The Creative Mind of Indu Sundaresan
by Ramon Shiloh
A bestselling author and powerful storyteller, Indu Sundaresan is a woman who has been championed and admired by literary scholars, university professors and numerous publications as one of the greatest authors of the 21st century.
Her observations about life during the past ten years served as the inspiration for her latest book, In the Convent of Little Flowers, a collection of nine short stories delicately woven to illustrate contemporary Indians’ clash with ancient traditions.
“Indu Sundaresan turns her revealing prose on the contorted relationship of past and present in 21st-century India,” one reviewer explains. “These stories are portals into the Indian soul, revealing the breaches and the bonds that delineate the relationship between rural and urban India, and the intricate play of ancient stricture and modern striving in contemporary life…The stories within these pages are brilliant, penetrating.
Sundaresan’s first two novels, The Twentieth Wife and the sequel, The Feast of Roses, examine the life of a 17th century Indian empress. Mehrunnisa was, in many ways, the woman responsible for the building of the Taj Mahal.
“There was something I read about her that started me on this journey to research her life,” Sundaresan explains, “and try to figure out who she was.”
Her third book, The Splendor of Silence, is also set in India. The fictional love story follows the four days in May of 1942 between an American soldier and an Indian woman.
In the Convent of Little Flowers was born from Sundaresan’s observations of interesting events that caught her attention. “What guides my writings are things I overhear or read in newspaper articles. I get connected to these people’s lives because I live in the same time they do,” she says. “Unlike my novel length fictions, these stories were conjured through random insights. You can’t shut yourself out from your life to write. For me, it’s part of the process, where I look around and discover what I’ll be writing today.”
Another major departure from her earlier writings was to place the story in Seattle, which Sundaresan admits was a struggle. “One of the things I could have easily done was to write about the Indian American experience in the U.S. Although my husband and I have lived in Seattle for many years, I never wanted to write about the American experience. All my fiction was written about India. I had no idea about how to structure the environment,” she says. “I also find it difficult to write about a life I currently live. I just don’t have the distance and the perspective to look at it in an unprejudiced manner and say ‘OK, this is what happens.’”
Still, Sundaresan managed to navigate the pitfalls to turn out another powerful set of stories. Her first story, Shelter of Rain, is about a young woman who is adopted from India and comes to live in the Pacific Northwest. Twenty years later, she receives a letter from Sister Mary Theresa, a nun at the Convent of Little Flowers Orphanage in Chennai, requesting her to come back home because her mother is dying.
“As far as my work goes,” Sundaresan says, “I don’t think there’s any other country in the world that would have embraced my work as much as America. I understand the racism and understand that it exists, but I don’t think there’s any other country in the world where it exists less. It’s true. You couldn’t go to any other country in the world and find such a diverse city of people who have lived there for many years and become part of the culture, then have infused their own culture into what is mainstream America.”
Creativity in India
Sundaresan was born and raised in India’ fourth largest metropolitan area, Chennai (formerly known as Madras), which is located on the southeastern coast. However, as a result of her father’s profession as a fighter pilot in the Air Force, she grew up all over Northern India.
An artistic child, Sundaresan was inspired by her father, who enjoyed spending his time with a paintbrush and canvas or a book. He was also an exceptional storyteller.
“That’s how we spent our weekends. We read a lot, we told each other stories and he painted while we read books ourselves. So, growing up an artistic kid is only from the point of view of doing many creative things, but none that I was particularly good at,” Sundaresan laughs.”
Sundaresan arrived in the U.S. in her early twenties to attend graduate school at the University of Delaware. She earned a degree in operations research and another in economics. She believes she has been lucky to walk a fortunate path without racism. But, she points out that it is where you decide you want to live that dictates the environment suitable to your life.
“I have been very lucky to be in positive environments, in part, because of where I chose to live. The University environment is very little contusive to any sort of racism because there are so many people around who come from different countries and they’re judged on their intellectual merit, not necessarily on how they look or what they say,” Sundaresan explains.
