Outlook’s senior-associate-editor Avantika Mehta in conversation with the author Rupleena Bose. Rupleena Bose serves as an associate professor at Sri Venkateshwara College, University of Delhi.She has written several screenplays and a non-fiction film titled You Don’t Belong. which has won a National Film Award. She has been a Charles Wallace India trust scholarship holder for creative writing. she is also an occasional actor and has co-written a non-fiction book on the history of film festivals titled ‘In the Life of a Film Festival’ (Harper Collins,2018). Her debut novel, just released, is called 'Summer Of Then'.
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NewsTranscript
00:00Welcome to Outlook Talks. We're sitting with Ruplina Bhose and we're going to discuss her
00:16debut novel, The Summer of Ben. I read your book and I have to say it was really impressive.
00:22What an impressive debut and everyone is saying it, right? Are you happy with it?
00:27Yeah, thank you. Yeah, I mean more people read it, more people like it. Of course,
00:31what else do you want? That's exactly what a writer would like. Of course. A lot of people
00:36are saying that this is one of the most contemporary, set in a more contemporary
00:40situation than other Indian novels of late. Can I ask you why you decided to set it in this
00:46particular decade? Did it have anything to do with the politics or it has been compared, you know?
00:53Yeah, basically, you know, I read all these novels, like I was a big fan of Rachel Kask,
00:58I was a big fan of Sheila Reddy, lot of these writers, Deborah Levy and they used to write
01:03about women and it was contemporary, women were going on holidays, discovering their sexuality,
01:08love, desire, betrayal and I just felt that why can't we have a novel about us and about like
01:15somebody who's also flawed maybe, you know? And if you're writing about India, you cannot bypass
01:21the politics of what is happening. So, while it is set in 2010 to 20, which is where it ends,
01:28you know, you could also look at it as something which, you know, which could be this decade as
01:33well. But I needed to set it a little apart for, you know, because sometimes you can't see a lot
01:38of things directly, particularly, you know, the political, larger political aspects.
01:42So, it is a little bit like the coming of age, even though your protagonist is 20,
01:47in the sense of she's really growing into herself, right? And a little bit is set against the coming
01:52of age of India as well, where India sort of becomes this global power and all these people
01:57become super rich, which is something you address in the book, the caste, the class difference,
02:02the growing inequalities. Do you want to speak a little bit about that? Why this decision to
02:06talk about that and so poignantly? Yeah, you know, the thing is that I, what I felt was that,
02:13you know, India, in India, you know, you can actually, if you'd like, I mean, if you compare
02:18it to a Bangladesh, Pakistan, a lot of other countries, India, you can, if you are well educated,
02:23if you go through good schooling, good education at some point of time, I'm not talking about the
02:27India of today, honestly, but like maybe the 2000s, you could do anything, you had the desire,
02:33you could try to do anything. But actually, it's not true. I mean, somewhere, you are bound by
02:39your class and my protagonist, even though and that's why I put a teacher at the helm of it,
02:45an English teacher, because firstly, we don't see novels like that in India, at least I didn't find
02:51a contemporary English teacher, because you're also doing something which is very interesting,
02:56like how many people read literature, how many people read books. So that observation of inside,
03:02outside, what is happening in academia, in your city, in yourself, and of course, the
03:07realization that class is very important. So that is something which I needed to have my
03:13protagonist talk about, because that is what makes her. It's almost a character in your novel,
03:18the class. Class is almost a character in your novel, right? But you know, some of it is also
03:23unconscious, I would say, I mean, when I finished it, I realized that, oh, okay. And I think,
03:29yeah. Were you feeling those feelings?
03:32After I finished it, I felt that, oh, okay, there's a lot of class in it.
03:36It's not, I mean, I didn't set out to write about it, but I set out to definitely write about
03:41this girl vis-a-vis the nation, you know, this girl vis-a-vis the city.
03:46And then set it into very, very strong Indian cities, Calcutta and Delhi.
03:50Yeah.
03:50Now, who could not be more different, even the cities?
03:53Yeah.
03:54So you grew up in Calcutta?
03:55No, I grew up in Madras, actually, which is not in the book.
04:00So I grew up in Madras, I before that, actually, I was born in Patna.
04:04So and then I came to Delhi and I did my college here.
04:08And now you teach at?
