Kiran Nagarkar's Ravan and Eddie hit rock bottom

Book: Rest in Peace

Author: Kiran Nagarkar

Publisher: Fourth Estate

Pages: 376

Rs: 337

He's a novelist, a playwright, a scriptwriter and a critic too. Multi-talented Kiran Nagarkar, the recipient of Germany's highest civilian honour, the Cross of the Order of the Merit, is also a Sahitya Akademi awardee for his novel Cuckold. As Rest in Peace, the last in his celebrated Ravan and Eddie trilogy, readies for release, the Marathi-English author talks about how the characters have evolved, his own days in a Mumbai's chawl and the despair he feels about the city's non-inclusive development. Excerpts:

You are a cruel man. How could you kill India's most popular fictional characters with Rest in Peace?
Well I don't know if they are really gone for good or will keep coming back like bad pennies. I'd originally written the whole thing like a Bollywood screenplay of the mid-70s where you start off with a happy family with preferably more than one child. They are all in a train, which goes down a bridge and everybody gets separated and the titles come on... As soon as they are done, the kids have grown up and the story gallops on. All this was in the screenplay...

Does the prospect of Rest in Peace having to deal with the popularity of its forebears in your trilogy make you anxious or excited?
You know my temperament... Not only butterflies but rhinos in the belly... One never knows... See what happened with God's Little Soldier. It wasn't a perfect book but I know it was trying to tackle some extremely urgent issues like fanaticism. I still get feedback from even some of my German readers about how it's far more relevant today. So I don't know how the readers who loved Ravan and Eddie are going to react to this book.

It took 17 years for Ravan and Eddie to get its sequel The Extras. Comparatively, Rest in Peace took just three years. Have you begun writing faster now?
Quite the contrary. Originally, I was going to write one, single book. But as I began writing, I asked myself, 'Are you out of your bloody mind?' Not that I'm not perpetually there you know (laughs).
There are various kinds of trilogies. With this one, all I do is chase these two children of mine, Ravan and Eddie. In that sense, writing this was very challenging. And jitters is not the word. I had to write in a way that each book worked stand-alone and yet give background so that those who want to, don't feel disconnected from the other two books. For example, Ravan had a fall in the first book, which has a major role to play in Rest in Peace.

Why does Asmaan get so much mileage compared to the two heroes in Rest in Peace? Were you trying to compensate for her barely being there in The Extras?
Yes, she is doing quite a bit and does say a lot of stuff, which makes sense like little else, but I don't think I was trying to make her overwhelm Ravan and Eddie. With Asmaan, I'm trying to give vent to how strongly I feel about the way daughters are treated in this country. Asmaan, for example, is being badly exploited by her family but she continues to provide for them and doesn't tell them to leave...

Despite their trying circumstances, Ravan and Eddie continue to be blessed with a great sense of hope?
You must remember that Ravan and Eddie are not mere survivors. They are far more. In a way, they are like the street children in Bombay. The city makes them wise beyond their age and experience. In Rest in Peace, Ravan and Eddie hit rock bottom but then go and reinvent themselves.

As a writer when you look at Bombay and how its changed avatar Mumbai is felling chawls to create towers and malls, do you see hope?
Ravan and Eddie may survive here given their street smartness but there is little hope for others. The unfairness is just ghastly. The stranglehold of the real estate wallahs, builders, politicians and the mafia is scary. They are out to destroy the city. One-third of the mill land was supposed to go to the poor. And yet when you come from the airport, see what has been done. The chawl dwellers have been shifted into these 7-8 storey buildings with almost the same size homes with all community spaces gone, the clothes drying on window grills. In the nearly 70 years since Independence, we've become our own neo-colonisers out to exploit the poor. The multi-storeyed slums we house our poor in are also not out of any compassion. Where will our rich in our New Cuffe Parades in their 35-, 40- and even 100-storeyed buildings get people from to cook, swab floors, take their pedigreed dogs out for a walk or drive their fancy cars?

The thought that they need light, air and shelter, which does this without de-humanising them and robbing them of their dignity, simply doesn't seem to occur to our policy makers and politicians.

Is the way you evoke and use the absurd a way of dealing with despair at the way Bombay has been run aground by corrupt politicians and apathetic citizens?
From the very beginning, I've been a philistine. I don't see commercial writing as being vastly removed from edified literature. For me, all writing has to entertain. Humour, I often maintain, can be far more serious than serious or tragic writing. When Asmaan says that at least when I sit on the toilet, I want a few minutes of privacy without the 20 people waiting outside continuously tapping on the door, it's not meant to make you sentimental. It's meant to make you angry.

I've lived in a chawl and was forced to use common toilets for many years. In our chawl, there were four toilets, of which two were always broken. So on one side, you have Rs 100crore-apartments in gated communities and then this contrast for the larger majority. This situation fills me with fear and foreboding.