Writers on Reading. Part Twenty, Karuna Ezara Parikh
Collage by Pearl D’Souza
Many of us had our first tryst with poetry as children in a classroom reciting Robert Frost, William Wordsworth, or Kabir Das. With our fingers clasped together and straight-backed postures, our lips moved with the words that we’d memorised as a teacher scribbled grades into their register.
Is it possible that social media might change this age-old technique of learning poetry through the literary ‘masters’ ? With a rise of sharing writing on Instagram and the access to the diversity of voices, does our unidimensional understanding of the medium evolve?
We speak with poet, author, activist, model, and television anchor, Karuna Ezara Parikh, about the craft of wielding the rhythmic and written word, her newest poetry book Where Stories Gather (2021) , her debut novel, the perception surrounding a digital piece versus a printed piece, and how being a writer is often a balance between scrounging through life experiences and having a wild imagination.
In the introduction to your recently published book, Where Stories Gather, you write about the challenges of recognising a ‘good poem,’ from a ‘fairly ‘okay,’ one because of the Instagram gratification you often receive. How do you decipher when you’re writing from your heart vs. ‘doing it for the ‘gram’?
This is the most painful part of writing, for me – silencing the audience, imaginary, perceived or real, and writing in a way that is simply true to me. I think pretension really stinks and passionate readers can sniff it out. You don’t want that happening of course. This is the complex duality of the process – to not heed the voices that mock you as you write, but to also become your own harshest critic. With each poem I asked myself if it felt true to me. True to something I wanted to say. Did I actually like it, this poem? So many poems that were popular on Instagram didn’t make it to the book. This wasn’t me being precious or rebellious, it was me forcing myself to be honest. With the novel as well, towards the last edits I swept whole paragraphs away, realising at the end that they didn’t add anything to the book. They were an addition to my ego, so they had to go.
Why do you think it’s taken less seriously than a printed version of the same piece of writing?
Ah perhaps we’re all traditionalists at heart? We like the classic form? In a way I find it heartening, that there’s still so much respect for ‘books’, or for work ‘in print’. There’s a sweetness to that isn’t there? The sad bit is that the respect should simply be for ‘writing’, but I suppose there’s so much lore around book deals and validation that it’s bound to happen. Plus, with social media making everyone a poet, I think some level of cynicism around ‘the online’ is valid. The thing I find funny is (as you mentioned) it’s often the same piece lauded in one place and mocked in another.
You have published both, a novel titled The Heart Asks Pleasure First, and a poetry book. In a way, they both deal with themes of love, identity, longing, fragility, and human relationships. As a writer, is it a conscious decision to include recurring themes in your work? Or do you prefer going where the words take you?
I write about what interests me. What makes my heart sing…what I’m drawn to at the time. If I had to write about something I was consciously trying to move towards, without it actually being a passion, I think it would reflect terribly in the work. I spent the last few years thinking a lot about the themes you mentioned…now, not so much. I’m thinking these days about different things, and I suppose my interest in them will be reflected in future work. I think my first two books have similar themes because they came out very close to one another. They were almost twin projects, and therefore have some amount of a twin nature.
The Heart Asks Pleasure First is a story about an India-Pakistan love story in more ways than one. As a storyteller, how do you manage to write stories on widely discovered themes absolutely afresh and with your own perspective?
Before I began writing my book I had this fear. I thought – Partition and September 11th have been so widely covered, Hindu-Muslim stories have been written time and again, what am I really going to say? But then I realised, the book in which I wanted to read about these things, had not been written. The story I wanted to tell wasn’t out there. And soon after I realised, no two people will ever tell the same story in the exact same way. There are some things about human beings that are magic…and this really is one of them.
While writing poetry, do you ever stop in-between to read the lines you have written, or do you prefer to let it flow organically until the very last line? And how does the editing process differ between writing novels and poetry, if at all?
With poetry I usually write in a flurry, it’s an outpouring. But then I go back and undo it all. I find better words, finer rhythms if I can. I read it out loud. I think it’s trash and then I rescue what I can. With my novel and other longer works, I tend to re-read quite frequently. I comb sentences and paragraphs repeatedly as I’m writing…often not moving forward till they feel right.
Paint us a picture of your favourite writing spot.
In March 2021 my husband and I shifted homes to this house by the Lakes in Calcutta. I knew immediately where I wanted my writing desk and when I placed it there, he agreed it was perfect. Let me try and explain…the desk itself was gifted to me by my mother, a writer herself. It is covered in exquisite inlay work from Jodhpur and has two small drawers in which the original drafts of my novel lie. It sits at the South West corner of my house and looks out on one side to the lines where the trains of the Great Eastern Railway pass by each day, and on the other to my neighbour’s incredible garden. This is the thing about trees – they don’t belong to any one person. He has a Neem, a colossal bird-drawing Wild Almond, and a shaggy Ashoka around whose trunk a giant Pothos has climbed. Though I only look out at them, I think of them as mine too. On one side of the desk, in a small milk jug I keep fresh flowers and on the other there are talismans – a tiny clay Frida Kahlo, a Eucalyptus scented candle, a dragonfly I found recently, an amethyst, two bamboos in old wine bottles... There are pens galore in old coffee cups and of course, the books I’m reading. It is a space flooded with light and birdsong, and at my feet often is Clover, the little dog we adopted a few years ago.
