Vikas Swarup Returns Readers to India’s Slums

Author Vikas Swarup talks about his new book and the many Indias he traverses in his imagination
SB Veda <CALCUTTA>
“I always consider the slums to be the ground zero of human survival. And you know, anybody who has survived the slums can probably survive anything because… if they have come from that grueling experience of no sewage, you know no proper shelter, no protection against the elements, then I think they have become battle hardy enough to withstand any shock that life throws at them.” – Vikas Swarup
Acclaimed and best-selling author, Vikas Swarup has, after a hiatus of over a decade penned another thrilling novel called The Girl With the Seven Lives, published by Simon and Shuster. Having written Q&A, which was made into the phenomenon that was Slumdog Millionaire, which won eight of the ten Oscars for which it was nominated for the year, 2008, including Best Picture, Best Director for Brit Danny Boyle, Best Song and Best Original Score by A.R. Rahman, and Best Adapted Screenplay by Simon Beaufoy, Swarup was launched into the stratosphere of fame.
Although he continued his successful literary career, writing books until 2013, his fans have had to wait over a decade to read a new narrative written in his distinctive form, putting characters in impossible situations, while the plot circulates around headlines that appear in newspapers that cross the subcontinent.
Our SB Veda, recently interviewed Swarup via Zoom after reviewing his latest release:
SB Veda: In your latest book, like Q&A. The Girl With The Seven Lives returns the reader to the slums. this time, it’s not the shacks of Dharavi in Mumbai, but rather a place called Rail Basti in Delhi, which you aptly call the ‘city of dust’. So, I wanted to start by asking you what attracts you to characters who have come from such humble origins especially given that, as an IFS officer, your background would have been vastly different than theirs.
Vikas Swarup: Absolutely so… I always consider the slums to be the ground zero of human survival. And you know, anybody who has survived the slums can probably survive anything because, you know, if they have come from that grueling experience of no sewage, you know no proper shelter, no protection against the elements, then I think they have become battle hardy enough to withstand any shock that life throws at them. And that’s really what attracts me to that kind of a life, because. Even though I have come from a much more privileged background, I think I can relate to the struggles of the people living in the most marginalized of communities.
SBV: This is only your second book, I believe, portraying a female character as the sole protagonist. What made you return to narrating from the point of view of a woman?
VS: Well, as you know, my second book, Six Suspects, was the first time I experimented writing in the female voice, and one of the 6 suspects in that book was a Bollywood actress called Shabnam Saxena, and her story is narrated through her diary entries, you know, written in the first person. So, I enjoyed that experience, and that is really what emboldened me to try a complete novel based on the female perspective. And the result was my 3rd novel, The Accidental Apprentice, which is written from the perspective of a 23-year-old sales girl called Sapna Sinha. And you know, people related to her character, and even though, you know, some people may have had some issues with the plot or whatever, there was not a single criticism which said, as a male author I was not able to do the female voice correctly, and that really gave me the courage and the confidence to once again experiment with the female voice, and the result is, The Girl With The Seven Lives. In a way. I’m returning to the world of Slumdog, millionaire. But the Slumdog Millionaire had a male protagonist called Ram Thomas [in the film he is named Jamal Malik]. This one has a female protagonist called Devi.
SBV: Yes, indeed, we are introduced to her by her birth name, Devi but has several names throughout the book, and she basically leads these different lives, seven of them, compelled in a way out of circumstance. We first encounter her in a very perilous situation where she’s been kidnapped. There’s a gun to her head, and she’s being threatened and being filmed, and she has to recount all of the ways she has injured others… I wonder if this is, in a sense, a similar theme that you pursued in other books, in that you put people in these situations in which they have to face some kind of a challenge, and it’s a very unusual challenge whether it’s a quiz show whether it’s a billionaire saying that you have to pass tests or, as in this case the protagonist, as she’s recounting her lives, has figure out a way out of this predicament – and this is sort of a plot device by which you can kind of cut through the sort of background and context that is, that is really thick in Indian society, and get right to the meat of the of portraying India.
VS: Absolutely. I think you hit the nail on the head. That’s a very perceptive observation, because, you see, in all 4 of my novels what I have tried to do is to render some of the complexity of India slightly more accessible. And, the reason for that is that India is such a complex country, you know. We have so many stratifications, not just the usual stratification of gender and class, but we also have the caste system, and that leads to a further subdivision of the number of stratifications that we have, and the plot device that I use to render the complexity of India slightly more accessible is to have a multi-layered narrative.
