Indian roots, childhood and loneliness: Kiran Desai talks about her new Booker-shortlisted novel

Kiran Desai’s roots in India and some vivid childhood memories always seep into her writing. Perhaps that’s her comfort zone. The Booker Prize-winning author of The Inheritance of Loss, is now back with her latest novel, The Loneliness of Sonia and Sunny, also shortlisted for the prestigious award. In an interview at the Jaipur Lit Fest (JLF) in India, she talks about what inspires her to explore themes like childhood, Indian roots, love and loneliness against the backdrop of major national and global events. Edited excerpts: 

Let’s begin by talking about your writing process.  

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For me, writing is a slow and patient work. It is creating a life of service towards something. Since I was a child, (I loved spending time at) my grandparents' verandah in Allahabad (my father's side). We spent summers there. That verandah has remained extremely important to my creative life. Surprisingly, Inheritance of Loss starts on a verandah with an old judge and even The Loneliness of Sonia and Sunny starts with grandparents emerging on the verandah. It just fascinates me that after staying in US for so many years, I still return to that landscape first.  

The Inheritance of Loss was more political compared to your latest book, which has a romantic angle. How different was it writing for this one?

Writing a book is putting together thousands of tiny observations and weaving them together. Perhaps, also thinking of a deeper undercurrent. You have to get those tiny details absolutely right. It's easier to write an angry political book and harder to go between the private spaces of people involving love and death. Maybe that’s why we read novels on love rather than politics. Reading books and watching films–the arts give us a vocabulary in our own minds. It was hard for me to write this book with love and loneliness as a subject.

Creative world plays a big role in the novel. There’s an artist in the book and then all the fascinating women in the storyline. There’s a daughter who takes care of her father. Which moment was most challenging to create? 

Writing about private moments is the most difficult. We are tracing the history from various generations and thinking about how modernity affects us in the spiritual matters of love and loneliness. So, in this book, Sunny and Sonia find that their love and romance is not their own. It’s influenced by stories around them (of their parents and grandparents) and the sense of displacement they are feeling in their cosmopolitan life, moving from one place to another, which is in parallel to the older generation's sense of displacement. So, a lot of my writing roots back to my childhood observations. To create these characters and moments was very interesting.

Loneliness has a bit of a stigma attached to it. Can we talk about the types of loneliness in this book?  

When I decided to write this long unresolved romance between Sonia and Sunny and the cosmopolitan Indians who are out in the big world, between India and other countries like US, Mexico, Europe—I understood I could widen the scope of the idea of loneliness and not think of it in emotional terms but in intellectual terms and think of all the power divides between a society. All of these are kinds of loneliness but I wanted to show the lovely side of it too. There’s no shame in being lonely. It can also be sustenance. It can be the peace that comes after the war is over. In this adamantly demanding world where there’s constant fight, it’s important to remember that we actually seek a sense of identity that requires a certain kind of loneliness.

You’ve touched upon some significant global political events in the book. How did you decide on including them? How do these events shape the characters in the book and their world views? 

I was covering these years in the book when the incidents happened so I had to include them. I did want to talk about those political events and the characters who lived through them. I grew up in India during the time of religious riots. I remember those conversations. I was in the US during September 11 (2001) incident and how drastically important that has been. I was very conscious about thinking of it as politics for the sake of art and not the other way around and how the instances influenced characters in the story (The Loneliness of Sonia and Sunny).

You’ve come back with a new book after 20 years. What’s your relationship with fame? 

I am a private individual. I think that… when you lose those eyes on you, that’s when you can work.  

Which authors have influenced your writing style? 

I'm inspired by Milan Kundera a lot.