Jahnavi Barua - the girl Next Door

I just finished reading Next Door a collection of short stories by Jahnavi Barua. This petite medico was my neighbor many moons ago. She would keenly listen to the ongoing conversation and then jump in, speaking rapidly (with more words per second than anyone else I know!!) to put across a point of view.She is a full time writer, reader, mom and wife but "not necessarily in that order", Jahnavi adds briskly. While this the first book by her that I have read, but Jahnavi is no stranger to writing having won the Short Fiction contest hosted by British Council in '05 and then the second prize in the Children’s Fiction category of the same prize. In 2006 Jahnavi was awarded a Charles Wallace Trust Fellowship to study Creative Writing in the UK.Next Door has stories set in Assam (Asom to the locals and pronounced as Ahom). The backdrop gives it a unique flavor and the use of Asomiya English builds the recipe. The stories are on themes that are universal. I loved The Patriot a story featuring the relationship between an old man and an underground militant who meet in strange circumstances. The two stories which are about the militant groups (which since the '80s have been pursuing armed struggle to establish a sovereign state in Assam) bring out the best in Jahnavi. The stories around relationships between parents and children also have hues that reach out to the reader.My overall take: I enjoyed the her debut collection of short stories. The liberal sprinkling of Asomiya words and phrases make up the unique flavor of her collection. You understand the many moods of the river Brahmaputra (known as Tsangpo river in Tibet) and how it is integral to the inhabitants of the state. The flowers that grow there. The emotions that guide the rural and urban folks.  Sometimes the local phrases make you stop and re-read the sentence to get the import of it and acts as a speed breaker but at the end the pace also lets you absorb the nuances that speed reading would not. It is like getting used to eating a new cuisine that you know you will eat again.Next Door – a collection of stories, is your debut work. Did you choose between writing a novel or a collection of short stories?Yes, this is my debut collection - I have had a couple of stories published in anthologies earlier and have also written a children’s illustrated book called, The Boy Who Lost His Voice, but this is my first collection.From the point I began writing seriously, in 2004, I found I was writing only short fiction so the choice between writing a novel or a short story collection was, in a sense, already made.Which of the stories happened first? Where there more stories you had written before that did not make it to this collection?In this collection, the first story I had written was Tiger. It took me the longest time to write, nearly five months, and is also one of the more elaborate and detailed stories in the collection. I have a few other stories lying around, written before and after the collection. But it is not as if they did not make it to the collection; I have not finished them yet to my satisfaction, so have not sent them out anywhere.All your stories are set in Assam. The language of your characters is also “Asomiya English”. Does the language used come in the way of appealing to a larger section of the audience?Yes, all the stories are based in Assam. Although now I have lived more than half my life outside Assam, I found when I began to write I returned to the landscape of my childhood, of my origin, as if it were the most natural thing to do. Place, for me, is a powerful influence; it shapes and moulds a person in a way at once subtle yet all pervading. The landscape of Assam is for me the landscape of affection, of memories; against its wide sweep of misty blue hills and majestic river most of my family’s lives (and mine) have played out and that is where I wanted to set my stories.The characters in my stories being based in Assam naturally speak Asomiya English. I found, after the book was published, that it did not seem to, in any way, detract from the book’s universal appeal. In fact, people outside Assam who have read the book have told me that they relished the strong Assamese flavour of the dialogue in the book. A fellow author, also from the North-East, from Shillong, has stated in an interview that after reading Next Door, she almost felt as if she had read it in Assamese. And she does not speak or read Assamese! Others have told me that even though there were Assamese words, here and there, they did not understand, it did not get in the way of their flow of reading at all.I have to say here that I have used Assamese words only when there were no equivalent words in English; there has been no attempt made to exoticize the stories.How many of these stories are about characters you have met or known of? You are a trained doctor. I would have expected more stories that capture your experiences as a doc.There are only two characters in the rather diverse cast of characters in the book that I seem to recognise from real life. Even then, I only recognise certain traits; a physical characteristic, a particular attitude. There is no one who is taken wholly from real life experiences.My experiences as a doctor have crept in obliquely into many of the stories… in The Magic Spell for instance, the entire episode of poisoning was dictated by my knowledge of Forensic Medicine. Several of the stories – Holiday Homework, Honeybees and Awakening, for example - have been marked by death and disease. This is, I think, a consequence of my years spent as a doctor.What next are you working on? A novel or a collection of short stories?I always seem to tinkering around with a couple of short stories – I don’t know, though, if any collection will come out of this! But I know , with certain conviction, that I will always be writing a short story.At the same time I am considering a novel. It is a new challenge and one that I look forward to taking on.The biggest challenge here, I find, is finding that large chunk of time needed . A novel demands that uninterrupted long stretch of quiet time ; be it for that stewing stage, when an idea has to ferment in your head, or for that time when you need to put it all down. I work from home and there can be no one more harried than the person- and I gingerly add here - especially a woman – there I said it !- attempting serious work from home, for no one takes you seriously; there are constant interruptions and often resentment from the interrupting end when you resent that interruption. I am now resigned to being thought unfriendly but that label is an occupational hazard of all writers desiring seclusion.Alternatively , I am considering working at night , at a time when the world sleeps. The quality of silence at night also helps in focusing my thoughts. The only drawback here is I will have to sleep when the world awakens , but we can all get used to that! I really am interested in how other writers manage this problem…Who have been your literary influences? Do you read Asomiya literature as well? Did you ever think of writing in Asomiya?Literary influences – there have been so many it is hard to name just a few. The darkness and the attention to flavour of the Russian writers – Chekov, Dostoevsky, Sholokov; the preciseness of American writing, past and contemporary. A deep and encouraging influence was the Indian woman writer writing in English ( although such classifications may be frowned upon now). I still remember Anita Desai’s Fire on The Mountain , for its lean, spare yet lyrical prose. Another influence has been Shashi Deshpande with her strong sense of place – she showed me it was okay to write about what one knows best. There are too many such writers to name here! I must add here that my mother , a student and teacher of English Literature , studied in particular Indian women writing in English. Her doctoral thesis was based on that topic and growing up in a family where this was much discussed did have a strong impact on me.And of course, my favourites are the writers of short fiction : Chekov again, Alice Munro, Richard Ford, Raymond Carver, George Saunders, Julie Orringer… the list goes on and on!I read Assamese literature too, but I am ashamed to say mostly in translation, for although I read Assamese well enough, I am slow, slower than I would like. But I intend to attempt to read only in the original now. There is exciting writing coming from Assam that I want to savour fully.