VS: If, for instance, I was to set a novel entirely based, entirely set in the south of Kolkata, for instance, it would be a very unidimensional novel, because you’ll be basically meeting people of the same social economic milieu. But by using this kind of a plot device where either you are answering 13 questions, and each of those questions relates to a different chapter of your life, even a different geography. You are able to capture slightly more of the complexity of India. Similarly, in the 7 tests, you know, the tests, take her from Punjab to Bombay, to all kinds of places. And, again, you are able to capture some of the elusive – what should I say? – the contradictions of India through that. And again, in this device, again, in this latest book also by this device of she being held prisoner in a dingy basement by a masked gunman who’s threatening to shoot her dead unless she confesses to all the crimes he’s accusing her of, she is able to narrate the entire sequence of her life, and then we find out how she had to change her identity.
SBV: I once read that you you had when you wrote Q. And A. You had not visited Dharavi before. Writing the novel, which many people found very surprising because of the authenticity in the writing, in the narration of the what it was like to actually live in that slum. Did you visit the places that Devi went to? Or was it a similar kind of thing?
VS: It was again similar. As I said, I have never lived in Punjab. I have not been to a single Godman’s Dera. I have not been to. I have passed through Kotem on the way to Aleppi, but I have never really lived in Kotem, which is one of the places where you know. I think Deepti stays for 3 years of her life, and of course I visited Goa, but I’ve never lived in Goa. I visited Mumbai. I’ve never lived in Mumbai as such.
VS: But I think that’s the greatness of fiction that it allows you the liberty to explore places to explore characters that you don’t own yourself and places that you have not vested yourself as long as you do your research properly. Because you see a person from Kolkata. If I’m writing about Kolkata, a person from Kolkata will be able to discern it from half a mile away. That you know this is not authentic. If the backdrop against which my character is operating does not feel authentic. So I have to know what is Park Street. I have to know, you know what is Rabindra-sangit, and things like that. If I’m writing about life in Bengal, and that’s where I think my research comes in. I research each of my geographies, each of my characters, abilities, or whatever you might call it, very, very thoroughly.
SBV: So how long did it take for you to write the book – I mean, when you, when you take into account all the research and then actual process?
VS: Yes, so the way my process works is. I first let the idea germinate in my head.
and I’m working out the character arcs of where each character will go from the beginning till the end. In fact, the ending comes to me first, st and then I sort of work backwards from there, and once I have fleshed out all the character arcs which takes about, I would say, 3 to 4 months. Then I do. My research, and the research itself takes about 3 to 4 months. And then, once I have done my research and the characters are fully fleshed out in my head, that is, when I sit down to write, and that’s why most of the time. What gets published is my first draft because, you know, the whole idea is now fully formed in my head. I do not need to go back to the drawing board in between, and because my research has also been done, I know fairly well, what do I have to do? From A to B to C to D. How do I have to traverse that particular terrain? So it took me about a year in total. This novel took me a year and a half.
SBV: Okay. What you’ve described stands in stark contrast, I think, to your experience with Q. And a. Because my understanding is that was written very quickly, and it had a lot to do, as I understand, with the professional circumstances going on in your life.
VS: Yes, but I think you can also only get lucky the 1st time around, because, you see, when you write your 1st novel, you write very unselfconsciously. There is no yardstick against which you are judging yourself. There is no precedent of a previous book against which you are judging yourself so because of that. I suppose you know you can write pretty fast. And I wrote Q & A in, actually, two and a half months. That was the entire time it took me, and what has been published is [sic] my 1st draft. But then the subsequent novels have all taken a year and a half, because, as I said, that advantage is available only to the 1st time writer.
SBV: When it was accepted. That was prior to 2 and a half months. I think it was only one month in, or something like that, right?
VS: Yeah. So basically, what I did was, I wrote 4 and a half chapters, and I send them out to 10 agents to see if I get picked up by any one of them. I was very strategic about this writing process, because, you know, it was just a challenge to myself that can I be Vikas Swarup, the writer, or will I just remain Vikas Swarup, the diplomat? That was the challenge. So, I said, ‘let me write just four and a half chapters, send it out to 10 agents, if I get picked up by one of them I’ll complete the novel. If not, then that’s the end, you know. At least I don’t waste 3 years of my life writing a novel, and it doesn’t get published at all.’ Don’t forget. When I wrote this novel in 2003. You know the Amazon 70:30 deal did not exist. Blogging did not exist. The gatekeepers were very much around. You had to go through a publisher. You had to go through an agent. There was no other way to get published at that particular point in time. So that’s what I did. I sent it out to these 10 agents. I didn’t hear back from any one of them. I met the 11th agent, the one who actually signed me on on the Internet, you know, quite serendipitously. And then he signed me on, and he said, ‘You know, finish this novel.’
