Coasting along with Tishani

The poet-writer on her forthcoming novel that reveals the larger picture of the country through the prism of Paramankeni, a coastal village in Tamil Nadu

You could tell the story of Grace as a woman with sand on her feet.

The other place, where sand finds its way in poet, writer and dancer Tishani Doshi’s new novel Small Days and Nights (Bloomsbury), is perhaps an hourglass — because, for Grace, its protagonist, the world around her feels like a test of time. She leaves America and returns to Pondicherry to cremate her mother and discovers a new family member in a residential facility. Lucia, her sister, was born with Down Syndrome. But Doshi’s narrative isn’t just about sisterhood — it binds geography, with economic and social differences. These are highlighted through her lyrical prose; measuring a person’s salary in glasses of wine, for instance.

On the last page of the book, that is due for release in April, there is a tiny note by the publisher on Perpetua, the font it is set in. Incidentally, the typeface was created by sculptor and type designer Eric Gill, who once said that typography was “not his line of country.” It is also happenstance then, that it is used to tell a story revolving around a village that feels like a country. Excerpts from the interview.

The Pleasure Seekers, your first novel, was published in 2010. How have you evolved as a writer?
I’ve published two collections of poetry and a novella since The Pleasure Seekers, so there’s been a steady amount of work — and I think some concerns remain central throughout. The idea of the body, family, belonging, place, gender, sexuality — these things are explored in everything I do.

The author lives by the beach in Tamil Nadu. PIC/instagram.com/tishanidoshi

You conceived your poetry collection, Girls are Coming Out of the Woods, on a bus in Ireland listening to Bollywood songs.  What inspired this one?
Living in a coastal Tamil Nadu village for eight years inspired this novel. There’s a particular landscape I wanted to capture, a feeling of incredible beauty, but also with danger skirting around the edges. I wanted to write about relationships both familial and otherwise, but I also wanted to write about the contrast between rural and urban within the context, as I know it. And how the ‘small’ can show us a larger picture of a country.

There’s a sense of complexity when one begins reading the novel. What was difficult about writing it?
It was hard to keep the tone constant. I wrote the book in segments over long stretches of time because I’m always moving between projects, so every time I’d return to it, there would be a shift in [what was registered], so I had to maintain the tone. Also, I didn’t want to sentimentalise the relationship between the sisters — I wanted to capture the real difficulty of living with someone who is differently-abled and to be a woman trying to do this by herself essentially, in a context that has its own challenges. So, that was the difficulty — to keep these various elements in balance.

You weave intricate narratives with history and imagery. How would you describe your relationship with words and images?
I identify primarily as a poet who occasionally writes fiction, so when I do go to prose I’m looking to make really strong sentences. One after the other. Image is central, and the sound of words. But I also wanted to have a clear narrative in this novel. So it was about combining language with plot.

Prose and poetry are often viewed as binary choices. What does that intersection mean to you?
I don’t see them as binary at all. It all comes under the territory of language, and as writers, we have all these modes of expression available to us. When I sit down to write, I’m always thinking of the word, of intent, of clarity, of beauty, of sound, regardless of form. Prose requires a different stamina than poetry, but the same attention to language.

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