‘I could write only after mother died’

Daughter of the late Marathi writer Gauri Deshpande and grand-daughter of Sahitya Akademi award winner and anthropologist Irawati Karve, Urmilla Deshpande’s second novel, Kashmir Blues hit book stores this month. But the 47-year old novelist has only just begun to shake off the demons that typically plague young writers. It might have something to do with her ‘complicated’ relationship with a talented but overly critical mother. Or the fact that Urmilla only formally picked up the pen after her mother’s death due to alcohol abuse in 2003. Born and brought up in Mumbai, Urmilla now lives in Florida with her husband and two children. In Kashmir Blues, California-based Naia comes to India to track down her birth family after the bizarre death of her parents.

Urmilla Deshpande spoke to DNA about her new novel, her famous mother, and about her next book. 

You say in your blog that you wished your mother was alive to read your books, but also that there would have been no book had she been alive to read it.
My mother did a PhD in English literature, wrote in Marathi and also taught. Usually, when a child draws something, parents tend to say something nice, regardless of how bad it might be. My mother was incapable of doing that. But I also remember her saying, “For children to reach their full potential, their parents have to die.”

Is this why both your books delve into frayed mother-daughter relationships?
It was a complicated relationship. People who know me read my first book and said how autobiographical it was. But if I wanted to write an autobiography, I would have. The reason I didn’t is I wanted to twist things around, create interesting characters. My characters might be me but I’m not them.

What is your connect with Kashmir?
I’ve actually never been to Kashmir in my life. The ‘Kashmir’ of my book is a fictional place, like the London in Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes novels, or Alexandria in Lawrence Durrell’s quartet. But if I were to do it again, I would probably give it a fictional name.

Why is that?
By calling it Kashmir, I’ve linked it to a real place and that automatically generates curiosity. But I was just writing a story. I did a lot of online research and went through books at the Florida University library. But I didn’t take any notes. I just let it all ferment in my mind. So there may be factual mistakes in the story. I’d say it’s not a greatly researched book, but then, it was never meant to be a book about Kashmir.

Still, wouldn’t such fictionalisation of Kashmir end up making light of the ongoing crisis in the region?
Kashmir is just a setting. I’m a writer who dropped out of school in the tenth grade and I’ve written a book of fiction. But journalists can really grill you. During the release of my first book, a woman in the audience asked me what advice I have for young women. And I was like look, I’ve just written one book, it would be presumptuous of me to give advice.

What’s next on the cards?
A collection of erotic short stories. I’m also planning a book about a post-civil war situation in Bombay. I feel I’m gradually becoming less apprehensive about what I know and what I don’t. What I really want is to be authentic with respect to the people I am writing about.