VS: I had one month left in London at that time, and I was just told that I’m going to be appointed as director in charge of Pakistan. Once I return back to Delhi, and I knew that in that job I can forget about writing anything, because it’ll be just so hectic, including weekends also, and that’s why I wrote like a maniac in that one month that I had left I finished the novel, I think, on the 11th of September, 2,003. On the 12th of September I was sitting in an Air India plane, going back to Delhi.
SBV: Well, but let me ask you, you mentioned that writing the 1st book was, and a very unself conscious act subsequent to that and because of the huge success of the 1st book. Because even before let let’s remember, I don’t think a lot of people know this, that even before it was made as a film, even before it premiered as a film, it was already. It had already won some awards, and it had gotten some accolades.
VS: And it had been translated into 37 languages.
SBV: Yes, yes, so it was already a prominent book before the film came out, and then the film made it into this phenomenon. So, is that sort of does that cast a long shadow as as as you write? I mean, is it always sort of in the back of your mind, so you have to say to yourself: ‘I’m no longer just an unknown writer – I have to write against this reputation of being Vikas Swarup, the author of Slumdog millionaire.’
VS: Absolutely. I mean, you know very well this is called the dreaded second book Syndrome. When the 1st book becomes huge, then the pressure on the second book, and that’s why, you know, we’ve had writers who won the Booker prize and then didn’t come out with a second book at all. After that, because they just felt they could not top the success of their 1st book. But in my case, look! The advantage was, I was already in a proper day job. I was already a diplomat, so I was not dependent on writing for my bread and butter, and that, I think, was very important, because for me the important thing was. I wanted to test my own boundaries as a writer. So when I set out to write 6 suspects. 1st of all. It was not a sequel to Slumdog millionaire. It was a completely standalone separate book altogether. I knew, even when I wrote the first words of that new novel that this would not be as successful as Q & A.
SBV: How so?
VS: Because i Was a very safe book, you know, you create a lovable character, and you have his precarious adventures, and you follow him, you know, from beginning till end, and you root for him. So it was a very safe book in that sense, in 6 suspects I was being much more subversive. This is a novel in which there is no center of gravity. Every 30 pages the whole perspective changes. Each of these 6 suspects that we go through. Who are they? Why were they at the farmhouse? Why did they have a gun with them, and which one of them is the actual murderer. That is the subtext of this novel, and even when I was writing it because I knew I had chosen a very complex structure for this book. I knew it wouldn’t be even half as successful as Q & A. And I said, That is fine with me, because, you know, I am testing my own boundaries as a writer. Can I write a polyphonic narrative? Can I look at India through 6 different eyes, 4 insiders to outsiders? That was the challenge I set myself.
SBV: You seem to explore plots that, at least in the in the new book, The Girl With the Sevem Lives, that appear to have mirrored actual events. To give you 2 examples: Devi’s younger brother gets hit by a car. He gets killed. It’s an expensive luxury car. The driver drives off. Nothing happens to them, and then the family gets no justice. Another instance would be the
The racket for the sending people abroad with fake degrees and all this kind of thing. And, as you know, Canada figures very prominently in that racket as a very desirable destination. All this is to ask, were some of these plot lines inspired by actual events? Or was it a case life mirroring art?
VS: I would say, everything in the novel is inspired by actual events in all four of my novels, you know for me the inspiration for what I write comes really from everyday life, and I always say this, that if you read just one day’s newspaper in India just one day’s newspaper you’ll get to, you know. You’ll get ideas for at least 4 or 5 different plots, because so much is happening in our country, and so many bizarre things are happening, you know, especially in terms of crime and punishment. I mean, a country with almost a billion and a half people. That’s a billion and a half stories right there!
