BANGALORE
At one point in her writing career, Susmita Bagchi did not have enough time to write and she chose to give up a coveted job as lecturer at a University of Delhi college to focus on writing.
Sitting in the manically neat drawing room of her beautiful home, surrounded by large framed photographs taken by husband Subroto and the many ceramic bells collected by both of them during their travels abroad, author Susmita Bagchi looks the picture of contentment.
A sleek laptop is twinkling by her side. Susmita often looks at it to check facts during this interview.
“By eleven in the morning, the part-time help leaves, Subroto is at work and I have the time to write and read as much as I want,” she says.
At one point in her writing career, Susmita did not have enough time to write and she chose to give up a coveted job as lecturer at a University of Delhi college to focus on writing. This was more than 20 years ago, and after publishing five novels, seven collections of short stories and a travelogue — most in Oriya, her mother tongue — she has no reason to regret her decision.
One of her novels won the state Sahitya Akademi Award in 1993.
She is considered a formidable name in contemporary Oriya writing and Penguin India is just out with her first English novel Children of a Better God, a translation of her super-successful Oriya novel Deba Sishu (2006).
Children of a Better God takes a close look at the lives of children affected by cerebral palsy. Unlike many books in this genre, it also pays equal attention to the families and caregivers of those born with this congenital developmental disorder.
“While researching this book, I spent months volunteering at the Spastics Society of Karnataka and the biggest realisation was that children with cerebral palsy are just like other children,” says Susmita. “They can be just as angry or hurtful or jealous or naughty as ordinary children and should not be treated with kid gloves.”
This is a point that comes across strongly in her book; her protagonist Anupurba, a former NRI art teacher, is initially shocked to see children at a special school dancing and cheering boisterously during a school event and later realises that the atmosphere at such an institution need not be one of unmitigated misery and gloom.
“The Christmas party scene in the book is from my own experience,” says Susmita, who remembers breaking down after a similar function at the Spastics Society, where she had been invited along with her husband several years ago. Subroto Bagchi, gardener, Mindtree, became associated with the NGO around that time and the family has had a strong link with it over the years (the Mindtree logo was famously created by a child from this institution).
While Susmita took extensive notes while volunteering at the school, she finally put pen to paper seven years later. “The form and structure just wouldn’t fall into place. When it did, though, I finished writing it within a couple of months. Then, as I usually do with all my books, I let it be for a few weeks,” explains the author.
“I feel one must step back from one’s work and revisit it after some time. Otherwise, you just get too emotionally attached to your own writing and lose objectivity,” she says.
In between writing best-sellers, the Bagchis take off on back-packing trips to little-known places in Europe.
(Children of a Lesser God will be launched by Girish Karnad at Crossword Bookstore, Residency Road, at 6.30 pm on Monday)
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