Nilanjana S Roy’s ‘Black River’ which came out in 2022 was hard-hitting and gut-wrenching- while you could possibly finish reading the book in less than two days, there was something that would subconsciously make you want to take it a little slow. Not because of the noir setting or the murder taking place in the book but probably because the writing was extremely raw. Roy through her words makes her readers question the sociological and environmental degradation that is only scaling up with time.
Roy’s gripping novel successfully discomforts the comfortable and by the time readers get to the end of the book, they know for certain that Nilanjana is a writer for the ages. In an exclusive conversation with News18 at the Samsung Galaxy Tab S9 Series Jaipur Literature Festival, the magnificent author spoke not only about ‘Black River’ and its resounding success but also about her prior works, her career in journalism, the quest for representing diverse voices and perspectives in her writing and much more.
Read-
The last time you spoke to us you had mentioned that the success of ‘Black River’ was still seeping in. Has it sunk in yet?
I returned to novel writing after a ten-year gap, and am (still!) surprised and deeply grateful to the readers, bookshops and reviewers who have given this Delhi noir of mine so much love and a home on their shelves.
‘Black River’ is still very much talked about, so do you think there’s an added responsibility on you as a storyteller after its resounding success?
The greatest responsibility you have is to the page in front of you, the next story, to what you feel most keenly in our rapidly changing, incendiary, often cruel times — this is a turbulent century, haunted by old ghosts returning from the past. I’ve come late to writing fiction, and I am still learning how to write in my 50s; I hope I will be able to write better and truer in the next few decades.
You had also mentioned to us, that you wouldn’t mind if Black River was turned into a film. Any news on that? What’s your vision for the novel?
I hadn’t thought about an adaptation when I was writing Black River, but there’s been interest. Film and web series are dramatically different mediums — if it does happen, I’d be curious to see how Chand, Rabia, Khalid and Ombir come to life in someone else’s vision. The Yamuna, Teetarpur, Bright Dairy — Delhi’s landscapes range from starkly beautiful to apocalyptic, so that should be interesting to see on screen.
There has been a lot of interest in your expertise when it comes to working across different genres. How do you choose the themes and genres for each of your books? What draws you to them and how do you manage to ace them all?
You’re being very kind. I think many of us in creative fields have been lucky to be able to follow our curiosity about the world around us, and many live several lives — Anuradha Roy, whose writing I admire greatly, is a potter and a writer, Janice Pariat writes poetry, short stories and novels, for instance. I was lucky to start my career at the Business Standard, because it took arts, culture and books seriously, and because editors like T N Ninan, AKB and Tony Joseph had great integrity and progressive values. I began editing and writing with an anthology about food in India — a vast subject, feast, famine, battlefield and meeting place — and circled back to freedom, to modern Indian history, to the love of books, to the sheer pleasure of writing fantasy like The Wildings series. At present, I’m gripped by the immense possibilities of crime fiction — it’s both a modern and an ancient genre, can swing between pulp and literature effortlessly and deals with the grimmest and most joyful of human experiences.
What is your typical writing process like? Do you have any rituals or habits that help you get into the writing zone?
It’s visual, almost wordless, as images and characters, visions that you don’t wholly understand, begin to accumulate. In flashes, the story shapes itself. I go through several drafts — writing teaches you humility above all because your first draft is often shaky, watery, and thinly voiced. I’m an early-morning or late-night writer. It’s hard to write well with interruptions. Phone calls, email, an overly social life, and Twitter (X), they all get in the way.
Rituals: coffee, a cat on my lap (or more usually, lying right across the keyboard or notebook), and sometimes a quiet prayer just to ask for clarity and direction, because fiction always seems to arrive from someplace beyond human agency. Stories are given to you in a way that’s truly mysterious; you are just the shaper.
Fiction needs stillness, but it’s on long walks that I really find my rhythm, and I get back to the desk with a refreshed spirit, a renewed, cleaner energy, and more playfulness. And the cats (we have four, all of them drama queens) keep you from taking yourself too seriously. I like to write on the roof or in a slightly cold room, it sharpens the mind. I struggle to write in Delhi in the summer because I can’t walk that much in the heat, but winters are great for novels. Freezing, gloomy winters when no one wants to go out or meet you: that’s a gift for a novelist in a big city.
What inspired “The Wildings” and “The Hundred Names of Darkness”? Why did you explore the world of animals in your fiction?
Strays are citizens too, and aside from its 35 million humans, Delhi is populated with dogs, monkeys, cats, cows, a profusion of birds including cheels and peacocks, rats, bandicoots and tonga horses living in a universe that’s built by humans. I found their world fascinating — cats, from my own to the ferals I met and befriended over the years in Jangpura and Nizamuddin, were kind enough to show me a city under the city I thought I knew so well. What got to me was that they lived in a world that was often harsh, cruel, and encroaching — and yet they, and the street dogs and others, formed strong inter-species friendships, lived with curiosity and joy whenever possible, and were protective of one another. The Wildings and Hundred Names wrote themselves once I understood their lives a little better… during the pandemic years, I was befriended by a family of cheels. And once they trusted me enough to ignore my presence, I spent hours on my rooftop watching while they wheeled and spun in mating dances, painstakingly built nests, warded off predators, brought up young fledglings, and flew wingtip to wingtip with other cheels in their territory. Life is all around us, even in a concrete megalopolis, a thousand sagas happening everywhere.