SBV: India is portrayed in your, in your works as. And they were fine to be fundamentally unjust. I mean I and just for the for the downtrodden. And and I’ll just read. I’ll read back to you a line that early on from Q & A, which I which kind of really struck me at the very beginning of that book. The protagonist says, ‘I brought this upon myself for crossing the dividing line between rich and poor. The brain is not an organ the poor man is authorized to use. We are only supposed to use our hands and legs. So what business did I have participating in a quiz show?’ Is this how you think most Indians who are, say middle class and above view, the less fortunate?
VS: Yes, unfortunately, and I think that’s a reality of our times. I mean, if you just look at the way in which we disparage those who work for us. The sweepers, the cleaners, the dhobbies, you know all these people. We somehow think of them as not having an agency of their own. And just because and in fact, the whole purpose of writing Slumdog Millionaire, I mean Q&A, which became Slumdog Millionaire was to show that the greatest teacher in the world is life itself. And just because somebody has not had the good fortune of a proper education because of their circumstances, it does not mean that they don’t know anything. They know a hell of a lot of stuff, you know. That is for instance, a car mechanic would know much more about a V6 engine than you and I would do, for instance, and that was the whole idea. But it’s very true that you know what I have pointed out is a social reality of our times, that we treat our we treat domestic staff as though they’re only good for manual labour.
SBV: This puts me in mind of the book, White Tiger in which, and I’m paraphrasing, but there’s a great line from that book which really encapsulates the relationship between the car owner and the driver, which is that all drivers hate their bosses, but their bosses think that their
VS: Yeah, exactly, exactly, because that also, you see, is very subversive. It talks about the whole ecosystem of the drivers themselves, how they are evaluating and rating their own bosses.
SB: Yeah, absolutely. And how dare they!
VS: Exactly, exactly, if only if the bosses were to find out. You know the kind of plotting that is going on, you know, in the Drivers group, I mean there would be hell to pay for.
SB: Back to The Girl With The Seven Lies – Devi actually has to assume identities of different religions in this instance. And I wonder. Was this almost an attempt to sort of correct? I don’t want to say the wrong, but to kind, of course, correct the decision that was made to take your protagonist from Q&A? Your original protagonist, Ram Mohammed Thomas was a kind of an amalgam of religions, and to have the screenwriter make that person a person from a single religion. Was it a way to? Then suddenly, sort, of course, correct and say, ‘Okay, I’m going to take a character, and she’s going to have to pose as being from these different religions. And that’s how I’m going to talk about. Write about different religions in this book.’
VS: I don’t think it was a reaction to the film dumbing down the character of Rama Thomas here, as to to render the complexity of India slightly more accessible, and I think our various religious identities are also very much part of that complexity. So, as you can see, you know, at one point she does not consciously become Muslim, but she’s mistaken to be a Muslim, and she goes along with it because it serves her particular purpose at that point in time. Similarly, when she goes off to Punjab, she acquires a Punjabi identity probably becomes a Sikh. So, the whole idea was once again to explore the many social layered complexities of India by using religion also as one of the pegs. Similarly, we see the Christian religion coming in when she becomes in Goa.
SBV: I’d like to talk a little bit about corruption in India. People talk about corruption in India so derisively – and yet, esteemed public intellectuals – people like Asish Nandy have said that they see it as a sign of progress for the downtrodden because the power and influence wielded by the privileged, which may technically not be illegal (though in some cases it is) flies under the radar. For the marginalized within India to elevate their circumstances, corruption becomes sometimes the only means by which they can do it. Certainly, in Devi’s case, her criminality is something she is almost forced into in order to survive in a world where the cards are stacked uniformly against her. Is Nandy and his ilk right? How do you see corruption in India and the role it plays in your writing?
VS: No. I don’t think I don’t buy that, because, see, even if the corruption is by the poor people at the end of the day they are gaining an unfair advantage over other poor people, just as the capital does of the riches. They are gaining an advantage. They are gaining a contract over other rich people who would probably, in a level playing field, you know, won that contract fair and square. So at the end of the day, corruption is corruption, because it is, it un-levels the playing field. I think that’s what corruption does. It greases the, you grease the palm so that your route is made smoother compared to all the other people who are traveling on that same road. So I don’t think you know, that’s that. But what people say is that, you know corruption is an almost inescapable reality for the poor, because they are unable to navigate the world.
VS: As it is, you know, without the connections that the you know rich people have
that that others have, because for them the road is navigated by the connections that they have. You know, one phone call and a person who’s in trouble is out of trouble. The poor don’t have that agency. They can’t pick up a phone and call you know the high and mighty person who can get them out. So for them the only way out of their predicament is by greasing the palms of the people lower down the food chain, who have the power to, you know, change things in their favour.
