Siddharth Dhanvant Shangvi on 'The Rabbit & The Squirrel': This book called me

With The Rabbit & The Squirrel, Siddharth Dhanvant Shangvi has returned to fiction after a gap of 10 years. The award-winning author’s third book after The Last Song Of Dusk and The Lost Flamingoes Of Bombay, is a modern-day fable about friendship and loss, with illustrations by bestselling writer and acclaimed artist Stina Wirsèn. With the book’s two oddball characters who come to see each other as the true custodian of the other’s heart, Siddharth hopes that the readers are encouraged to reach out to the one they care for. ‘The only love that sticks around is the love you let go’ he writes. “Perhaps love is recognised not by its completion but in the magic of its imminence, and the threat of its departure. What we are not allowed to experience is naturally perfect: it has not been given a chance to fail you,” the author explains. Over to Siddharth...

Why the long gap post your last book?

I never thought of myself as someone who writes book after book, performs at literary festivals, espouses a popular cause. I’m too much a curmudgeon to play to script. Moreover, I was doing other things — I direct an arts foundation, I made homes, I pursued photography. And I returned to writing because this book called me. So I did what I must: respond.

You mention in the acknowledgment that the book was originally written for a friend. How did it take this form?

My friend Stina Wirsen heard the story when I recounted it to her one night in Stockholm. Moved to tears, she asked to illustrate it. I agreed with pleasure — Stina is Sweden’s most respected children’s book author, her illustrations are graceful, confident, possessing a liminal strength. Credit goes to her entirely, for bringing this book to life — otherwise, this would have stayed a private gift, a set of cards, a few photographs.

Her illustrations add a particular charm to this little fable...

I had no such intention of creating an illustrated book. This was entirely Stina’s great gift: to give my words the voltage and inflection of her illustrations. I have been collecting her illustrations for years. Can you imagine the fantastic turn of fate that she later went on to illustrate one of my books?

The writing is contemporary, cheeky and loaded with puns.What was the thought behind it?

I was only being true to the characters — when you are able to form characters in your head you are obliged to give them that much room to be themselves entirely. It’s a little like acting — once you are in character, you can play a nun or an axe murderer. The important thing is making enough room in your head to allow characters to be entirely themselves, and not dummy, vain manifests of yourself.

What do you hope the reader takes away from the story?

That it encourages them to reach out to the one they care for. My adoptive grandmother often quotes EM Forster when she says, “Only connect... remain in fragments no more.” The Rabbit and The Squirrel are fragments apart, but together they veer toward something like entirety.