Before this, I was always a write-in-bed or anywhere really kind of girl, but this spot brings me so much joy. It’s a pleasure to sit down here and write. I think many writers (including myself before), don’t treat their work as sacred. If you aren’t published, you feel silly calling yourself a writer. Sometimes even after. But making a space to work, to create, even if it’s just one corner, is so important.
Storytellers often talk about the “urgency,” of telling a tale. What do you think this “urgency,” means for you?
For me the urgency comes from within and not based on exterior events. For example with my novel – the “ideal time” to publish it would have been in 2002. But I hadn’t dreamt it up then, hah. The urgency writers mostly speak of though – that drive, that need, I think that’s what defines whether you are a writer or not. If you feel the most important thing is to get those words out of you and down on paper. If you fear you may die before it is done. If you worry someone else might write it all before you. None of these things are likely, but they are part of the panic that pushes you to paper.
Has moving from a fast-paced metropolis like Delhi, to a sleepy city like Kolkata affected your writing process at all? Do you have corners in both cities that you’d choose to go to and dive into a good book?
Oh absolutely. I always say – if I hadn’t moved to Kolkata, I would never have written my books. When I shifted here, I knew no one and I was very much in love. I walked everywhere and explored small lanes and took photographs and spent time in my head building stories. In a sense I created my very own writer’s retreat by shifting cities. There was never anywhere I had to be. I had no social commitments. It was freeing and gave my creativity space to return to me and then I had no excuse but to sit down and write. I remember writing a lot of my first book at this small charming spot – Sienna Café, and reading there many afternoons. In Delhi, more than reading spots, I miss the bookshops terribly. The selection we have access to there is just exceptional.
In a blog profile from 2017 (yes I found it!) you write- “Give me books and you will always get it wrong.” Please elaborate?
I’m impressed! Those were some of my first experiments putting my work out publicly! I think at the time I was being gifted very strange books by people. The one thing I can’t stand reading are “light” books. For some reason they bore me to tears and because they don’t hook me, they tend to frustrate me. I remember being gifted many bestselling “fun” books at the time and it drove me quite mad. Don’t get me wrong, I love dark humour and elegant wit but these were just ridiculous and for a while when someone would say, ‘Oh I know you like reading so I bought you a book…’ I would feel such trepidation. Also, what moves each person is so different. What The Alchemist may have done for one person, The Virgin Suicides may have done for another… Even my best friend and I often have different responses to the same book. I think you must either know someone quite well to gift them a book, and you must know books very, very well. And think carefully – are you thinking about yourself when you gift a book, or about the other person? I must admit there are some friends (and definitely my mother) who get it very right, but even now, I do prefer buying my own books. Half the joy is in standing at the bookstore surrounded by possibilities.
On the same blog, you viscerally describe your father’s home on Elgin Road in Kolkata which is brimming with stories of your childhood, intermingled with the memories of your forefathers. Do you think those experiences shaped you as a writer?
I would hope so. Everything that hurts… if it isn’t material for writing, then what is it? It’s the only way I know how to process and I try to remember it is a great gift and privilege to be able to express, to relive but also to rewrite. Sometimes at the hardest points in my life I have envisioned writing about them later, in the future, and then it doesn’t feel so bad.
Furthermore, since you have donned many hats of being a screenwriter, sustainability activist, model, and TV anchor- do the multiple personas help with building worlds? If I’m not mistaken you have also visited 50 beaches across the world during your time anchoring the NDTV Good Times show, Life's A Beach. Tell us more!
All the years I wasn’t writing my book because I was busy doing other things – all these things – I felt this deep sadness within, because I had begun somewhere to believe I wouldn’t end up writing a book. When I was at my lowest I would tell myself – someday you can use all this and put it into your books. A part of me was consoled, but a part of me didn’t buy it. But when I finally sat down to write my novel, I found that my character Milni had become a model, without me ever really choosing it. My protagonist’s parents ran a business that looked suspiciously like an NGO I once worked with. The lovers in the book travel to a place that echoes of a town in Japan I had once covered for NDTV. So you see… everything is material, in the end. I’m smiling as I type this, by the way.
Concluding with a rapid fire of word associations. Could you tell us the first sentence that you would string together right after these in a poem?
Bread: baked brown by my mother
Cloud: tragically uninhabitable
Chocolate: freckled with berries
Home: pillow and skin
Jasmine: dew drenched
As interviewed by Zahra Amiruddin