04:09I teach in Delhi.
04:10Sri Venkateshwar College.
04:11Yes, I teach there.
04:12How is that, meeting all these young people? It's something you mention also in the book,
04:16right? There's a whole thread of a Muslim boy who gets killed during an honor killing.
04:24Is that something that was close to your heart? There are obviously such stories and then around
04:28the time you were writing the book, there was the Ankit Saxena case, you know, and it was all over.
04:33Yeah.
04:34Was that sort of where you drew the inspiration from?
04:37You know, like, this didn't happen, this incident didn't happen.
04:40But what happened was like, the fact is that when I was writing Summer of Them,
04:45I was not teaching at that time, I was on a long leave for my PhD.
04:49So it was April 2020 was when I started it.
04:52And I remember this moment, that moment, I said, Oh, my God, there's a pandemic,
04:56I need to escape, I need to think about nicer things, a different decade, you know, like parties
05:02and, you know, everything else that is in a different decade.
05:06Everything was not possible at that point of time in April 2020.
05:10And that's when I started writing. So I was actually not even a teacher at that time.
05:13I had not taught for almost three and a half years.
05:16So which is why it felt like becoming someone else.
05:20And somehow this boy's character just came, I guess, the subconscious of the politics of the
05:25nation. When I started writing, I didn't plan it.
05:29So you didn't, did you plot this novel a little bit even?
05:31Or was it like one of those pancers?
05:34No, I didn't plot it a bit. Actually, the primary character which I got was Pat.
05:40But I realized that I can't tell Pat's story in first person.
05:43I have to be someone else and then Pat comes in.
05:46So yeah, that was the starting. The primary objective was this woman,
05:51two men she meets and parallelly Pat's story of being a teacher.
05:56Is that why the character is unnamed?
05:59Yeah, I guess. I didn't need to name it. I mean, I had a name in my head.
06:04But then I realized like 40-50 pages have gone and the name is not required.
06:09To be honest, I read 40-50 pages before I realized you had named the character.
06:12I was like, what's her name?
06:14And also I wanted it to be like a something like every person,
06:18like, you know, when you anyway, when you say I, there is like, you know,
06:21an immediate recognition.
06:23So whoever is reading it can be their I.
06:26That's a good tactic to get people to sort of identify.
06:28Yeah, yeah.
06:29Though I don't think they'll have trouble identifying with the character.
06:32And I hope so.
06:33No, of course, a young woman in her 20s in a love triangle is.
06:36Yeah.
06:38Tell me a little bit more about the motivations behind this book.
06:41You said you wanted to write about all the things that weren't happening during the pandemic.
06:45But when you're reading this book, there's also a lot about class envy.
06:48There's a lot, like I said, class and caste are a character.
06:52You know, even when she marries the upper caste man,
06:55the mother-in-law says you should be happy to take his last name.
06:59Some of these things, do they happen from your own experiences?
07:02Or have you drawn from experiences around you?
07:05No, you know, I have not from, they're definitely not from my own experience.
07:10But having said that, you know, I remember somebody told me that,
07:12oh, you know, people often say that, oh, caste is for,
07:16we never talked about caste.
07:17You know, amongst this very educated public school lot,
07:20we often say that we don't talk about caste.
07:23And somebody said, that's because, you know, you didn't have to.
07:25If you were me, you would have known, you know, you would have talked about caste.
07:29And I think that is what stayed in my head.
07:32And the caste aspect, you know, actually comes from the grandmother story.
07:37Because that is where, you know, she has a relationship and that guy is a Brahmin.
07:42So that was what I wanted to essentially highlight.
07:45But the fact that somewhere, you know, some of these things sort of spill over decades.
07:50Well, of course, because it is a pervasive topic in India, right?
07:53So it's funny.
07:54I like that about the book.
07:56I like even that scene where the mother-in-law is talking because it was very real.
08:00You know, something that you don't see often in contemporary novels,
08:04especially about, you know, love stories and so on.
08:06They just gloss over this stuff.
08:07I like that you didn't gloss over it.
08:09Was that a conscious decision?
08:12Yeah, I mean, it could have.
08:13I could have removed a couple of lines in the subsequent drafts.
08:17But then I didn't because to me, it had to resonate with the grandmother's story.
