Exploring themes of love and pleasure
Ananth Padmanabhan
By Malik Gunatilleke
Q: What brings you to Sri Lanka? Are you promoting your novel here?
A: Not on this trip. I work for Penguin books. So we supply a lot of book to all the book sellers here. We’ve been selling books in Sri Lanka for a very long time actually and I have been Head of Sales for almost two decades now.
It’s multi-pronged – if you take something like Ladybird, which is prescribed in all schools, it’s about promotion of the Ladybird brand to schools and schoolteachers and just in general to grow the readership and the market. As a large brand we publish for every age group, every category and it’s to promote readership and encourage book-buying. We work with all the major retailers in Colombo.
Q: Tell us a bit about your novel ‘Play With Me’?
A: My novel was published last August. It’s started out as an idea in the office very simply in that after the publishing of ‘50 Shades of Grey,’ there was this whole new market for erotic literature and we hadn’t had a good erotic novel published in India for a very long time and definitely not one by a man. Some of my colleagues had read the unpublished short stories I had written. I wrote them more or less for my pleasure in that sense. So my colleague asked me to give it a shot and I agreed. That was the beginning of ‘Play With Me’.
Q: Why particularly an erotic novel?
A: There’s a tipping point in literature so to speak. How Harry Potter just opened up the door for fantasy fiction. How Dan Brown’s ‘Da Vinci Code’ suddenly exploded the Templar fiction and so on. Similarly, E.L. James’ ‘50 Shades of Grey’ just suddenly created this whole new market.
Q: Was it inspiration-driven or was it particularly to target a gap in the market?
A: In a way it was purpose-driven but it was particularly to target the market. Most of the erotic literature is created by women and approaches feminism, liberation, suppression and middle-class woes so to speak, at least in India. I wanted to write a novel that was contemporary, that was current, that connects to the younger audiences and I wanted a novel about women. The only difference was that it was from a man’s perspective. I wanted to break the norms that say that typically men love sex and women love love; that men are unemotional and physical and that women are more emotional. I wanted to address these aspects.
Q: You spoke about how you wanted to create a great Indian erotic novel. What does a great Indian erotic novel entail?
A: I wanted to portray the daily life of a youngster in contemporary India. I didn’t necessarily want to burden erotica with culture and with the various shackles that culture has set around the subject. I think a lot more is happening in the world than we like to admit. So I just wanted to make it contemporary and say it as it.
Q: Does the novel have more of a global appeal rather than something that is specific to India?
A: It is set in India and it’s also set abroad. I don’t name a city (one city mentioned in the book is left nameless); although people in India who read the book will know which city I’m alluding to, it is based on a modern city. In fact, I’ve had responses from readers around the world who think the novel is based in their city. The novel moves in between that city, Goa and New York.
I’ve also got many responses from outside India from people who said that it was refreshing to bump into a novel that changed their perceptions of what Indian literature was.
Q: In your novel, you explore themes of love and pleasure. How important was it to separate the two and explore it as different entities?
A: That’s a very good question actually. I’m not a writer; I’m a photographer actually, besides my job at Penguin. You have to have thematic integrity; I can’t just write a book with a lot of sex in it, it doesn’t work like that. I didn’t even want to make sex that significant because when two people are seeing each other and when fall in love with each other it is natural that they get physical with each other; it’s a natural progression. But at what point to we let pleasure affect your sense of love?
Relationships go through various cycles. First is you like spending time with each other, you break the barriers of physical proximity which starts with touch. Then it breaks the barrier of being physical with each other. Then you start to question how much you love the person and the combination of love and pleasure is what will determine if the relationship is long-lasting or not. If it was an action of one or the other it might not be a successful relationship. These were the questions I wanted to ask myself.
In the novel itself, the main character Siddharth has a relationship with a younger woman, which is entirely physical, but in the process he falls in love with an older woman and he asks the same questions. What is more important? How does he choose long term happiness? Is it through pleasure or love? The book has an ambiguous ending as well.
