Interview with Sarojini Sahu

C P Aboobaker

    C.P: You seem to like writing on women problems very much? Wouldn't it affect your creative writing?

     
    S.S: When I started writing in 70's , there was a popular slogan in America that 'personal is political'. But I was not aware of that slogan. Still I used to write about women -- pious women, working women, artists, wives, adulterers, daughters, widows, and sisters. The characters of my fictions represent almost the entire range of female experience in individually. Each of the female characters in my fictions is unique and always more complex than a woman initially seems. It is not that I have been writing cautiously to portray women in my fiction , but the women have come to my sphere, to my surroundings , are the characters of my fictions. In 90's When DD1 made a tele-documentary on me, the director of that tele film, Dr. Satti Khanna , asked me why I am a   feminist ? He pointed out that in most of my fictions, I have painted the women's issue. I told him that time if I am a feminist that is because I am a woman. It does not mean that I have not written any thing besides women's issue. Recently I have finished a novel, where the protagonist is a 25 years boy and there women have very rare and minor role. But it is true that I feel free to portray women in my writing. Feminism is a natural process of my writing, not a fashion. I have tried to be truthful always to my feelings and to my beliefs. So, never any day I find myself tussled between my critical appraisal of feminism and creative writings. I am not an activist at all. I am a writer and have my own limitations. I always want to live my life with my beliefs and I always try to portray my beliefs in my writings without any   propagandist out look. As a feminist I think I am more a writer and as a writer I think I am more a feminist.
     
    CP: Before I continue, may I ask you how you realized first that you have the spark of writing in you?
     
    SS: My first story appeared in a Sunday Literary Supplement of a leading Oriya News paper of that time, The Prajatantra, when I was mere a school going girl. What sparked me to write a story? One morning , from the third floor of my parental house, I was brushing my teeth and while spiting the foam of toothpaste from my mouth to the ground, I marked some children from nearby huts were playing there and they were trying to catch these foams by saying, “Look, how flowers are showered from the sky”. It seems unbelievable, but was true and that small event made me to write my first story 'Abaseosh O Aboshosh' (Remains and Repentance). It was a sort of story based on Marxian ideas. What ignited the flow of my writing at that time were the ideas, not the feelings. Later when I found myself much mature, I could realize that ideas and imaginations are not sufficient enough to create a story. A newness in ideas, sincere observations to your feelings, emotions and experiences and an insight in to the life process is some of required factors for continuing one's creativity.
     
    C.P: How many stories did you so far publish? Write?
     
    S.S: I have not tried to count how many stories are there in my credit. Besides my ten anthologies of short stories, there are some stories still remained to be anthologized and are few stories, written at the primary stage of my writing carrier, which I have discarded for inclusion in any of my books. If an anthology contains ten to fifteen of my stories, I think, I might have written around two hundred stories, but I am not sure about this statistic.
     
    C.P: Have you any inhibition in writing?
     
    S.S: From the beginning of my carrier, critics have stamped me as a frank speaking writer. You might have marked a typical shyness has been found in common women writer's voice while relating the truth and exposing their inner self. Even their weaknesses or love relations are also not expressed clearly in fear of social scandal of their character. A typical womanish shyness prevents them to write their actual feelings towards sex and love. This is not only due to any restriction imposed by their family, but many time we find that an idea of being a good girl pursues them to hide their own feelings and experiences. In The Second Sex, Simone also discusses three particular inauthentic attitudes of women in which they hide their freedom in: "The Narcissist," "The Woman in Love," and "The Mystic." In all three of these attitudes, women deny the original thrust of their freedom by submerging it into the object; in the case of the first, the object is herself, the second, her beloved and the third, the absolute or God. You know in India the 'chastity' means a lot for a woman and it is always demanded that a female should keep her 'chastity' pure and perfect. (It is another issue that nobody asks a man for the purity and perfection of his chastity). In case of poetry, one can hide herself with mystic metaphor or myth, but in fiction, one has to open herself completely. So, it is difficult for a woman to write any fiction sincerely hiding her experiences and reactions. I never find any 'inhibition' in relating reality while writing. Because while I write, I place me alien from the otherworld. Writing for me is a muse, a monologue, a kind of self-intercourse. I enter in to the chore of the character's self and find where I am hiding there. I lift my self to the above, much more above from those characters and open and tear and alter them as if I am re-dressing, remaking my self. There is no place for the second or third person at that time. Inhibitions are caused when you are aware of another's existence. When no body is there and you are going to open yourself, to whom you would inhibit? Is there any restriction, limitation, or shame to open anyone in front of one's own self?
     
    C.P: -What is the modus of your writing? About Virginia Woolf it is said:"All through her life, Virginia Woolf used at intervals to write short stories. It was her custom, whenever an idea for one occurred to her, to sketch it out in a very rough form and then to put it away in a drawer. Later, if an editor asked her for a short story, and she felt in the mood to write one (which was not frequent), she would take a sketch out of her drawer and rewrite it, sometimes a great many times. " Does this occur to you? If so, why? What in your opinion can be the reason for Virginia's neglect of her stories? She has written some wonderful stories.
     
    S.S:- This has happened with me also . Though I started my carrier as a short story writer and for a good time I had been in those fields but that time I had a 'phobia' for novel writing. After 90's onward, when I started writing my first novel, I overcome this trepidation. Nowadays, I have been writing very few short stories and all my creative times have been spent for novel writing. You know, the novel has a huge landscape and the author has much more freedom than the short story writer. You can emerge any idea any story plot in a novel. Virginia Woolf's An Unwritten Novel could have been a short story. The total time span of her novel Mrs. Dalloway is only one day. I think, like me Virginia Woolf might have been emerged her story ideas and plots in her novels.
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C P Aboobaker - C.P. ABOOBACKER, editor of thanalonline, belongs to Calicut in Kerala. His interests include writing, publishing poems, essays, and many more literary things. Latest writing is about Channels and Globalizations. He is a retired professor of history.

    e-mail: cpaboobacker@gmail.com
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