08:20Because that is what reveals in the end that the guy that she likes, you know, like,
08:24whatever, there's a caste angle to it.
08:26So which is why I thought that I have to keep these two parallel.
08:29Because they are in a way parallel.
08:30They are in a way parallel.
08:32You mentioned the grandmother.
08:33And I can't help noticing that you also dedicated the book to your grandma, right?
08:39Can you tell me a little bit about your grandma?
08:41What was she like?
08:41She obviously made an impression.
08:43She's the teller of stories.
08:44Yeah, she used to tell a lot of stories.
08:46You know, let me qualify this book and his experiences.
08:49I've got nothing to do with her at all.
08:51But what happened was like, you know, because my grandmother would be constantly
08:55telling me stories.
08:56And I think I was one of those very weird kids, I think, who was like, from age 10,
09:01I would say, I want to be a writer, I want to be a professor.
09:04You know, so like, very weird.
09:06And I would be reading all the time.
09:08My grandmother would also be like telling all kinds of stories, like Bengali stories,
09:12you know, like Tagore, of course, a lot of Tagore.
09:15Like what?
09:16Tell us a story.
09:18Tagore, she told me all of the ghost stories, a lot of ghost stories she would tell me.
09:22And Tagore, you know, Gora was a story that she said she had first told me about.
09:28Then so many, Bankim Chandra Chatterjee was something I think before reading, I heard
09:33the whole story in parts.
09:35So those, which is why I tell her that.
09:38And which is why your next one might be a detective novel.
09:41Yeah, yeah.
09:42It might be, let's see.
09:44I think that's lovely.
09:45And you have qualified and said this has nothing to do with, like the story isn't.
09:49But bringing in this grandmother's character and so on, there's a lot in here about the
09:54interior voices of women, you know, which is, which we don't see so often, especially
09:58in Indian literature.
10:00Again, I want to ask you, was that a sort of conscious decision to make it so interior,
10:05so within themselves, you know, almost always thinking, your characters are almost always
10:09talking to themselves in the book.
10:11And now, obviously, as women, you and I know, we are perpetually thinking, right, you are
10:15always thinking about what to do and how to be careful and how to like, even, even how
10:20to keep your head.
10:20And yeah, right.
10:22So all of this came out very beautifully.
10:24I have to ask you some of these characters that you made, like Riya's character and so
10:28on, were they based on people that you knew?
10:31Did you sort of like, pick them up from, you know, your experiences?
10:36Or maybe just like watching society?
10:38No, definitely some of the characters, there are little bits of people I have taken, not
10:41Riya.
10:42Riya is a totally imaginary character.
10:44She's very real.
10:45Like Viola as well.
10:47But there's certain things, obviously, which I've merged, like two people I know, I've
10:50taken a little aspect of them, merged it with another person.
10:54But one thing about the grandmother, I must say that my grandmother was a widow.
10:58So, you know, I really didn't know many things about her personal life.
11:02You know, I only knew about the things that she would tell me about stories.
11:06So I think that was the subconscious why I created this character.
11:09So there is that as well.
11:10And is that a thread that you've seen across your childhood and so on?
11:15Because here's what I've noticed in the book, right?
11:17Is a lot of the stuff is very personal, in the sense of these are things that most people
11:23don't talk about often.
11:24And often, like you said, you won't know your grandmother's personal stories, you won't
11:28know your mother's backstory.
11:29They don't share them with us, right?
11:31And then there's a sense in your book of the super candidness, where all these stories
11:36are being shared, like, just simply without any, you know, coyness, anything, even the
11:41affair and so on.
11:43How did that feel?
11:44Like, what was the reaction to that?
11:45How did other people, your editors, agents react to the candidness of your book?
11:50Yeah, you know, they really liked it.
11:51I must say when I sent it to my agent first, and she really liked it.
11:56She said, I have not read anything like this, you know, and then she compared it to several
12:00female writers who had not read at that point of time.
12:02I'd read Sally Rooney, of course, somewhere in between.
12:06And then she said, you know, this, she said something like deep dive, that you would deep
12:10dive into the self.
12:11Yeah, that's the word Radhika had used.
12:14And she said that it's, it's so nice.
12:16I mean, that's such a lovely moment, which is constantly created.
12:22And where, you know, you're talking about yourself, you almost feel that she's in a
12:25conversation with herself.
