SAPNA SAMANT recalls her rendezvous with Vikram Chandra – author of Red Earth and Pouring Rain, Love and Longing in Bombay and most recently Sacred Games – at the Auckland Writers & Readers Festival.


I SIT at my workstation today and think how on earth am I going to encapsulate a meeting that took place more than a month ago? I am not recounting this as a witness so some embellishments are legit... I suppose? It is not often that one gets to meet and gupshup with an Indian Writer of English. In my head, after reading some books and interviews, IWE seemed snooty and condescending. Like ‘we-write-in-English-for-an-elite-audience’; ‘we-are-far-too-literary-dahling-none-of-this-downlowIndianstuff-for-us’ (and yet we do sell the smell of spice through our words). Yeah the stories of happy stumblings into chiefs of publishing houses at parties and agents knocking on their doors etc etc were enough to make me doubt my ability to communicate via the pen. What does it take to be an IWE? A boarding school education and trawling through the upper middle class echelons of Indian society that allowed you to know people? Coming out of the entrails of Girgaum, Mumbai, the need for such credentials seemed unfair to me. So I was wary but still eager to interview Vikram Chandra when he was in Auckland for the Writers & Readers Festival (May 24-27). Not interview as in analysing his writing in front of a paying audience, but for community television. But I also put my hand up for this write-up. It is happening now, a month late, as I sit at my workstation and try to encapsulate my encounter with Vikram Chandra.

I meet him in a hotel lobby run amok with liquor company executives. Boys and girls indulging in corporate bonding. He stands out with his quiet confidence. I don’t gush. Once upon a time, in India, I would have. In Auckland, famous people buy their own groceries and are one phone call or email away. Even members of parliament. I don’t gush. Instead we confabulate. It is too noisy for a television interview. Kamal (producer-director, Darpan-The Mirror), Abba Renshaw (Vikram’s publicist, Allen&Unwin), Vikram and I take the lift upstairs to some clubroom that the hotel has offered. “When did you arrive?” I ask Vikram. “Did you fly from India or the U.S.? How do you like New Zealand so far?” I make small-time conversation in the lift.

The clubroom is noisy too. There are other writers, photographers, assorted visitors and members. The coffee machine spurts intermittently. Vikram is unruffled. He has done many television shoots before and repeats his answers for the camera.

I started reading Sacred Games a week before the festival. I was enthralled. This is the Bombay I know. The chaos, confusion, the methodic existence. I know Ganesh and Sartaj. There is even an Inspector Samant in there. I know Paritosh Shah. White clothes, languid pose and the black phones beside the gadda. I picture him in white sandals, spooning mukhwas and discreetly scratching his scrotum through the white pyjamas. We talk about the characters. Is Ganesh Gaitonde inspired by Chhota Rajan, the infamous gangster now languishing with kidney failure on a yacht off-shore from Bangkok? Who is Sartaj Singh? We analyse the intricate connections between Indian polity, mafia, religion and the film industry. Vikram has first hand experience with the latter. He is the brother-in-law of the famous director-producer Vidhu Vinod Chopra who received extortion threats from the mafia. We are both happy about the spread of Inglish (Indian English). That is why Sacred Games is not full of italics. No more pandering to a Western reader or exoticising the madness of India. The maa-behen invectives roll of the tongue as normally as can. So much so that a New York Times review carried the words innocently leading to outrage from Indian readers. That was followed up by another review and apology¹. But it was motivation enough for me not to italicise this article explaining Indian terms.

Vikram tells me about how he started writing. Science fiction for the school magazine. He is a fan of Isaac Asimov and hopes to write science fiction some day. His mother Kaamna Chandra is a scriptwriter, one sister Anupama is a journalist and another, Tanuja, is a film director. So writing is an integral part of his family. But, Vikram cautions, it is a hard thing from which to make money so he understands why most young Indians study medicine or engineering.

I am completely taken in by Vikram Chandra’s humility and the ability to give. He wants to share his thoughts and have a conversation on equitable terms. The lack of airs and graces are a pleasant change from the pomposities of some local ‘important’ Indians. Here is someone who can create memorable text and images that will last for ever. Can’t wait for the day when Vikram Chandra’s works are taught as an English paper at varsity. Popular Indian culture, mythology and the history of Bombay as a microcosm of independent India. I like that.

His session at the Writers & Readers Festival is quite packed. Vikram reads excerpts from Sacred Games, Red Earth and Pouring Rain and Love and Longing in Bombay. He talks about his grandmother and other powerful women, about colonisation, ideology and proselytising. About how he was inspired by the autobiography of James Skinner, an Anglo-Indian soldier from the Raj. And of course the problematic Indian Writer of English. It is a paradox, this writing in English in India; with so many colloquialisms and the unique use of English words in our daily conversations. Then there is also the issue of Indian-ness. When does an IWE not actually ‘sell the soul’ to Western readers? There will be critics and there will be fans.

It is unforgettable this meeting with Vikram Chandra. I only wish I had told him that when the screenplay for Sacred Games is being written, I WANT IN. (Yeah right!)


At my workstation today I feel restless as I type away. I have procrastinated enough. It is not often that one encounters such inspiration. Even a month down the road I feel the stimulus to take up my pen. I just need to get back to my notes and incomplete manuscripts. Get rid of the italics and expositions. Don’t want to justify the Marathi in my works. Rahude! Vikram Chandra has paved the way.