Shonagachhi, as we know, is the second largest Red Light area in India and Rijula Das is a wonderful fiction writer. The aforementioned author shows us glimpses of the real life in Shonagachhi through her debut novel ‘A Death in Shonagachhi’ published by Picador India which recently won the Tata Lit Live! First Book Award 2021 and was spotted in conversation with Supriya Newar in the Tata Steel Kolkata Literary Meet 2022.
Here are some insights I got from the author herself at the end of the evening talk :
Ma’am first of all, how does it feel to come back after such a huge pandemic?
Yeah, it feels very surreal in many ways because a lot of me being back here, it’s first of all you know, three years is a long time, then there was Covid and there was all this heartbreak about not being able to come and when I come back, everything has changed a lot, to me. Things like Insta Mart, son of my brother tells me that he never leaves the house, he orders everything, which is very different with the Calcutta I know but it’s also different because this time I’m coming and promoting the book. So, last time when I was here, I wasn’t an author, so it’s a very different experience because I’m in literary festivals and stuff this time, yeah.
So, how has Pandemic been an influence in the book, for you?
I can’t say that it’s directly been an influence because I live in New Zealand and luckily, the only thing we faced were lockdowns and restrictions in travelling internationally but life kind of went on very normally for us and me being a writer, I welcomed the Lockdown because I love cooking and I love staying at home and I’d never want to leave the house, so I did a lot of rewriting during the pandemic. So, the version that you read in this book has been probably entirely written and rewritten during the pandemic.
Since we are talking about women all over wide, how do you feel as a woman of this constant fear we live in to make sure of our own safety?
Yeah, so you know I obviously feel very strongly about that because, if women are being targeted and victimised then, it’s not the job of women to not be victimised, it is the person, the group that is victimizing us, to be sensitised, it’s not for women to learn Karate, so that should never be the response. I feel in many ways our response is ‘women shouldn’t wear this’ or ‘they shouldn’t be out of the house’ or ‘they should learn to defend themselves’, is all wrong, it’s like an insult on top of an injury, so to speak I feel that it is our job to raise better men than actually, you know, make women Karate champions(laughing), this is not the answer.
You have so many female characters in the book, so do you relate to any particular character of the book or is it in general?
I think it is you know, when you write a thing as a novel with so many characters, some of these characters are versions of yourself, like there’s little bit of you in many characters but there are some characters that have nothing to do with you, like the ‘Maharaj’ who is the main antagonist in the story, I have nothing in common with that person. So, you know, characters are characters, they are people that we may know, it’s like an extended family, but it’s not you.
Ma’am, my last question would be, how do you think the book is going to affect the female audience especially, because it’s such a stigmatised topic in general?
Yeah, I’m not sure because you know, it’s such a personal experience, reading a book is a very personal experience, and I hope that it opens up the conversation as well I think because as women we are not allowed to access a lot of places, we are not allowed to go there for that matter, so I think this is a way maybe people can see that there are other ways, that nowhere are close to us but then what somebody’s experience is, is so personal and private to them because a book is so personal, reading a book is a very personal experience.