12:27But yeah, frankly, I didn't think of it like that.
12:29I mean, that would be like, really, like, what a lonely girl.
12:32No conversation.
12:33I know, I also got that.
12:35Like I said, like, it really felt like there was a lot of inner talk of these women and
12:39you get a front row seat into that, which is very rare these days, especially with these
12:43sort of characters.
12:44Your characters are very bold.
12:45They're doing exactly what they want.
12:48Your English teacher wants to be an activist in the middle for the Muslim boy.
12:51Yeah.
12:53And these are sort of things where you normally when you see characters like this in India's
12:57books, or even in cinema, they're action oriented.
13:00You know, there's not a lot of inner dialogue, whereas in this book, it's almost all inner
13:04dialogue.
13:06So that was that was very interesting to read.
13:08And you unpacked it quite beautifully.
13:10Was it difficult?
13:12These are some very hard feelings you're writing about the envy, the even the abuse with the
13:17mother-in-law, the affairs, how to feel.
13:20These are difficult things that you're writing about and difficult not just to articulate,
13:25but difficult even to put out there.
13:27So how was that for you when you were writing this?
13:30You know, I think what helped was it was really quiet when I was writing it.
13:34There was no sound around.
13:36Is this because you were in Goa?
13:37Yeah, because I was in this small village.
13:39And it was, you know, like entire I wrote it in nine, ten months, I think April to December
13:44was the time because I had to finish a PhD after that.
13:47I was like, oh, my God, I have to write this.
13:51While you were writing your PhD.
13:53I was like, I have to write this.
13:54There's a deadline because so then I was writing them, this book.
13:59And because there was a lot of silence around, I think that helped in the unpacking because
14:03you're only hearing your voice.
14:07And the other thing that I think helped was that I would write one every day, one chapter
14:13every day.
14:13One chapter every day.
14:15It's exactly the way it is.
14:16It's gone through several doubts, but it starts with weather, the season, you know, spring.
14:22Because, you know, in pandemic, what was spring and what was, it was like, it was very strange.
14:28So it starts with spring.
14:29And that's how then I moved to the next section, next season, next city.
14:34And it goes on for 10 years.
14:36To separate 10 years is not easy.
14:37So you have to grow also.
14:39That is what I was wondering, like, it's not at all easy to separate and you go seamlessly
14:43back and forth quite often in the book as well.
14:47I have to ask you, what were your inspirations in writing this book?
14:50You said Sally Rooney.
14:51But you also said there were a lot of people you were compared to that you hadn't read.
14:55Who are the authors that you like reading?
14:57Oh, I like so many authors.
15:00No, Sally Rooney was not my inspiration.
15:02I must qualify that I read it.
15:04I think after I finished the first draft or something like that.
15:07And then of course, everybody compared and all of that.
15:10But I think my greatest inspiration would be Virginia Woolf, Orhan Pamuk, who I love.
15:16I see a lot of Orhan Pamuk.
15:18Who I just love.
15:19There is Rachel Cusk, I would say was a very big inspiration, you know, because I read
15:24that novel when she's a professor and she goes to Crete.
15:27I think it's Outline.
15:28Yes.
15:29Because I read a lot of second place, Outline, all of them I really like.
15:32And that's when I thought, oh, my God, see, she's a professor, she's going to Greece,
15:36and she's going on a residency and she's meeting people.
15:39Why must we not?
15:42We have a story like that.
15:43And I felt like I wanted to read something like that.
15:46And that's why I started.
15:47With an Indian woman, finally.
15:49And you know, which is, so in a way, it's very sort of dysfunctional.
15:52So you want to write what you want to read, which is not out there.
15:56That's fair enough.
15:57I mean, I feel like that is just the best way to write, right?
15:59Like you write something that you want to read.
16:01Well, I tried, you know, I was initially writing a detective novel.
16:06So what happened was, I had written a detective novel, and it was in the first draft.
16:12But with the pandemic, April 2020, I just said that I can't go back and do a draft of this.
16:18It's not me.
16:18I have changed, the world has changed, something new has to be started.
16:22And that's when I thought that who are the people I like?
16:24And I thought Pamuk, Rachel Kask, Deborah Levy is somebody I just love.
16:30And Virginia Woolf, of course, forever favorite.