Q: Tell us a bit about the writing process?
A: I went about it in a very methodical manner. Before I began, I knew I wanted to write a book that had roughly 30 chapters and about 60,000 words. When I started to think about what these characters would do in the novel I just opened an Excel sheet and started plotting the chapters. So A meets B; where they go; what they tell each; what problems they encounter. Siddharth is an under 30 photographer who runs an ad agency called ‘Alpha’; a new intern comes in to work there; and what happens from there onwards.
I plotted all of it and I knew where I wanted to end the novel. I must admit there were places I struggled with in terms of the dilemmas that characters go through especially when dealing with life questions about what will make us happy. I wrote the eighth chapter and the last chapter long before I wrote the others. I was constantly living with the characters, constantly wondering about how I would solve a particular problem in a chapter. The moment I got an idea, I would give it a shot, complete the chapter and link it all in the end.
One of the key points in my writing process what my ability to take a picture. When I wanted to write about something I could see the light, where people were sitting, how they touch each other when talking. It was extremely helpful. I could pull away from the writing process itself and use that description method. Whenever I thought it was becoming two difficult, I would stop immediately. I didn’t force it.
This all took about six months. I started one August, nothing happened for a while. Then I restarted it in February (2014) and finished it the following August. Then I rewrote each chapter and then the third version of the book I sent to five colleagues whose opinion I trust. The advantage at Penguin is that everybody is a different kind of reader and editor. They all read it and liked it but most of them had some problems or questions as well as many suggestions. Some of the suggestions I took and some I didn’t. Then I had a fourth draft and the fifth draft was what I submitted back to Penguin. The book got delayed a little because I was waiting a while to get the right cover design.
Q: How has your role at Penguin affected or contributed to your role as a writer?
A: For one I was petrified. Especially when you’re exposed to so much good literature and the disadvantage being that one man’s sex is another man’s porn. It’s one thing to approach a tough subject like erotica but I was really scared to tell you the truth. I worked with a lot of people who would be honest and tell me if I was good or not. If I get criticism beyond that so be it; I gave it my best shot. But it is scary working in publishing and writing a book.
Q: Did you expect a great response?
A: I wasn’t expecting critical acclaim. It was never going to happen. It was a commercial novel and it was meant to be enjoyable but I had a professional reputation to worry about. Not just within but family – everyone will wonder the same thing – why would you start your life as a writer with a novel about sex? Luckily I got fairly good responses. Many readers have been able to associate with the characters.
Q: Were you concerned that the book would not be taken in the right spirit back at home?
A: Yes. I worry about it even now. So far it’s been good. Even with the responses that have been critical, there was good and bad in it. It’s been balanced in that way. I still worry about it. I’ll even worry about what you thought of the book.
Writing and photography are connected. An image might be static but it’s the conversations that one picture can invoke in anybody who sees it that the strength in that image lies. The truth is that I have no control over what you will think of it; as long as what I’ve tried to say comes across and you see it for what it is.
Q: Will you look at writing more now that your first venture was a success and are there any other books in the pipeline?
A: I’m enjoying it actually. I’m writing book two actually – a sequel called ‘Think of Me’. I’m not working on a deadline but I’d like to publish it next year.
Q: Have you thought of switching genres?
A: Yes, crime.
Q: Is that your passion?
A: My passion will always be photography. I have conquered one demon which is being able to write and construct a novel. One of those things that Indian novels haven’t done very well is to talk about the dark side of the mind. We haven’t had a very good psychological horror novel for example. Even if the bar is set high with authors like Stephen King, there’s an in between, where we haven’t been able to produce a good horror novel or a crime novel. What we have are very good crime thrillers; gritty crime thrillers are available, noire crime novels are available but psychological crime is tough. Very few people get it. I have an idea and I want to try and push the bar on that.
Pix by Daminda Harsha Perera
