In conversation with Janice Pariat

As a young girl, Janice Pariat loved Enid Blyton. She was so attached to the stories that she plagiarised them freely. “I would pick up these stories and rewrite them in my own way. I would copy characters, adventures…everything, without any shame,” she says. The excited little girl would then rush home to show them to her parents. Her proud parents have filed all her stories in a folder called 'Jan' Jan (her nickname). 

Pariat is quite embarrassed by this little childhood quirk. “I hope they have been burned and will never see the light of day,” she says. This ‘embarrassing’ secret  though is what drew her towards writing. “I haven’t been writing all my life. It came and went and came again and went and then one day decided to stay.”

The author and the winner of Sahitya Akademy’s Young Writer Award and the Crossword Book Award for Fiction for her book Boats on Land, Pariat will be a part of the Zee Jaipur Literature Festival (JLF) for the first time. It will be her third literature festival. Janice has only just entered the country’s literary circle having made the shift from London to Shillong recently. “I am generally wary of literature festivals. I know that readers would love to access these authors and it’s wonderful to be able to be given that chance. As a writer, writing should be simple and very personal. It’s just you and the page,” she says.  

It’s a personal choice, she says. There are some writers who crave that spotlight whereas other reclusive writers would rather have their work talk for them. “It would really help to customise the format of literary festivals according to the writers you have on stage. Not all authors like to sit there and talk. I prefer reading because I feel like everything I have to say about my work is in my book,” she says. On the plus side: “The authors are so accessible. They’re just there.” 

At JLF, Pariat will be reading from her second book, her debut novel Seahorse. Pariat’s debut novel Seahorse brings Greek mythology into modern-day Delhi and London. It is a retelling of the Greek tale of Poseidon and his male devotee Pelops. Nehemiah (Nem) is a literature student who finds himself a lover-mentor of Greek-origin, the art historian Nicholas. Nem is the blank slate in Nicholas’ life, eager to absorb everything that comes his way, always seeking new experiences and always curious. Then one day, Nicholas leaves. Nem’s life changes and what follows is his struggle to seek answers to his disappearance. 

There is much intricacy in the novel. The sexual identities of the characters are fluid and simple and Janice’s prose shines in the many homosexual lovemaking scenes. “Nehemiah for me is somewhat an anchorless character. He is quite fluid when it comes to gender. I feel that perhaps it is a small glimpse into what a world would be a like if a gender is not categorised for you,” she says.

Seahorse is steeped in art, literature, culture and music which though intriguing, require much involvement from the reader for whom these are not easy references. The significance of music to the story can be gauged by the fact that 

Pariat has created an OST for it brimming with the evocative music of Tchaikovsky, Brahms, Mozart and Liszt. She recommends listening to Catarina Moreno’s Dead Birds, a song by a Portuguese musician friend of hers that is hauntingly beautiful. Her curation of music finds resonance in the book – Nicholas curates a selection of classical music for Nem’s initiation into that world. 

“Whenever I read a book that includes music in its pages like Murakami and Julian Barnes, I always wish that I could look them up and listen to them immediately. I feel that books could have soundtracks. It adds a small extra dimension to the book,” she says. 

Pariat initially wanted to write a novella after her first book, the collection of short stories, Boats on Land. “Seahorse was meant to be a novella but it just unfurled before me. There are some stories that cry out to be written longer, to have more space and to orchestrate the scenes on a more complicated scale. Some stories are quieter and are driven by fewer emotions,” she says.  

The author has written a lot of poetry in the past but none recently. “I like to think there is a small poet’s voice that lives on in my prose,” she says. Pariat’s prose certainly bridges that gap. In the book, Michelangelo’s Prisoners makes Nem think about unfinished chapters in life. ‘We treasure the incomplete, for it lends us many lives - the one we lead and the million others we could have led.’ A simple evening walk becomes a deeper discussion on darkness. ‘That is what darkness does – it removes the burden of having to appear as we usually are.’ A dinner with a friend in London gets them pondering the link between people and places. ‘How inextricably bound some relationships are to particular places…how a city is changed for you by someone else.’  

Seahorse is a compelling and moving novel, going deep into the feelings of love and loss, of companionship, of betrayal, and of creating a world of infinite possibilities. 

Pariat is ‘happily oblivious’ about the future. “I do know I want to write more books. I have ideas for another novel and short stories. I don’t know how long it will take to write and when it will be out,” she says. 

Janice’s session On Land, At Sea is on January 24, Saturday where she will be in conversation with Kanishk Tharoor.