00:31:51
Speaker
How did writing and now you've written, so you wrote a collection of 10 stories in Hindi, you've written a novel, you've written novellas. How is the experience switching from formats and languages different or interesting for you?
00:32:07
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So I think I started out with long short stories. So 10,000 word short stories. And as I wrote them, I realized that I was trying to cram too much in the short story format.
00:32:24
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My editor at Harper's Rahul Soni, he's someone whose literary judgment, his taste, the way he reads the texts, I really greatly admired and I defer to his judgment in almost all points of literature.
00:32:43
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And he said that perhaps these short stories are actually not short stories, they are a longer format. That's how the short novels happened because I realized Dora couldn't be well told in 10,000 words.
00:32:59
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And with Kintsugi, it was the same. The stories, I started out with writing a short story, but then I realized, you know, that's not the case. So you can say I'm a very, very uninformed writer. I never know which story is going to, you know, require which format. I just start writing. And midway through I realized, oh shoot, this was not a short story.
00:33:29
Speaker
So, but short story remains my, you know, a format I really enjoy writing. The stories of Japanese Sarai are all, again, they are like completely different from Dorabhori and Kintsugi. They are about our contemporary lives. They are about, for years now, cities have been my home as well.
00:33:58
Speaker
So they are about the disconnection in urban landscapes, people disconnected from their roots, people being disconnected from other people, and eventually people being disconnected with their own selves. So they are a slice of life stories from various urban scenarios. They are also about
00:34:29
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you know, heartbreak, loss, about, you know, about nature losing out to humans and breakdown of relationships, familial relationships.
00:34:44
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So I think they are just stories about ordinary people. I do hope more people read them. They gained attention in the Hindi literary world. And people said they are very new, very fresh. The style is being different. I think the reason, because I came from a different
00:35:08
Speaker
a set of experiences than many Hindi writers. So more sort of very much urban cosmopolitan international experience, which is common for English writers, but not so common for Hindi writers.
00:35:29
Speaker
Anukrati, it's been an absolute pleasure to have had this conversation. I have immensely enjoyed it as much as I enjoyed reading all your books so far. I hope that other people also grab a copy of your books and read them.
00:35:46
Speaker
because genuinely the story and the narrative is so fresh and also tender. I personally think if I have to use one adjective, I would say I find your books very tender to read and I would request people who are listening in to go grab a copy from either Amazon or an independent bookstore near you and have a great time reading. Thank you so much.
Engagement with Readers and Final Thoughts
00:36:15
Speaker
Thank you so much for having me on India Book Diocese. It's been a very interesting conversation. And yes, I hope people read Kintsugi and share their thoughts. I'm on Twitter and Instagram, and I love interacting with readers.
00:36:33
Speaker
Please feel free to reach out. This is for the listeners. Anybody who wants to reach out. I'm very happy to hear always from the readers because like I said, the books belong to readers. I want to know what you thought of Kinsel.