16:33I can see the Urang Pamuk.
16:34I think Pamuk, I'm a big fan of Pamuk.
16:37No, because I can see what you mean.
16:39Because there is obviously Pamuk is also very interior.
16:42A lot of it is thought, a lot of it is details.
16:44Seasons are extremely important to him.
16:47I remember reading some book of him and he was describing the window for like three pages.
16:52Snow, I think it's snow.
16:55And so yeah, I can see that.
16:57I thought that you reminded me of Anita Desai.
16:59I think I said yes.
17:00Yeah, you just said Anita Desai, I love, of course, you know,
17:03and I've taught Anita Desai, Clear Light of Day.
17:05Yes.
17:06And maybe it was subconscious because I really enjoyed teaching and I enjoyed writing Anita
17:11Desai.
17:12She was not there.
17:13The book was not there with me at that point of time, I remember in my bookshelf.
17:17Because that bookshelf is in my locker at the university.
17:22You have a bookshelf in your locker?
17:23Yeah, there's a locker where there are books which you read.
17:25So it was there.
17:27So, okay.
17:28I think the bookshelf in your locker, that's quite cool.
17:31Yeah, the locker is a bookshelf, actually.
17:33It's a locker you pick up and there are all these texts which we teach.
17:36Like, you know, Dubliners is there.
17:38I don't know why Dubliners is there.
17:39It makes sense, there's a whole bunch of, I mean,
17:42Desai is there, Waiting for Bodo is there.
17:44At least they moved on from sort of Jane Austen, which is a paper teaching when we were in
17:48university.
17:49Yeah, we do teach Jane Austen.
17:51But I do like George Eliot, another person I really liked, Middlemarch.
17:56Yeah.
17:56And in fact, subconsciously, Middlemarch was something which is an inspiration because it
18:00had that suffrage, you know, what we were talking about earlier, that woman, new jobs,
18:07new kind of identity.
18:09Definitely, and also Middlemarch doesn't directly obviously talk about it, but it's a lot about
18:15class.
18:15Almost every book novel from that part is about class because it was so unequal back then.
18:22Absolutely.
18:23Perhaps that's why in India right now with this emerging inequality, you also felt the
18:27need to write about it.
18:29Of course, like a suitable boy.
18:33Yes.
18:33Vikram said, I love Arundhati Roy and so many Indian writers.
18:40It's so difficult.
18:41What do you think of the Indian writing scene now though, like as contemporary novels are
18:45coming out?
18:46You know, Arundhati Roy, it's been a while.
18:48I mean, she hasn't written a book since the Museum of
18:51Ministry of Athens, at most Athens.
18:55And I wouldn't I mean, yes, she's contemporary.
18:57But what I mean is in the last 10-15 years, our age, you know, what do you think?
19:02What are your thoughts on them?
19:03Who are your favorites?
19:04Who would you like to read more of?
19:06So many, Jhumpa Lahiri, I love.
19:08I forgot to mention her, actually.
19:10But so many writers, I read a lot of fiction all the time.
19:16Who is the, I like Anuradha Roy, for example, and as I said, I like Vikram Seth, I like
19:26Salman Rushdie, I like Arundhati Roy.
19:28I also like Nilanjana Roy's Wildlings because it's about the story of a cat.
19:33And I, we have cats.
19:34So it's something that I really I thought that wow, to get into this, you know, that
19:39space.
19:40It's something wonderful.
19:41And I also, of course, Amitabh Ghosh, Shadow Lines, everybody likes, who doesn't like?
19:46Just let me, sorry.
19:47With the women, who do you think is your favorite?
19:50My favorite, it's tough to say one favorite.
19:55That's fair.
19:56There's so many.
19:56Yeah, there's so many.
19:57Yeah, well, Avni Doshi I write as well.
20:00Now I remember.
20:00Avni Doshi, yeah, I like her work.
20:03Avni Doshi, I haven't read Preeti Taneja, which I want to read.
20:06She did a retelling of Lear.
20:08So that's something which I want to read.
20:11And yeah.
20:14I mean, Rupina, now let's discuss, you said you wrote this in 10 months, which I'm sure
20:19you know as a breakneck speed for a novel.
20:22Some of us have taken seven, seven years.