What according to you is literature’s role in addressing social issues? Does fiction still have the power to create change?
Power lies with many other forces: politicians, oligarchs, tyrants, the cult of celebrity, whoever can shout loudest, has the most ‘followers’, whichever party can capture your attention, can manipulate algorithms. But good writers can enter your heart and your imagination — look at Perumal Murugan’s work, at the power of Geetanjali Shree’s words, at the towering force that was Girish Karnad or Krishna Sobti. Change can also happen subtly. Writers can choose to tell the truth, a powerful act when we’re caught in a web of deceptions, and fiction can, at its best, jolt readers out of the mayajaal, challenge and transform your beliefs. The problem is that as global English language publishing grows more corporate, fiction risks becoming another consumable, a feelgood, mass-produced or AI-generated product. But writers who remain true to the calling itself will always have the power to stir up necessary trouble.
The representation of diverse voices and perspectives is a growing concern. How do you approach diversity and inclusivity in your writing?
Publishing is a harsh business. Globally, writers earn less and less even as more books are published, and in India, we still lack the grants, the residencies, and the supporting infrastructure — prizes and literary festivals don’t bridge that gap. This means that only the most determined or the most privileged become writers — and if you need social, caste-based and financial capital in order to join the profession, that automatically excludes far too many. Fiction writers can always use the excuse that they should have unlimited freedom to explore any terrain they choose, which is partly true. But it took me years to write Black River because I was writing about people whose experiences, struggles, dreams and griefs, were sharply different from my far more cushioned life. If you’re going to do that, you have a duty of care. The research helped, years of conversations and learning, and letting go of any preconceptions, may have helped, but most of all I tried to write with respect and empathy for Rabia, Chand, Khalid, Ombir, Badshah Miyan and everyone who is part of Black River. You have to put yourself in someone else’s place, and let them be real, flawed, fully themselves.
How do you think technology, especially in the digital age, has influenced the landscape of literature and storytelling?
Big question! It’s shortened our attention spans, and we lose something essential when we become consumers rather than readers. Unfortunately, many in technology are dismissive of or heedless of the humanities, and that shows in their engineering. It can be malignant — social media in particular enables the spread of the crudest, most dangerous propaganda, like poison coursing through the veins of storytelling itself, and the AI age may be a monstrous as well as creative one. But the Internet also placed resources such as libraries and writing tools, in the hands of millions, and gave readers marvellous ways to share their love of books and stories across national and other borders. Storytelling is a fundamentally human creation, and even though many of us are now hybrid creatures — our selves fragmented across devices and platforms, divided jerkily between earthly lives and online lives — we still seem to need to write, tell, and read, and listen to stories. The form may change and transmute; not that deep, centuries-old call-and-response between tale, teller, and audience.
Not to forget, you have a background in journalism. How has your experience in journalism influenced your approach to fiction writing?
Perhaps the greatest gift from my years working with the Business Standard, and later the New York Times, was learning to shut up and listen, to research, to question what you’re seeing or being told to see. If journalism showed me a map of missing girls across much of North India — those lives taken in casual murders, in under-investigated crimes — fiction gave me a place for that anger, the sense of loss and injustice one carries for so many years.
I thought I knew Delhi well, but researching the Yamuna and the outskirts of the city for Black River helped me see how pollution — of the elements as well as of the spirit — had destroyed the land, and the web of human connections around the land; the waters choke, the soil reaches exhaustion, the air grows more poisonous, and all of this affects us, whether we acknowledge it or not.
I love fiction because it is limitless, and you can create a universe with just words; but journalism helped me anchor my imagination in a plausible, hopefully vivid, reality. Most of all, those years as a reporter taught me to get out and walk the city, the river, walk and listen and see how different a place might feel to migrants, outsiders, all those who find unexpected refuge in this massive, often abrasive, sometimes nurturing, megacity.
Can you talk to us a little about your sessions at the Samsung Galaxy Tab S9 Series Jaipur Literature Festival this year?
Crime fiction is picking up in India — about time, considering that we have everything from fierce wars between rival criminal clans sparked by forbidden love affairs between clan members, to people like Lal Behari who was declared dead by a property-stealing uncle, ran unsuccessfully against Rajiv Gandhi in the 1989 election, and founded the Mritak Sangh, the UP Association of Dead People. I’m in conversation with Pragya Tiwari, who is as brilliant as a moderator as she is at everything else, so we’re not likely to run out of things to talk about!
Lastly, what is next for you in line?
There are so many books I want to write: short stories, poems, essays, more novels, it’s all bubbling in that cauldron, and all I want is more time and nine more lives. But I’m also wrestling with the next novel, almost done. I hope I can make this one sing.
Comments
0 comment