SBV: What role does money play in your books? There is the aspiration of some big prize, a monetary prize that motivates the people, and we see it as kind of transitory in your latest book, because Devi acquires and loses and acquires and loses money, and at the end she finds something that’s more valuable to her at the very end of the book. I won’t, it’ll give away the ending. But what role does my does money pay play in these plots?
VS: I think money plays a very important role in in, you know, in any strata of society. And I look at money really as freedom. That money gives you the freedom to live the life that you want to lead, because, you know, then you are not encumbered by the you know the, what should I say? The ill effects of poverty? Let’s put it this way. So, Devi, if you look at it for her also, money is a way of leading a dignified life in each of the avatars that she adopts as you will see, she starts off by trying to lead the good life by trying to lead the proper life by trying to lead the non-corrupt. You know the honest life, but it’s circumstances that force her hand every time, and that’s when she finds herself mired in the what should I say? The quicksand of corruption, and she wants to get out of it. She does not like that life where she has to look over her shoulder all the time.. Those who have read the novel or those who will read the novel will find out what those circumstances are which force her. But money is important, I mean, let’s not deny that you can be as spiritual as you want, but at the end of the day. How do you put body and soul together?
VS: How do you buy that meal for that meal? You need money. The question is, how much money do you need? I think that is a question I dealt with in my 3rd novel, The Accidental Apprentice, where this 23 year old salesgirl is made the offer to become the CEO of a 10 billion dollar company. And the question eventually that she asks is, how much money do you need. How much money do I need eventually? And that is answered at the end of that particular novel. So money, I think, is important. Money does make the world go round. There’s no doubt about it, because without money, you know many of the – what should I say? – the levers and motivator factors of our life would simply disappear.
SBV: Going back to the transition from Q&A to becoming the blockbuster movie that it became in Slumdog, I believe I read somewhere that the rights had been optioned even before it was published. Is that true?
VS: So I wrote the book in 2003. It went to the publisher in 2003, but the publisher said, ‘this is a big book…we can only publish it, you know, with a lot of fanfare and publicity, and all that, and all our big books are lined up for the next 2 years, so we will publish this only in 2005. You have to wait for 2 years.’ So I said, ‘Okay, I have no option. You know I have no choice. As a first time writer, I’ll wait for 2 years.’ And then I got the offer from Film 4 that they wanted to make a film based on the book in 2004, one year before the book was even published.
SBV: Really? How did they get hold of the story?
VS: Basically, you know, I think that’s the difference between India and the West. In the West. The literary market and the film market are very closely intertwined. As soon as a book gets into a publisher’s, you know, library, they immediately, even when it’s in manuscript stage, they send it out to the literary scouts and the film scouts who try to see if you know this is a worthwhile story to be made into a film or not. So, basically they, yeah, they were given a copy of the manuscript. They loved the manuscript. They felt it had cinematic potential. And they said, we want to make a film on it.
SBV: That’s not a new phenomenon. Because I remember reading that the same thing happened to Mario Puzo, who wrote the godfather. He was kind of an unsuccessful literary writer before he conceived of writing about the criminal world which had intersected his upbringing as an Italian American living in New York. In fact, he hadn’t finished the book, when Paramount Pictures bought the rights
SBV: Then, during film development Francis Ford Coppola, a young Italian American director who absolutely didn’t want to make a movie about the Italian Mafia saw it more as a book about two subjects: One is family; and the other is capitalism. So, he wanted to focus on these themes rather than having the film being of the gangster genre that had come before. And, he and he worked with Mario Puzo on the screenplay, spending a lot of time on it, together.
SBV: I gather in in your case, I think, basically, the rights were optioned. And then you basically had to let go, and somebody else.
VS: No, absolutely. I mean, as I said, I was a first time writer. I had no prior experience of writing a novel, let alone a screenplay. So obviously, you know, they had nothing to do with those aspects.
SBV: Were you kept on as a creative consultant? Or did you have absolutely nothing to do with the screenplay?
VS: No, the advantage was, I had what is called a British contract, and British contract allows you what is called “creative control”, which means that you know they are duty bound to show you the script and get your approval on the script before it goes into production, and that’s what happened. They showed me the script, and, as I have pointed out earlier in the first script in the first draft of the script. It was a story of two brothers. Two Muslim Brothers. One was called Ram, and one was called Saleem. And. I had to tell them that, you know, that does not really happen in actual Indian Muslim homes, and that’s when they changed the name, Ram to Jamal.