20:25So what is your advice for other novelists, the inspiring ones, even I'm sure some of
20:29your students, right?
20:31Yeah, I'm sure they've come and asked you already.
20:33Now, what sort of advice do you give them?
20:36So, you know, this one was 10 months, but that was a very specific 10 months of 2020,
20:41where literally the world shut down, you know, so you could only escape, I could only escape.
20:48I think such a cliche thing to say right every day, it really works.
20:53It does work.
20:54So sorry, but it really works.
20:56I think finding that one space or time when you can, not space, essentially time, like
21:02either, you know, in the morning or one time where you're sort of away from responsibilities,
21:07domesticity, and you can just sort of fly.
21:09I think that would be something that I would advise like, you know, one page 500 words,
21:15400 words doesn't matter.
21:16I have done that also forever.
21:19And while this one took 10 months, before that, I've taken three years for the detective
21:24novel also, and I see another year.
21:27So it differs from story to story.
21:29So it sounds almost like you're saying don't compare.
21:32Yeah, 2020, I think that year, that time was something else.
21:36I know that I also can't, I don't have that speed, actually.
21:41So, no, this is lovely.
21:43And this is a great conversation.
21:45You were telling me that your book launch is coming up.
21:47Yeah, that's, you know, book is already out there.
21:50But it's an in conversation, which we are doing and a formal sort of launch kind of
21:54a thing we are doing in Habitat, which is on 1st of August.
21:57And it's a conversation which will have a dramatized reading by Rahul.
22:01Rahul Ram, who's also a musician.
22:03Yes.
22:03And, and then in conversation with Pragya Tiwari.
22:06And it's very exciting.
22:08You must be excited with the debut novel, everything coming out busy.
22:11Yeah, no, I think I'm most excited when people read it.
22:15That is, because actually, it's very quiet.
22:17There's this emptiness.
22:18Once your book is out, you're no longer with the.
22:22So while I wrote in 10 months, I also did several drafts.
22:26And that's another cliché, sorry, for every aspiring writer that you have to give it time,
22:32like first draft, give it time, sit for, let it sit for two months or whatever,
22:36and then do another draft and then give it time, do another draft.
22:39So I did several drafts.
22:41Yeah, I did several drafts.
22:42After that first stage of writing.
22:43So that cliché of the first draft is your throwaway drafts?
22:46Yeah, yeah.
22:47So I didn't throw, but I did throw away several things.
22:50I added also several things, I must say.
22:52Ah, okay.
22:54And now what's your next plan?
22:56What's next for Ruplina?
22:58So the next is I want to obviously go back to writing because that's the nicest time.
23:02Yeah, not university teaching?
23:05Yeah, teaching is nice.
23:06It's high energy.
23:08But yeah, I always wanted to like, write.
23:12It's also teaching takes away, like, you know, like journalism must be the same for you,
23:16takes away so much of your time and energy and there's nothing left.
23:20So we have to really protect that one hour.
23:23And so nowadays, I write anywhere.
23:25I write in my staff room, I write in the car, I write wherever I can.
23:28You keep a notebook on you, basically.
23:30Yeah.
23:31Oh, your laptop is with you.
23:33Wow.
23:34Yeah.
23:35Because then that's the other cliche that we can say, write anywhere.
23:38Yeah.
23:39Yeah, okay.
23:40But did you feel like you really needed to like, maybe engage the senses and so on?
23:44It does, your book engages the senses.
23:46You write with all six.
23:47Yeah.
23:49Yeah, I think I really, I think.
23:51Or does the maybe the food thing come from being Bengali?
23:53Because you know, it's a cliche.
23:54I think being Bengali, but I think most important was that in during the pandemic,
23:59we were not going to restaurants or pubs.
24:01I think that drove me, you know, because if you see right at the beginning, there's a pub.
24:05Yeah, exactly.
24:06So that was something that, you know, just the interaction and the busyness and music and sound.
24:12So you kind of created your own little party, basically.
24:14Yeah, you can say that.
24:17And it is like that.
24:18It's nice to read.
24:19It's a lovely book.
24:20And it's an amazing debut.
24:22Very affecting voice you have.
24:24It was really lovely talking to you.
24:25And I hope to see you in during your launch.
24:27And I hope to read much more of you.
24:29Yeah, thank you so much.
24:30And it was lovely talking to you.