Why I Wrote "Never Mind Yaar"

When the kids were four and one, I gave up my job, happily,
I might add, to look after them. We were in a new country. Before I knew it the
kids were off to school and kindergarten. I discovered I was bored. How often
can you go out shopping or meet up with friends? And, as is the case with new
immigrants, I missed my life back home. 




That is when I first started writing. It was 1992. I wrote every
day. Time flew. Before I knew it, it was time to stop and get some housework
done before picking up the kids. I wrote about my childhood and teens – a story
where nothing untoward happened except, it brought smiles to my face to recall
the things my siblings and I used to get up to. My husband suggested I write to
get published.



I started researching writing to publish. In those days PCs
were just beginning to make an appearance and here, in NZ, we had excellent
(and free) libraries. I kept dreaming about plots and characters but it was all
nebulous in my mind. From being bored and having time on my hands I was on a
constant adrenaline fix.




I chanced upon a book by William Pfaff about the “Wrath of
Nations”. One thing he said stuck with me. He said people of different nationalities
instinctively felt proud of their own culture. There is no reason or logic to
it. They just do. I’d often thought about and mulled over the Bombay - as it
was then known – riots. For the first time after the riots, I felt I understood
what I’d witnessed. To my mind it had been illogical, yet blinding, hate from
people who we’d dealt with daily and perhaps once or twice even joked with. I
realised it was complex but I felt I understood why some (not all) people
became hardened towards other communities. I felt strangely at peace. 




The riots had to be
part of the book I was planning to write. 




Whenever they spoke of the Indian middle class in the news, it
was always the “huge, burgeoning” Indian middle class. I didn’t like that term.
It made me feel like ordinary Indians were being lumped together as one mass of
humanity. We weren’t individuals. Besides, so many Indian authors wrote about
Indians on the edge of society, extreme poverty, degradation, male chauvinism,
rampant corruption, bribery, superstition, religious extremism and courage in
the face of all the above, that I was determined not to. 




I would write to celebrate and affirm the ordinary,
mainstream, middle-class Indians. The world should see India in all her colours
to get a true picture. I would dare to be different.



I’d write about ordinary Indians.




The plot began taking shape. I also wanted characters who
were idealistic and not jaded by experience. Breezy youngsters, amusing, out to
make a life for themselves – that’s who I planned to write about. Normal,
ordinary kids who weren’t living at the edge of society but who came from
secure homes. 




I’d write about the
carefree and light hearted years of college, friendship and young love.




I completed my novel in 1993. It does have stories from my
childhood but the characters and plot are pure invention. Today, almost twenty
years later, it is published in India. Why it took so long is another story.



One thing I should make clear is that I had no idea when I
wrote the book that some events in the book would actually come to pass. Perhaps
subconsciously we all knew these things were waiting to happen.



My feelings now: I’ve come to know many people through my
blog and through books written by contemporary Indian authors. People who
matter to me haven’t changed. They are exactly as I thought they would be. They
are my connection to the India I left behind. The other kind, the rabble, encouraged
to see so many of their own kind out and about, are crawling out of the
woodwork in ever greater numbers.




The “never mind yaar” attitude, on the other hand, is
definitely changing. I don’t know whether youngsters would accept substandard
fare from the college canteen as most of the college students did at Gyan Shakti
until Bhagu was beaten up. I don’t know whether ordinary Indians would accept a
building coming up, slap bang in their faces – a building that flouts every
regulation about the minimum distance between buildings as Louella’s family did
in the book. I don’t know if a time will come when rape victims and their
families will be able to trust the police and the justice system and speak out
against the rapist. Or will they continue trusting no one, either taking matters
into their own hands or preferring to forget the incident and letting the
perpetrators off scot free?




All I know is that we are beginning to understand once more what we knew during India’s
struggle for independence - the power of getting together to fight in unity. We’d
forgotten and begun to feel completely helpless in the face of coercion, bribes
and politicians ruling through goondas.




There is immense strength and safety in unity and a billion
lone individuals aren’t as effective as a billion-strong force. As long as
cynicism - that nothing will come of it - doesn’t make us apathetic there is
hope. Not defeat.




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