“Looking back, I realize what was expected of me. You don’t grow up and say, I’m going to be a writer. How are you going to make money and how are you going to pay the bills?” Sundaresan says. “When I finished graduate school, I decided I want to write a novel. It’s not something I struggled with and thought ‘I’ve done all this work and I should be doing something very practical.’ I looked at my academic journey and knew I paid my dues to society and accomplished what was expected of me. [It was time to] do what I want, which was to write.”
Silence is Golden
“I like quiet, so I write at home,” Sundaresan says. “I have an office, but I’m not very good at using that space, so I sit on the couch or bed with my laptop. What I really need is quiet. I need nobody else around.”
Sundaresan says she enjoys being alone because that is when inspiration usually arrives. But, she admits that it’s not always practical to sit down with a piece of paper and jot down what she is thinking.
“I have many moments where visuals or other things come to me. In fact, I’ll sometimes find myself writing in my head as I’m walking in a mall. I don’t have the time and so I write a lot in my head,” she says. “A lot of it gets lost, but what eventually gets put down on paper is a result of what I’m thinking. I don’t fret about the things I lose because when I get down to writing in my quiet environment, it makes itself up.”
Sundaresan contends there’s a wealth of courageous Indian writers ready to break through their shells and offer their literary gifts to the world. Having a good story is one thing, but timing, persistence and patience is the key to success.
“It took me five years for The Twentieth Wife to get published,” Sundaresan encourages. “That was simply because when I was sending it out to bigger names, my manuscript wasn’t good enough. I didn’t revise it enough and sat with a bunch of rejection letters. I had to work hard for it.”
When asked how the new generation of budding authors should pursue their dreams in the writing world, Sundaresan states the prevalent theme behind her writing is,”I want to finish my novel.”
“People stop to think too often about how hard it is to write, but today, there’s more access to information than there has ever been. Even when I began writing, the Internet didn’t exist. But, I wrote a novel. You need to be patient and persistent.”
Indu Sundaresan will read from her book, In the Convent of Little Flowers, tonight at Seattle’s Elliott Bay Bookstore. Additional information on Indu Sundaresan can be found on her website.
© 1/12/2009
by Ramon Shiloh
A bestselling author and powerful storyteller, Indu Sundaresan is a woman who has been championed and admired by literary scholars, university professors and numerous publications as one of the greatest authors of the 21st century.
Her observations about life during the past ten years served as the inspiration for her latest book, In the Convent of Little Flowers, a collection of nine short stories delicately woven to illustrate contemporary Indians’ clash with ancient traditions.
“Indu Sundaresan turns her revealing prose on the contorted relationship of past and present in 21st-century India,” one reviewer explains. “These stories are portals into the Indian soul, revealing the breaches and the bonds that delineate the relationship between rural and urban India, and the intricate play of ancient stricture and modern striving in contemporary life…The stories within these pages are brilliant, penetrating.
Sundaresan’s first two novels, The Twentieth Wife and the sequel, The Feast of Roses, examine the life of a 17th century Indian empress. Mehrunnisa was, in many ways, the woman responsible for the building of the Taj Mahal.
“There was something I read about her that started me on this journey to research her life,” Sundaresan explains, “and try to figure out who she was.”
Her third book, The Splendor of Silence, is also set in India. The fictional love story follows the four days in May of 1942 between an American soldier and an Indian woman.
In the Convent of Little Flowers was born from Sundaresan’s observations of interesting events that caught her attention. “What guides my writings are things I overhear or read in newspaper articles. I get connected to these people’s lives because I live in the same time they do,” she says. “Unlike my novel length fictions, these stories were conjured through random insights. You can’t shut yourself out from your life to write. For me, it’s part of the process, where I look around and discover what I’ll be writing today.”
Another major departure from her earlier writings was to place the story in Seattle, which Sundaresan admits was a struggle. “One of the things I could have easily done was to write about the Indian American experience in the U.S. Although my husband and I have lived in Seattle for many years, I never wanted to write about the American experience. All my fiction was written about India. I had no idea about how to structure the environment,” she says. “I also find it difficult to write about a life I currently live. I just don’t have the distance and the perspective to look at it in an unprejudiced manner and say ‘OK, this is what happens.’”
