India is a land of contradictions, says author Simon Choa-Johnston

Simon Choa-Johnston is an award-winning playwright from Canada who migrated there post graduating from college in Hong Kong. His family has an interesting life history and using the thread from his own ancestors, he has authored The House of Wives. The novel is about love, life and relationships during the times of opium trade between India and China. The novel focuses on Emanuel and his two wives—one an Indian from Kolkata and the other a Chinese bride—who live together in Hong Kong. In an exclusive interview with dna, Simon talks about his new novel, the inspiration behind it and more.

What was the inspiration for The House of Wives?

Growing up in a British Colony like Hong Kong, it was not the custom for Eurasian families to talk about their dirty little secret, namely the decades-long opium trade and its effects (good and bad) perpetrated by my ancestors of both races. So I grew up knowing nothing about where I came from, who I was, nor the cultural legacy I inherited. Repeated questions to my parents yielded only silence until, one day, when I was about eight years old, my mother sighed and said, “Your great grandfather was a Jewish opium merchant from Calcutta named Emanuel Belilios.” The look on her face told me never to pester her with further questions. I never forgot that response. Decades later, I verified her claim through the internet and ever since, I have been obsessed with discovering Emanuel's life in India, his marriages to two women one in Calcutta and the other in China and how they might have managed their lives.

How much of the book is from your own family history?

None of it is autobiographical because I don’t appear in the book. But I take you to mean what parts are real and what parts are fictional. Well, there are recorded facts available to the public in Synagogue archives, Indian, British, and Hong Kong museum archives, etc, that detail births, marriages, children, business dealings, deaths and so on. This data formed the spine of a narrative but to put flesh on it, to get inside the character’s head’s, to feel what they felt in their hearts, to listen in on conversations behind closed doors, I had to use my imagination. My goal was to write a work of fiction that reads like a biography.

You have written the novel with a focus on the two women.

Women are far more interesting, more inscrutable, more fun to be with than any taciturn male.

What fascinates you about India?

What doesn’t! I’ll start with food. I don’t know of any country that has the variety of cuisine than those found in India. The use of spices and the separation of flavours on the palette are incomparable. Next the contradictions: millions of vehicles on the roads that have no lane separations, hurtling at warp speed, thrumming with maniacal energy going somewhere with the urgency and energy that would make New Yorkers appear somnambulant, yet there is not one traffic accident. How do you do it? The contrast of the extreme rich and those who are less fortunate is a stark reality that presents an opportunity for change and yet appears to be an impossible task. Then there is Bollywood where everyone sings and dances in exuberant excess, flinging their fears at adversity like stones against a goliath of vicissitudes.

China and India have rich histories and cultures. In your novel, diverse individuals play an important role. Comment.

I don’t (couldn’t) address the different nations’ cultures but rather I take individuals who happen to be Jews, Hindi, Sikh, Parsi, Cantonese, British, Mulatto, Portuguese and put them all together, first to marinate then in a slow cooker to simmer until a new and surprising dish appears. You’ll recognise parts of the food and hopefully will be delighted with new tastes that you didn’t know existed before. My interest ultimately was not the nationality or blend of the races but what the individual characters do, what they bring to the stew when they are forced to live together.  

From writing plays to now writing a novel, why this transition? What were some of the challenges?

This novel started as a play when I was invited to be a playwright in residence at the renowned Stratford Shakespearean Festival in Ontario, Canada. But it soon became evident that the I needed a larger canvas to tell this story. In outlining the narrative, it was clear that this was a novel. The main challenge was finding the right voice. In plays, that may not always be necessary. You present the theme, conflicts to challenge that theme, develop the theme, then resolve it by tracking the central character’s arc to its logical conclusion. In a novel you have an opportunity to get inside a character’s head, hear what he is thinking, show what he is feels and understand his actions by understanding his deepest desires. My first draft contained me as a character framing epistolary exchanges between the main characters. My agent told me to cut out the “me” character. What remained were letters, diary entries and notes. But I felt uncomfortable with it because this form felt somewhat detached. I rewrote it a third draft in the form that was published.