Kabir Deb In Conversation With Rupleena Bose On Her Book Summer Of Then

Hello Rupleena! Congratulations on the publication and success of your debut novel. So, my first question revolves around the storytelling of the novel. Why did you think about writing a novel about a topic and situation that’s so visible around us? Also, how did the story and characters grow in your mind before you started putting them into words?

Thank you, in fact it has been one year since the novel has been out and now, we are gearing up for the audio book which will be out soon. 

I wanted to write about a character seen over a few years, a sort of a reworking of a bildungsroman. My story was about the desire to be an artist or a writer and the larger pertinent question of class in society. 

I have always loved reading novels set in universities or driven through the observations of a literature student and how they view life. It is very distinct in a country like ours. And somewhere I realised that there were not many stories of an urban Eng lit. student / teacher especially a woman set in contemporary India which could also be about the larger things happening in the nation because the university is also a microcosm of the world. So I felt it would be interesting to understand the interior life of a young woman and the choices she makes. I starting exploring a woman’s voice and her taking control (or losing control) of her own story. That in a way led me to write a first-person narrative. I started to think about a narrator who is observant that also leads her to question her situation. In a way that was the beginning of writing this story. The idea of looking inwards and outwards as years pass and things around her change. The characters came slowly through the central voice. I started with the narrator and Pat first. And then of course Zap and Nikhil.

When you are in that world of the novel as I was, the story eventually finds you. Sometimes the story is not in the grand events of life but in the smallest of observations or feelings. Like it takes place here. This novel is about minor histories of ordinary people wanting to do something extraordinary like in the case of the narrator who wants to be a writer.   

In the Indian society, marriage is considered as an insurance policy or is given the reference of security. In the millennial or post-millennial society, with the development of human understanding, why has the dynamics of marriage not changed in India? 

Which is ironic because marriage has nothing to do with security or economic independence. In India, I feel individualism is not encouraged. There are no state support systems; health and childcare systems are such that everything falls back on family. Of course now, things are changing, support systems are being built by people who are not willing to confirm to age old ideas of gender or patriarchy.  Progressive communities have to be built centred around one’s art, ideas, or interests. That is what can challenge the status quo. And I am sure in small ways the dynamics of relationships must have changed with gender roles no longer being taken for granted. At least one would like to believe that. Also, some of the millennials are no longer buying the threat of security given by families. They do not need to get married unless they choose to. 

The identity of ‘secret lover’ is adjoined with Zafar, one of the three protagonists of the story. Why is having a polyamorous relationship still considered a sin and has to be kept discreet from the many eyes of society? 

In this novel the central relationship represents many things, it represents desire, love, identity, morality and betrayal. So, while the protagonist and Zafar have a clandestine relationship, it is not a secret for long. One can say this was probably what the protagonist wanted. Maybe she did not want it to be a secret. Because of course it is at one level unethical from another’s point of view, but then that is the problem with love. Desire and love are often at loggerheads with ethics and morality. 

Polyamory from what I understand in fact is a kind of a stance that you take. A political stance, where every partner involved is also aware of the situation. It is meant to be transparent, honest and fluid of course with a set of givens.    

How has the politics of the nation changed the status of women? A book like Summer of Then is not loud and mentions everything with detailing. These novels haunt the patriarchs. Why does a quiet novel, compared to others, create a crater in the body of patriarchy? 

The politics of silence is something that informs the novel. It is often the nuances that we don’t account for. The smaller things that subjugate and stifle one and are often invisible. Maybe that is way a quieter novel gets into the skin of human beings, the things you think but don’t say. 

In ‘Summer of Then’, the politics of patriarchy and change actually is shown through the two stories, one of the present the protagonist and her choices and the grandmother’s story set during the partition that she is trying to retrieve and remember. Of course, in the end, somewhere you sense that the two women represent the way gender and patriarchy is at the core of the understanding of power, nations and nationalisms. 

Words have been shaping oppression on a subtle level. Nikhil portrays that in the novel. What should a woman of this generation keep in mind when patriarchy comes through subtexts? Also, a mixture of red and green flags is often appropriated in the case of men. For women, this mixture does not stand a chance. How should women of this age identify men who exhibit oppression through verbal conversations and body language?

That is such a difficult question to answer. I think aggression is a red flag along with entitlement. Because in our society men are brought up to be entitled and that is something maybe women should watch out for. Because then they want the gender equation to be tilted and not equal. The language of entitlement and aggression reveals itself very quickly in everyday interpersonal equations. 

In the novel, you write about the smell of rooms, conflicts of buildings, ferocity of ashtrays, and they give us a visual of how everything can be connected to life. This kind of literature is necessary but only a few succeed in doing justice to it. This can happen only when prose adheres to poetry. Why did you choose to give life to both animate and inanimate objects in a story where characters occupy a larger space? 

I love giving a meaning to little objects and how that shows something about a character. Also, spaces are so important to make a scene or a moment come alive. Music is another thing; a song make you feel so much without much to be said. That is why I spend so much time into building a moment. Because little truths and revelations come from moments that sometimes pass you by and you only realise it much later. 

Most novels written by men express their dissent against patriarchy by exposing its hypocrisy. Many women writers do it by providing a woman’s viewpoint on a larger scale. In this novel, there is a balance between the two and although, it cannot be a template but how should women writers write men in their novels in the contemporary time? 

I wanted to write this story because I wanted characters and spaces from an observing yet imperfect person / woman. Like the protagonist being a literary person / a teacher also looks at things, men, people from a critical point of view. I think a nuanced artistic perspective is everything. Not everyone can have that point of view. The narrator here is also accessing texts, writers, philosophy when she is looking at the world. That was my template. Also, I felt a joy in reading about observant female characters in Ferrante or Cusk, and I felt that was something I didn’t read often from contemporary Indian writing. I don’t know if there is a general template but I guess focussing on feelings and human behaviour would help us write men and women interestingly. 

Love has changed with time. How has love changed for the current generation? With the rise of romanticism over a single person, our fantasies and stories still germinate by keeping that one person in mind. If a man or woman loves more than one person, how should the present generation approach the form of love?

Well, love is love. Petrarch wrote about love and so does Pamuk. Wong Kar Wai captured love and so did Richard Linkater. Love drives the music industry; Hindi film song has forever tried to describe love. Also, Bhakti poets, Bauls and Fakirs, Sufi poetry have integrated love in their creations. 

What probably changed is the way we have become more perceptive towards gender politics and societal expectations. We are now critical of love and the symbols of subservience that is often described as love.  But to be honest, I do not have a real answer as it is a question that requires songs, poems, novels of films, in response. In fact, I feel I write about love in the novel form to make sense of it except love slips out of language too. 

Could you recommend some of your favourite books for the readers of our magazine?

While it is so difficult to name a few amongst the whole gamut of brilliant literature in English and Translations, I’ll still try. 

Orhan Pamuk: Museum of Innocence, Snow, The Black Book   

Tagore: Home and the World 

Elena Ferrante: My Brilliant Friend 

James Joyce: The Dubliners, Portrait of an Artist as a Young Man 

Virginia Woolf: Mrs Dalloway

O. V Vijayan: Legends of Khasak 

Deborah Levy: Hot Milk 

Jenne Erpenbeck : Kairos 

What do you think about our feminist magazine, Usawa Literary Review?

I really enjoy reading Usawa Literary Review. It is wonderful and rare to have a magazine with a feminist perspective. And not to mention absolutely important. I love the way it is designed and curated. I hope everyone reads it. I Love the fact that it has fiction, non-fiction, translations and interviews. And each one of your covers are works of art.