Still, Sundaresan managed to navigate the pitfalls to turn out another powerful set of stories. Her first story, Shelter of Rain, is about a young woman who is adopted from India and comes to live in the Pacific Northwest. Twenty years later, she receives a letter from Sister Mary Theresa, a nun at the Convent of Little Flowers Orphanage in Chennai, requesting her to come back home because her mother is dying.
“As far as my work goes,” Sundaresan says, “I don’t think there’s any other country in the world that would have embraced my work as much as America. I understand the racism and understand that it exists, but I don’t think there’s any other country in the world where it exists less. It’s true. You couldn’t go to any other country in the world and find such a diverse city of people who have lived there for many years and become part of the culture, then have infused their own culture into what is mainstream America.”
Creativity in India
Sundaresan was born and raised in India’ fourth largest metropolitan area, Chennai (formerly known as Madras), which is located on the southeastern coast. However, as a result of her father’s profession as a fighter pilot in the Air Force, she grew up all over Northern India.
An artistic child, Sundaresan was inspired by her father, who enjoyed spending his time with a paintbrush and canvas or a book. He was also an exceptional storyteller.
“That’s how we spent our weekends. We read a lot, we told each other stories and he painted while we read books ourselves. So, growing up an artistic kid is only from the point of view of doing many creative things, but none that I was particularly good at,” Sundaresan laughs.”
Sundaresan arrived in the U.S. in her early twenties to attend graduate school at the University of Delaware. She earned a degree in operations research and another in economics. She believes she has been lucky to walk a fortunate path without racism. But, she points out that it is where you decide you want to live that dictates the environment suitable to your life.
“I have been very lucky to be in positive environments, in part, because of where I chose to live. The University environment is very little contusive to any sort of racism because there are so many people around who come from different countries and they’re judged on their intellectual merit, not necessarily on how they look or what they say,” Sundaresan explains.
“Looking back, I realize what was expected of me. You don’t grow up and say, I’m going to be a writer. How are you going to make money and how are you going to pay the bills?” Sundaresan says. “When I finished graduate school, I decided I want to write a novel. It’s not something I struggled with and thought ‘I’ve done all this work and I should be doing something very practical.’ I looked at my academic journey and knew I paid my dues to society and accomplished what was expected of me. [It was time to] do what I want, which was to write.”
Silence is Golden
“I like quiet, so I write at home,” Sundaresan says. “I have an office, but I’m not very good at using that space, so I sit on the couch or bed with my laptop. What I really need is quiet. I need nobody else around.”
Sundaresan says she enjoys being alone because that is when inspiration usually arrives. But, she admits that it’s not always practical to sit down with a piece of paper and jot down what she is thinking.
“I have many moments where visuals or other things come to me. In fact, I’ll sometimes find myself writing in my head as I’m walking in a mall. I don’t have the time and so I write a lot in my head,” she says. “A lot of it gets lost, but what eventually gets put down on paper is a result of what I’m thinking. I don’t fret about the things I lose because when I get down to writing in my quiet environment, it makes itself up.”
Sundaresan contends there’s a wealth of courageous Indian writers ready to break through their shells and offer their literary gifts to the world. Having a good story is one thing, but timing, persistence and patience is the key to success.
“It took me five years for The Twentieth Wife to get published,” Sundaresan encourages. “That was simply because when I was sending it out to bigger names, my manuscript wasn’t good enough. I didn’t revise it enough and sat with a bunch of rejection letters. I had to work hard for it.”
When asked how the new generation of budding authors should pursue their dreams in the writing world, Sundaresan states the prevalent theme behind her writing is,”I want to finish my novel.”
“People stop to think too often about how hard it is to write, but today, there’s more access to information than there has ever been. Even when I began writing, the Internet didn’t exist. But, I wrote a novel. You need to be patient and persistent.”
Indu Sundaresan will read from her book, In the Convent of Little Flowers, tonight at Seattle’s Elliott Bay Bookstore. Additional information on Indu Sundaresan can be found on her website.
© 1/12/2009
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