SBV: Yeah, although in in here in Bengal you have…there are some people with mixed names.
VS: Yes, yes, that is also there.
SBV: Particularly nicknames. Often, Muslims will take Hindu nicknames. and I don’t know whether that’s to have to fit in to, kind of, broader society. But that could be a reason – or it’s an homage to their pre-converted status in the case of converted Muslims, which are l believe constitute the majority of Indian Muslims.
VS: Well, technically speaking, they [the film-makers] could have gotten away with that also if they had put in a backstory, but I don’t think they had. And, mainly Simon Beaufoy, who wrote the screenplay, wanted a recreation of the dynamic of Deewar, the Bollywood film, which is, as you know, a dynamic between two brothers from the Mumbain slums. One is a cop, and one is a mafia don, and the clash between them, the wall between them – he wanted to recreate that same dynamic in in Slumdog Millionaire.
SBV: Which is a kind of dialectic that’s been pursued in in a lot of movies before. And I I feel in a way they didn’t really do justice to Salim, whose character in the book is quite affable.
VS: Absolutely, and Saleem is such a good character in in my book, and he becomes this completely negative. You know, very villainous character in in the film.
SBV: Yes, yes, that’s right. So how did that make you feel? I suppose at that point there wasn’t much you could do about it.
VS: Yes, plus, you see, the attitude I had towards the people who are making a film was that, ‘look, I wrote a book, and they are making a film – and the vocabulary and the texture of a film is very different from that of a book, and if they are going to take some creative liberties, then you know, they are welcome to [do so]’
VS: I really believe that a film based on a book should, of course, try to preserve the soul of the original work, but should also bring some new elements to the table. If it is a complete and literal transliteration of the pages onto the screen. I don’t think it will work very well as a new product. The important thing is how much integrity is brought to bear in the transition. I think that is the most important thing. And, you see, for me the USP of the book was really the narrative structure.
VS: It was a new way of telling a story of revealing the life of your protagonist through the medium of a quiz show. Nobody had ever done that before, and they adopted exactly the same narrative structure for the for the film as well. It’s exactly the same. The only difference is, in my book he tells the stories to his lawyer. In the film, he tells the story to the police inspector. That’s the only difference. But the narrative structure is totally intact.
SBV: But they didn’t use all the elements of the narrative of Ram slash Jamil’s life, did they?
VS: What they changed was, they changed some of the stories from my book to fit their particular cinematic canvas.
SBV: But they followed the way you laid it out with chapters basically the directly linked to this TV program.
VS: Exactly, and plus more than that, you see in a film there is a willing suspension of disbelief, but in a book there is no willing suspension of disbelief unless you’re writing magical realist fables or something like that. So, I had to explain how come Ram Mohammed Thomas speaks English, and the backstory of that is, he lives for 6 years with the English priest. which, of course, which part they cut out completely in the in the, in the film. In the film it is nowhere explained. How does Ram Thomas [or Jamil] speak English? And how does he learn how to do good? You know it’s never explained. But I suppose in a film you can get away with those kinds of liberties, because a certain willing suspension of disbelief is taken for granted.
SBV: Yeah, that seems to be the case. Maybe, so too would the progress of the book to film. Do you think that that occurred because of the fact that you got a British publishing contract. I mean, would things have turned out differently, you think, had you been published in India first?
VS: No, in fact, let me tell you what happened, because the rights were taken away a year before the book was even published. Nobody else had a shot at it. Once the book came out in 2005. There was a beeline from Bollywood. Half of Bollywood wanted to make a film on it, including top line, you know, directors and actors. But I had to tell them I’m very sorry I don’t have the rights with me. The rights were taken away a year before even the book was published.
VS: So I learned from that experience. I said I didn’t like this idea of people not getting a fair shot at it.
VS: And look, I think if this movie had been done by a Bollywood director, you know, with a lot of integrity, probably it would have been an even better film, except it would have been competing only for the Best Foreign Film at the Oscars. Not the Best Film. I think that’s a huge difference.
SBV: Yes, and in in this instance, I think it’s quite a remarkable feat, considering that there were, other than I think, some minor American characters where he’s given the $100 note,
I don’t think that there are any non-Indian characters in the picture.
VS: No, absolutely. And plus 30% of the dialogue is in Hindi. Don’t forget that as well.
