Sonia Faleiro talks about her debut novel ‘The Girl’ that was launched in the city yesterday.
Art sometimes has the strangest way of mirroring life. The day that this interview takes place with Sonia Faleiro about her debut novel ‘The Girl’ in which the protagonist commits suicide, is also the day that front page headlines feature the suicide of model/actor Kuljeet Randhawa. Sonia quietly acknowledges the coincidence, before saying, “I think different people deal differently with loss. And ‘The Girl’ is really about loneliness and the extent that some of us will go to overcome it. That’s the purpose for the suicide by the protagonist - the feeling that she could not overcome loss; that she could not be alone again. It’s a feeling that sometimes all of us feel.”
Set in Azul, ‘the Village of the Dead’, in Goa, the novel retraces The Girl’s life through her personal diary as read by her lover and best friend. “I don’t think a writer ever consciously chooses a theme - it’s what appears; it’s what comes to you when you start writing,” continues Sonia. “I didn’t set out to write a melancholic book.”
A Goan by birth, ask how much of ‘her’ was in ‘The Girl’, and Sonia admits, “I think one always puts a little bit of oneself in one’s books, just like a fingerprint. It’s not enough that you’ve written the book and your name is on it - you have to actually put yourself in it,” she laughs, adding that one of the characters uses an asthma inhaler much like herself. “Looking back, I don’t know why I put that in. But it amuses me.” She also likes leaving her characters sometimes nameless. “I feel it leaves a lot more to the imagination of the reader.”
The Mumbai correspondent for Tehelka, Sonia is well aware of the importance of editing - with the success of any novel being based as much on what’s left out as what’s kept in. “There was a two-page love scene that I cut out, because I kept thinking that my dad is going to read this!” she exclaims. “Though I do regret that now.”
Planning a non-fiction book next - “It’ll be profiles of women of a certain class in Mumbai,” Sonia’s also begun the thought process for her next fictitious work. “And hopefully, nobody will kill themselves in it,” she promises with a broad smile.
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