different countries, marriage, and children. Amulya borrowed Priya’s
name for the protagonist of The Mango Season, as well as some
of her emotions, though that is still murky.
Amulya Malladi: Well, this is vaguely uncomfortable, talking about something that must make sense after the conversation is over.
Priya Raghupathi: Oh, I don’t know, I’ll turn the floor over to you, as the phrase goes.
AM: Ah, but you have to talk about the book and ask me questions about it, because I already did my job. I wrote the book.
PR: Okay, let’s start with the names in The Mango Season. They were all very familiar.
AM: Names as in, the names of the people?
PR: Yes.
AM: Hmm, I did notice that… but later on. I know different writers write differently, but I need to have the title of the book in place. I can think about the book, even write a few pages but if I don’t have a title, I can’t move on. And the title just comes; I don’t work very hard at it. Same with names of characters, my fingers just type the names and I settle down with them. I don’t second-guess myself too much.
PR: We’ve heard all these names in our close circles.
AM: I think I borrowed a lot of names from people I knew. I didn’t realize that I was borrowing your name for Priya until later when I started to read the blurb of the book and saw that she went to Texas A &M and so did you. I did get some hints when Priya’s brother’s name started out to be your brother’s name but I changed it without thinking much. And maybe there were connections that came from our time together in Hyderabad, as Neelima was also the name of your roommate (and I didn’t realize that until right now). I did quote another classmate of ours, Sudhir, in the book and used his name. Ashwin, Priya’s father’s name, came from an ex-boyfriend’s brother’s name. Ah… the list is endless.
Even, Priya’s boyfriend’s name came from an unusual place. One of my husband’s friends had a baby boy and they didn’t give the kid a name until he was almost six months old. And I think I was working on the book when my husband told me they finally named their son Nicholas. And I used it.
I don’t “steal” names consciously. Later on I can draw lines and make sense of it, but right then and there… it’s just something that works out.
PR: You also have a lot of references to the Bay Area and Hyderabad, places you’ve been. Do you write only about places you’ve been to? Even in your first book, you wrote about Bhopal, a place you were familiar with.
AM: I think it’s easier to write about a place you’ve lived in. The research element definitely shrinks and you can write more confidently. I also feel I have an obligation to write about a place I’ve lived in. I have moved a lot in my life, as a child and even as an adult, and I just feel that it would be such a waste if I wouldn’t write about the places I have lived in.
My third book, Serving Crazy with Curry is set completely in the Bay Area, while the book after that is going to be set entirely in India in this small town by the Bay of Bengal that I was familiar with when I was a child. And now that I live in Denmark, I feel I must write a book set in Denmark with Danes. After all, I am so intimate with this society, not just because I live here, but also because I’m married to a Dane.
PR: And I also think because you’ve lived in these places you relate with them and don’t make up stuff.
AM: I don’t mind making up stuff, especially about a place. After all, I’m writing fiction, not a travel book. But I’d rather not make up stuff.
PR: I guess writers do write about places they know. Hemingway did go to Spain a lot when he wrote his books with that backdrop.
AM: Even Naipaul does that. He writes about Africa and Indian immigrants who live there. Amy Tan writes about American Chinese characters who live in China and the San Francisco Bay Area. Maybe writers like to revisit the places they have lived in, the experiences they have had there.
For me writing The Mango Season was like taking a trip to India. I’d forgotten how good chaat tastes, or how good ganna juice tastes and when I was writing about it I could all but smell that sugarcane juice. I miss sugarcane juice! I remember how you and I would get off the bus from college and eat roadside chaat and indulge in a tall glass of sugarcane juice. Our mothers were never too pleased about us eating and drinking that junk. Never stopped us, though, even when we fell sick because of it.
PR: Speaking of food, you know I found something similar between your book and Like Water for Chocolate, that you put recipes before every chapter, or almost every chapter.
AM: Well, food is an integral part of Indian society. When we go to visit my parents, my mother will ask us to sit and eat even before we have set our bags down. Whenever I’d go to visit relatives, I’d find myself spending a lot of time in the kitchen with someone or the other, watching them cook or helping them cook.
And I love to cook. So, even though Priya (not you, the book one) isn’t a great cook, I think she appreciates good food because she grew up with it. And I wanted to show the kitchen dynamics and politics as well. A lot of women in one kitchen, there has to be some masala there.
The Mango Season is nowhere as brilliant as Like Water for Chocolate, which is one of those books where the lines between reality and fantasy blur and the end result is a beautifully written story.
PR: Like Water for Chocolate is like a water painting with no defined lines. When you look at something, you think it’s sort of a tree but it could also be part of the mountain behind it.
AM: That’s a fabulous way of putting it. Laura Esquivel does have that magic touch. I’d like to be like her when I grow up.
PR: When I first read The Mango Season, I thought, “Why is everybody sounding so emotional? Do we really talk like this in India? We definitely don’t talk like this in the U.S. ” And then I thought about it some. In the U.S. you try to stay politically correct and calm and balanced. Even with family and friends. But when you go back to India you realize that people say exactly what they think. They do tend to get more visibly upset. And the bad part is if you stay there long enough it can start rubbing off on you.
AM: Was everyone emotional in the book? Probably.
Well, it’s a matter of time and place. Priya has come home after seven years and she has something to say that no one is going to like to hear. Her parents want her to get married and they’d prefer to somehow do it without her permission. At Priya’s grandparents’ house there is a lot of tension because of what the sex of Lata’s baby will be, and they’re trying to get their youngest daughter, Sowmya, married. After years of trying and not succeeding, that is a matter of constant concern. And then there is the continuing battle over Anand and the fact that he married a woman out of his caste. They are all emotional because of the conflict-laden atmosphere they are in.
I don’t think it’s a matter of being politically correct or not, it’s just a matter of what the situation is. People are not extra polite with family because of the societal need to be PC. I think families are families and every family has a different dynamic. I know several American and Danish families where the conversations get loud and direct; feelings are bruised and mended, same as any other family.
But you’re absolutely right about Indians being direct and emotional. I feel that most Indians don’t have filters. They say what they mean and what they feel, without paying much heed to who will be hurt and how much. And yes, Indians are very emotional as well and I have seen it very clearly depicted when I interact with Americans and Europeans. We feel too much and we react so strongly. My Danish family probably thinks I am a little cuckoo because I go off the deep end very easily and often.