SBV: And I think we’ve seen Hollywood kind of move in that direction since then.
VS: That’s why I think this Slumdog was probably the first major crossover film from India.
SBV: Yes, yes, and it, in that sense was very much a trailblazing film. It broke the barriers, and the industry has kind of moved in that direction since – which leads me to my next question, which I have to ask: Have you been approached by production houses for the latest book, in terms of making it into a film, or a TV or steaming series?
VS: Yes, so interestingly, there is a lot, even though the book has not yet been published in the in the West. It’s not. It’s currently only being published in the Indian subcontinent. Already I’ve had offers from Hollywood, as well as from, you know, British producers based in London.
SBV: Really? Okay. Well, so you’re mulling that over now.
VS: Yes, I mean ideally, I would like an Indo UK co-production kind of a thing where we can get the best of both worlds something like Slumdog Millionaire. But let’s see what the destiny of this book is, because eventually many a slip between cup and lip, as they say, especially in the in the film world.
SBV: Yeah in in Slumdog. I believe, Danny Boyle. What a lot of people maybe forget is that he had an Indian co-director who managed a lot of the Hindi language scenes.
VS: Lovely in Tandon. Yeah, basically, he gave her co-directing credit because, you know, she was the one who handled the child actors.
SBV: Would you be looking for some similar kind of collaboration if The Girl With the Seven Lives is adapted for film or TV?
VS: Yeah, I mean, look eventually, as a writer, you don’t get too much of an input on to who the director should be and things like that. But this time I will be evaluating all the projects very, very carefully, that you know who all they bring on board, and then, if I’m really very comfortable with a particular set. Then I think I would go with that for me. Money is not that important? What is important is the integrity with which this is approached, and you know what kind of a passion they would bring to this project.
Sujoy Bhattacharyya: Would you be more interested in film or TV, this time?
VS: I think it translates very well to either a film or a web series, in fact. if you leave it at eight, the first 8 episodes are already laid out, so to speak.
SBV: It seems like a story that can very well to something you would see on Netflix, and I could see people binging right through it.
VS (smiling): Yes.
SBV: Getting back to the writing of the current book. I’m just. I’m just wondering when you talk about you think about the characters and their story arcs. How immersive do you go? I ask because, my sense is that it’s a lot easier to write non-fiction because you can write and then move on with other things in life, and then get back to it. But, in fiction, you’ve got to really inhabit the world of your story. So, you’ve got to get some space from your real life to really get it moving on the page. And, you had a very intense day job in diplomacy. So, how did you manage it?
VS: That’s precisely teh reason it took 11 years for this book to come out compared to the last one was because I was totally immersed. In my day job. I was completely involved with the geopolitical events that were happening in my career as a diplomat. You know my role as High Commissioner to Canada, and then as official spokesperson, Secretary West. And that left me no time really to conceptualize a novel, let alone starting one, because I knew I couldn’t finish it. And that’s why. Only when I retired [from the Indian Foreign Service] that I was able to, you know, start this new project, and you were absolutely right. Once you really get deep into the project you start inhabiting that particular world.
VS: In fact, I would live, breathe, sleep, eat, drink that particular world only, and that’s why, many nights I would just, you know, the idea would be simmering in my head as to you know where the progression would happen, and sometimes the best ideas come to you late at night.and that’s why you know. What I have done is I have in the past. I used to keep a little diary with a pen, so that as soon as I wake up it’s in my short-term memory I have to transfer it to long-term memory and jot it down. Now I just inscribe it onto my phone, the notepad section of my phone because you lose many good ideas. If you do not immediately, you know, work to get them from short term memory into a longer term. Memory.
SBV: I understand the response to the new book has been very positive.
VS: Well, I don’t know what everyone thinks. Anyway, when I went for the launch of The Girl With the Seven Lives, then I had a very good audience, you know. They did it in Oxford bookstore [New Delhi] in the upstairs section, and I had a very good audience, in fact, and very, very good and probing questions from people like Julie Mehta and others.
SBV: Well, it has been a pleasure speaking to you, and I wish you all the success the new book deserves both in print and possibly on screen. And, I hope we can stay in touch if and when this story is adapted, and chat again. With that, I’ll bid you congratulations on the publication of yet another page-turner!
VS: Thanks, Sujoy. This has been really a wonderful interview. You’ve brought many insights to bear, so congratulations to you as well!