Each work of Malayalam author KR Meera is an intertwining of female experiences with patriarchy, politics, idealism and even romance. Often autobiographical, her flair for reimagining tales of retribution and redemption in women has won her an audience base like no other. In her newest release, Assassin, (translated from Ghatakan by J Devika, published by HarperCollins) she probes our turbulent times. Meera has won the Kerala Sahitya Akademi Award twice, for a short story and a novel. In an interview, she discusses how the central government’s demonetisation rekindled questions on political dissent and freedoms, while the killing of activist Gauri Lankesh made her pick up the pen again. Excerpts from the conversation:
Why did you write a novel about identity, caste and gender in the thriller mode?
There were many reasons – the trigger of the novel was an assassination; it was an exploration into the times and lives of the women of my generation; the thriller mode hadn’t been experimented with in my stories yet. Most importantly, it was so thrilling to experiment with the thriller mode.
With its charged personal-political narrative, is this your most significant feminist work?
As an author, all I can say is that writing this book was like an apocalyptic experience. On finishing it, I have burnt myself out, totally and fatally, maybe because Assassin has been the most autobiographical of all my works and it has been my most ambitious experiment with my own truths. I wish to describe the process of writing as the only way to resolve my perilous inner chaos and confusion, by observing, exploring and documenting the stages of my journey, and my evolution, on the personal, political and spiritual levels. But which is my most significant feministic work? Only my readers have the right to judge.
Does Assassin’s protagonist Satyapriya come from a line of women protagonists that you have created before or is she drawn from real life?
All my protagonists come from my own self. I often describe them as selfies from different points of my journey over the years. Satyapriya is my selfie from this point in time. Also, I wish to say that it is a true story in the sense that, all incidents, traumas, emotions – everything is true, they have happened to me or I have been a witness to their happening. I have gathered fragments of truth and cooked a story out of it.
Power, patriarchy and gender are recurring motifs in your works. How prominent is the politics of gender among these themes in Assassin?
Although the spark of this novel is demonetisation, the trigger happened when Gauri Lankesh was assassinated. It was shocking since she had published my story Bhagawan’s Death translated by Dr KS Bhagavan—another name in the hit list of communal fanatics—in Gauri Lankesh Patrika.
Gauri’s murder happened when I was at the University of Pennsylvania, on an invitation from the Center for Advanced Studies, on India. It was as if the bullets pierced me too. It shocked me because she wasn’t holding any position of power. All she had done was to ask questions and challenge beliefs. It sparked in me that there has always been a kind of violence that wouldn’t spare an Indian woman who was raising questions within her domestic sphere and it was deliberately being extended to the public sphere too.
Something in our present concept of nationalism doesn’t tolerate women and the underprivileged asserting their rights as equal citizens. And I have always observed that misogyny has been the foundation of patriarchy and subsequently, all forms of total authoritarianism. It was after I finished writing Assassin that I read the book How to Stop Fascism by Paul Mason. The main solution to Fascism according to Mason is to win the battle of ideas, well in advance of its electoral breakthrough. I was surprised to read that the solution he proposes requires fascism to be understood as an ideological war that is not based just on racism, but also on misogyny. It is like what I write from my own practical experience and observation, being endorsed by a theoretician. So not only in Assassin, in all my works, gender is a prominent aspect, because it is written by an Indian citizen who was raised by our society as a second-rate citizen who has been moulded by different kinds of violence.
In the book you have also drawn a connection between Satyapriya’s own troubles and demonetisation – why did you connect the two?
Because the first spark of the novel was the demonetisation itself. I had witnessed how ordinary people were suffering physically and mentally. I was reminded of Gandhiji and his response to the then Governor General who was angry because he was kept waiting for a long time as Gandhiji was listening to a group of poor peasants from the villages. The Governor General reportedly told Gandhiji: “You forget that I am the Governor General of this country” and Gandhiji retorted: “But you forget that the country belongs to them”. Then after Gauri’s death, when I started thinking of the women of my generation, it was revealed to me how the fiscal policies of our governments have shaped our lives and experiences. Satya’s life could not be an exception.
Gauri Lankesh and Mahatma Gandhi’s assassinations are nearly a century apart. The times have changed but again it has not. Do you agree?
I can’t agree more. That is exactly what Assassin wants to remind the world. The saga of violence has roots somewhere deep in history and true nationalism is to understand and address that.
In the India of today, there seems to be low tolerance for political dissent. What is the role of an artist of political books like you now, and the future of a book like the Assassins?
I am not sure, frankly. Ever since I wrote Assassin, people have asked whether I am not scared to write on such themes. I feel bad and sad, to realise that we have normalised violence and even justified it, to that extent. It is in this atmosphere that the writers have much to do. The future belongs to us.