INTERVIEW Slumdog author does Q&A
by Muhammad Cohen
UBUD, Bali - Vikas Swarup is India's consul general to Osaka-Kobe in Japan. But
he's also the author of Q&A, the novel that became Slumdog
Millionaire, the Oscar-winning film. Q&A was Swarup's first
novel, and he wrote it in two months, after his family returned to India to
start the school year on time, while he completed a posting in London. Aside
from the success of the movie, the book has been translated into 42 languages,
and Swarup's second novel, Six Suspects, has been optioned as a film.
I caught up with Swarup at the recent Ubud Writers and Readers Festival in
Bali. In the spirit of the quiz show in Q&A, the author
agreed to answer 12 questions about himself and his works.
Muhammad Cohen:Every aspiring novelist dreams of having a
best-selling novel turned into an Oscar-winning movie and becoming a
millionaire. You've done all that. So why haven't you quit your day job?
Vikas Swarup:Because I love representing my country and secondly
there is no guarantee of continued success. More importantly, I think the
security of the day job gives me the freedom to write in my spare time. I don't
feel I am under any kind of "pressure".
MC: Is there any tradition of Indian diplomats as novelists, as
there is with Indian film stars as politicians?
VS: Some people do talk of an IFS [Indian Foreign Service] School
of Writing. But the real reason so many diplomats have turned to writing is
that we are trained to use words rather carefully. That training probably comes
in handy when we try to write something other than official reports.
MC: What conflicts arise between your work as a diplomat and your
work as a novelist?
VS: Actually the Indian government is very liberal and gives
complete freedom for artistic expression of any kind to civil servants. So
technically speaking, there is no bar to what you want to write as long as it
is made clear that the views expressed are personal. The only conflict, I
suppose, is that as a bureaucrat you are neither supposed to be seen nor heard
in public whereas as a novelist you have be out there, promoting your work.
MC:Your books delve into the seamy sides of India including
corruption, religious strife, and class conflict. How do you reconcile those
widely read portrayals with a diplomat's mission to promote a favorable image
of the nation overseas?
VS:At its core, my book presents the image of an India that is
vibrant, energetic, ingenious and industrious. The book tries to capture the
vitality of life in our cities. How people, even those living in the slums, are
trying to make a better life for themselves. Neither the book nor the film is a
documentary on slum life. Dharavi [a Mumbai slum] just happened to be the
backdrop of telling a compelling human story about the ultimate underdog.
MC: You live as an expatriate, in foreign cultures, yet your
novels are deeply grounded in India. Why is that? Does living overseas make you
feel more strongly Indian?
VS:I have always written about India as an insider and never as
an outsider. Even though I have lived abroad because of my government job, I
have never felt that I am living away from India. I remember my early days in
the diplomatic service when we would anxiously await the arrival of the
diplomatic bag which would bring mail and newspapers from India. Living now in
the era of broadband Internet and 24-hour cable TV, the sense of distance has
largely melted away. I feel connected to India every waking minute.
MC: After the enormous success of your first novel, was it
difficult to write another? Were you apprehensive about having to live up to
the high standard you'd set?
VS: I think any writer whose first book becomes a huge hit faces
the second book syndrome. Luckily I don't see myself so much as a writer as a
storyteller. And I asked myself this question after Q&A: Do I have
another story to tell? As it turned out, I didn't have just one, I had six
different stories to tell, and that is how Six Suspects was born.
MC: What was your involvement with the filming of Slumdog
Millionaire?
VS: I was consulted on the screenplay and gave my suggestions.
MC: How pleased or disappointed were you with the translation of Q&A
to film? What would you have done differently?
VS: I consider Slumdog Millionaire to be a creative
interpretation of my novel. The film-makers took my central narrative structure
and a few of the stories and added some new stories of their own. I am, by and
large, happy with the end product, but I was sorry to see that my
multi-religious protagonist Ram Mohammad Thomas [Hindu, Muslim and Christian
names respectively] had morphed into the unidimensional Jamal Malik.
MC: Do you plan to have any role in the upcoming film version of
your second novel, Six Suspects?
VS: I have only seen the treatment so far and it is quite
faithful to the original novel. Six Suspects is a much more complex
novel than Q&A so I hope to be more closely involved in the film
project.
MC: What did you think of the controversy surrounding houses for
the two young actors in Slumdog Millionaire?
VS: It is not really my area - the so-called controversy pertains
to the agreement between the families and the filmmakers. I will only say that
the two slum kids have cashed in on the break they got in life. Now they should
get a decent education.
MC: You didn't grow up in a slum but in a family of lawyers. With
that background, how were you able to make the depiction of slum like seem so
realistic? What sources did you draw from?
VS: For this you have to give credit to my research. I have never
actually lived in Mumbai. And I had never visited the slums of Dharavi where my
protagonist Ram Mohammad Thomas is supposed to reside. But research can only
help you create an authentic backdrop. To get under the skin of your characters
you need the quality of empathy - E M Forster's [edict to writers] 'only
connect'. At a fundamental level, I believe all human beings are alike, with
the same dreams, desires and passions. One only has to take certain things out
of the equation - for example, money - to visualize life for the disadvantaged.
MC: You say you found an agent without finishing your manuscript
and that you've never gotten a rejection slip. Who is more lucky, you or Ram
Mohammad Thomas, your character who wins the quiz?
VS: I think all of us have been lucky at some point or another.
The important thing is to believe in yourself, remember that there are no
shortcuts to success and that, as Ram Mohammad Thomas says, "Luck comes from
within."
Former broadcast news producer Muhammad Cohen told America's story to the
world as a US diplomat and is author of
Hong Kong On Air,
a novel set during the 1997 handover about television news, love, betrayal,
financial crisis, and cheap lingerie. Follow
Muhammad Cohen's blog for more on the media and Asia, his adopted home.
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