What are you writing these days?
 I am attempting something, I don’t know if it will get realised, but it’s something about my time. I’ve lived through the British period and independence. And in the last ten, twenty years a major change has come. It is a complex, rather ugly and at times, frightening time. And I’ll be there to see what is happening. There will be people who will have no security, no stability, no clarity. What’s going to happen? That’s my fear.

Are you afraid of a change that has already come or that is still to come?
Situations change, sometimes they change with a very sharp turn. So at one point it is very difficult to predict what it will be at the next point. This particular time was absolutely inconceivable at one point. When the Constitution was designed, they had something else in mind as a future for this country and where we have reached now is something that was not in their mind at all. So maybe there will be one more change. Another situation will occur, equally unpredictable at this point. One hopes it will be better but it can be worse.

What specifically are you afraid of?
First of all, what is happening to the third world with the fast pace of technology. On the other hand, the growth of poverty, unemployment. Those who are at the poverty line are being pushed below it while we claim this country is going to be a world power in a very short time. The dichotomy itself is frightening. Because prosperity cannot be sustained without a certain security. And in the situation which I am describing I don’t see any security. So ultimately that prosperity also will have no meaning.

You had written a piece some years ago called ‘View from the Balcony’.
That was about my childhood.

It was like the beginning of an autobiography. Will this book be a continuation?
It will not be an autobiography. It will definitely be personal. But more than my life I expect it to be about the time. The changes I have seen and how they came about.

This seems to be on a larger scale, much of your earlier work has been about relationships.
What would you say about Ghashiram? I have written films also and two novels. I have dealt with relationships it is true, but nowadays I am more interested in what I have told you.

Recently though a new work of yours was staged that was about Sakharam Binder’s previous woman, a character that is merely referred to in the original. What made you return to this particular play?
(Spreads his hands) There’s no logic.

Do you feel man-woman relationships have changed?
Basically I don’t think there has been a major change. But changing circumstances affect all relationships so maybe they have changed. The romantic element does not seem to be there any more. The physical-ness is now more emphasised, more considered – that at times is the decisive factor and we have come to accept this. So in a way one can say relationships have become more prosaic. The kind of poetry that used to be there seems to have gone. It has happened in almost all relationships. It is like some kind of business. Very practical. And very tentative.

You don’t feel there has been a change in the status of women? With more education, employment?
In degrees there has been a change. But basically a woman is a woman – not only here but everywhere. She may aspire for a number of things and may keep claiming she has her own kind of strength. Fact is she is vulnerable. I don’t want her to be vulnerable in the future. Because even a woman who is conscious of her rights at times falters in her relationships and then repents. A man, of course, can step out of the relationship and go away, have another. But the woman as I see it cannot do that. Her involvement is her vulnerability.

Many of your plays were controversial partly because they exposed certain hypocrisies. Looking back, what kind of impact do you think they have had on society?
I expected them to be outdated but surprisingly almost all of them are still seen as relevant to many, which is not a good sign, if I look at it objectively. They are my creations but I expected the situation to change and change fast considering the pace of science and technology. I expect this also to change. Everything must get outdated fast. But it doesn’t happen. For that matter my very first short story, written in the 1950s, was recently staged by a young group from Nashik and there have been many performances after that by many groups. In the light of all these changes that we claim have happened this ought to be re-examined – how come something written 60 years back can be staged now?

Should an artist be an activist?
There is no such condition. They are two separate professions. But though it cannot be some kind of a compulsion, anybody should be aware of the social reality around. That is in his own interest -- even an artist should be aware of these things. And if one participates in some activities or programme – why not? What is wrong?

Does the artist have a responsibility?
The artist is responsible only to his art. If he creates responsibly -- the responsibility cannot be forced, it should come from inside, be natural to a human being. I accept that kind of responsibility. But more than that what he needs most is some kind of lack of fear. He must say anything he feels without being afraid.

You have been quoted as saying that Suketu Mehta’s Maximum City was an irresponsible book.
I did not like the book at all. First of all it is not literature. It is some kind of reportage but very lopsided and incomplete. Things need to be cross-checked if one wants to put them in a book. Most irresponsible is the chapter on Thakeray. He (the writer) mimics his English and turns him into a caricature. Thakeray is definitely not a caricature. If you make him a caricature it means you really don’t have an understanding of elementary things. You can make your readers laugh but really that is not Thakeray. If you ask me, Thakeray is a dangerous character and should be taken very seriously. On the whole I would say it is good entertainment at the cost of the reality of the city of Mumbai.

For that matter the statements of the police that he (the writer) has taken – they need to be cross-checked. Because in my three years of investigation (in the early-’70s Tendulkar was awarded a Nehru Fellowship to study emerging patterns of violence) I have studied the police, I also know what happened in Mumbai during the communal riots in 1992, particularly in Mahim, so I know that he shouldn’t have gone by the statements of  a particular police officer. That is when I discarded the book.

It has become a trend, people coming in to write books in English. Do you think people should be rooted in the reality they write about?
Half-a-dozen writers staying abroad and writing in English don’t affect this country as such. Let them do their business as others do. The point is -- going back to the example we discussed – if you are not rooted in this reality then writing about this reality is either sheer nostalgia or fiction. You may be able to impress the Booker Prize people but you cannot impress us. The poor Indian writers writing in regional languages are impressed not by the book but by the money they earn. They endure the jealousy because of the money not the quality of writing.
 
What do you think of Indian theatre today?
I have lost touch with Indian theatre. Marathi theatre of course is divided between the outright commercial --  which is trash -- and the other serious theatre which is good. There are many talented young playwrights, talented directors, actors. It is very exhilarating for me. Some of them at least, are producing something which is virtually learning for me because they write about their time. I come to understand that generation more. It is entirely new, entirely fresh. Their vocabulary, their form, their characters – that’s something rare, not only in this country but even in the world. Because (in general) the breed of playwrights is dying, other kinds of theatre are flourishing. Only in Marathi theatre I can name at least half a dozen extremely talented playwrights. Their confidence, their clarity – I feel myself lucky to have been here to watch it. I can quote one playwright, Manswini (Ravindra) -- a young girl who has written three plays and I loved all. She is unlike anyone in the Marathi theatre – unsentimental at times, very ruthless in dealing with relationships. Non-literal in the traditional sense. I don’t think a playwright of that age or quality exists anywhere.

To return to your current preoccupations and what you are writing about. You seem despondent about the times and the country. Is there anything that gives you hope?
Logically the only hope is that there may be some major and unexpected sharp changes and something better may emerge. But if one has to consider this time with the time before we are going downhill. Virtually I think we are moving towards a major crisis. We have terrorism, unbridled corruption, increasing poverty and unemployment and the crime rate is all the time going up. The number of suicides too—you come across them much more.

Since ideologies are dead, whatever bad may be said about some of them, they at least provided a framework for political workers to function. Now since that framework is gone it is a free-for-all. Very frequently you find that there are different flags, different manifestos for different political parties. But then you find they are hand in glove with each other, they protect each other, cheat the people. The role of the media should be to expose this but the media also refuses to do that. Some secrets which we know never appear in the media.

Many ugly things seem to have come to stay and grow. The basest qualities of the human species have surfaced and they refuse to be controlled. The most frightening rule of the day is that you kill innocent people and win a battle, win a cause. Even the kind of wars we fight – dropping rockets on hospitals and schools. This is happening the world over. Where is the species going……(trails off).

(Amrita Shah is a Mumbai-based writer and journalist)

InfoChange News & Features, March 2007