Interview: Aditi Sowmyanarayan on 'Thus She Rose'

Interview: Aditi Sowmyanarayan on 'Thus She Rose'

 

Print.Able: Aditi, I read your novel Thus She Rose almost as soon as it became available on Amazon and, as usual, I have my three questions for you.  But before that, let me say I really liked Pooja Sakhlani’s cover – the colours of the winter sky, the snow and fir trees in the background, and Zooni with the pretty top (lovely colour), the tattoo, and the thin gold chain. And now, my questions:

Print.Able: A chalk and cheese difference in style and content between Gobble Thy Prejudice and Thus She Rose.  I enjoyed that. Very serious, hardly any humour, unexpected twists, including at the end – did the story just come to you in entirety or did you have to work a lot to put it together?

Aditi: Thank you! I love the cover design too and it’s the wallpaper on my phone!
So, let me just give you a bit of background about how the idea for this novel came about. This was right after my short story collection, Small Stories Big Thoughts, was launched and had garnered positive reviews, and my novella, Gobble Thy Prejudice, won the best manuscript award at Auther Awards, in April 2023. I was on a high, with all the success and love, but had no idea what my next book was going to be about. In one of my classes, I began to learn about the conflict in Kashmir. My educator casually mentioned that I should consider writing a story against this backdrop, and so, I got my idea! Having said that, what came to me was just the outline of the tale- I had to do a lot of research to get the backdrop and the character sketches right, because  Zooni and her family are not like the kind of people I encounter in my daily life, unlike Kusum and Ramesh from Gobble Thy Prejudice, who are all around us!

Print.Able: You picked your location without ever going to Kashmir, and all your main characters are Kashmiri Muslims mostly belonging to the swish set.  Did you set that up as a deliberate challenge to yourself or did it happen because you simply could not help yourself – that was the story and it had to be told?

Aditi: It’s basically a bit of both. Like you mentioned, I chose as backdrop, a place that I have not had the opportunity to visit as yet, and a culture about which I had to learn from the scratch. So, writing this novel helped me grow as a writer. That said, the book is about the wide spectrum of human emotions and how that shapes us. Idealism, ambition, courage and greed are universal - religion notwithstanding. Zooni is an idealist. How can someone growing up in an environment of chaos and flux remain an idealist, unless she comes from a family of wealth, who have the means to keep her away from the chaos in her growing years?

 
Print.Able: No doubt there are difficult situations and sad occurrences in the story but overall, you come across as a writer who likes things to end well for everyone – clean finishes rather than messy issues haunting the reader’s imagination after reaching the last page.   Do you see that trait in yourself – kindness towards all your characters and kindness towards your readers?

Aditi: It’s not so much about being kind to my readers, it’s just who I am and my outlook towards life. Life has a way of tying things out. The process maybe messy and the outcome may not be as expected; but things do get tied up, and oftentimes, one thing leads to another!

 

Print.Able: Some of your blogposts are like short stories themselves. All the very best for your forthcoming literary efforts.

Aditi: Thank you! And do consider reading my latest short story, a modern fairytale, Mirror Mirror on the Wall- out in kindle now.