Jonaki Ray in Conversation with Gaurav Monga
Jonaki Ray is a poet, writer, and editor based in New Delhi, India. She is the author of Firefly Memories and Lessons in Bending. Her work has appeared in Poetry, Poetry Wales, The Rumpus, Indian Literature, Lunch Ticket, Southword Journal, and elsewhere. Honours for her work include the 2018 Pushcart and Forward Prize nominations, the 2019 Iceland Writers Retreat Alumni Award, and First Prize in the 2017 Oxford Brookes International Poetry Contest (ESL).
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Gaurav Monga is a writer and teacher originally from New Delhi. He is the author of Tears for Rahul Dutta, Family Matters, Ruins, Costumes of the Living, My Father, the Watchmaker, The English Teacher and Raju and Kishore. Much of his recent work is inspired by the language of fashion. A book titled A Fashion Dictionary is forthcoming with Black Scat Books in January 2024. His work has appeared in numerous literary and fashion magazines, including B O D Y, Fanzine, Dismantle and Vesto.
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Gaurav Monga (GM): Jonaki, let’s begin with your poetry. In the poems I have read of yours, I get a sense that you are able to imagine the lives of others, whose lives, predicament, and cultural milieu might be very different from your own; yet it comes across as if it is a very personal experience, almost as if a vague memory of a former life. Does poetry become a veritable instrument for you to enter others’ souls? In many of your poems, one gets this uncanny sensation that you are nostalgic for a buried lost self, a self you, yourself, barely know. This is at least the feeling I got when reading much of your work, and I wonder if you resonate with this feeling?
Jonaki Ray (JR): That’s an interesting point, and something unusual for me to hear! I don’t set out to visualise or write about the lives of others in the way you have described here. Therefore it is also quite a compliment, thank you! I think what happens is that I often begin with an idea or image that might be something I’ve seen or read about. If it’s something in the news, or something I came across my travels, for instance, I bring in a bit of research first of all. I start reading about that idea, or about the life of that person (if it’s a person who inspired me), and quite often get into strange black holes of information along the way, before I start writing. And yes, once I do write, I get into a trance-like state, and often visualise myself in that moment of that life, or event, and perhaps, that is why you got that feeling. For example, the poems in my collection Firefly Memories, specifically in the second and third parts, are inspired by my travels as well as what is happening around us in the world. I read a news item a few years ago about a woman, Reshma Qureshi, who was attacked by acid, and how she overcame horrendous legal, not to mention physical and mental, battles to finally walk the ramp in a fashion show. I did a lot of research about acid attack survivors in India—and about her story, and my poem “Burn” was dedicated to Reshma.
What about you? Is there a starting point for you for a piece of writing? Or is it completely spontaneous? I do feel that some of your writing, especially your prose poems as well as some of your fiction has an element of magic realism. For instance, a building in Ruins is both a symbol of life and an image of the uncertainty of time and/or history. There are stories within stories, and one object, a watch, links to another one, and then another one . . . would you like to elaborate on how you do this?
GM: Yes, I do like to believe I write in constellations, a sort of block-chain system, much like a rhizome with multiple pathways. And although both Ruins and Costumes of the Living are fragments that pertain to buildings (architecture) and clothing(fashion), these fragments often function allegorically and are, like you said, not just buildings or clothes, but perhaps an explicit tapestry on which I attempt to confer certain ideas and feelings. As regards starting points, I think I often like to start at starting points, by taking themes that are anthropologically so essential on one level and yet so basic, sort of existential “givens”, so to speak. I have written a book about homes, a book about clothes, and the next one I would like to write is on food (Roti, Kapda, aur Makaan).
GM: I have been fed on 19th-century and early-20th-century German literature. I seldom break into contemporary locution (even dialogue), and people who even love my writing often regard it as a little sleepy, elegant but lacking at times of a certain contemporary energy and charge. Your lyric seems to straddle both impulses quite comfortably. You seem to be equally at home with a rather languid, prosaic register, and yet your poems and stories are equipped with a certain contemporaneity, in terms of register and the objects that often surface in your writing. It is almost as if there is a pastness embedded in your nowness, often by virtue of you being able to locate poetry in commonplace, mundane small things. You seem to be able to find wonder in the small. How is this ability a comment on your own life, way of living and seeing things?
JR: It is indeed! I think it comes from the joy I find in the unexpected elements of life, as well as perhaps from the scientific training of focusing on the process! All those years of running experiments taught me to look at the details, and what goes behind the scenes before the final outcome, and that extends to my writing. I often find inspiration during my commute to my work, for instance, when I see something on the road, or catch a tantalising glimpse of someone else’s life, and that makes me wonder what is going on there . . . and after all, if one can’t find wonder in the small things, how does one face larger issues? My favourite poets are the ones who have managed to create beauty from seemingly simple acts that comprise our daily lives. Robert Frost has been a favourite poet of mine since childhood—I mean who else can create such a beautiful image out of a fork on a road, or a man cutting wood, for instance?
I am also fascinated by the cyclical nature of history and time, and how eventually things cycle back, and there are lessons (and joys) everywhere.
I remember watching semul flowers blooming on a tree next to my window while the neighbour’s TV was on and the anchors were announcing/debating about the possibility of war happening soon. The juxtaposition of the two completely different happenings came out in a poem, “The Poison Flowers”, which was published a national daily as well as in my book.
When I think about your writing, I find it rather unique—it’s a hybrid of different genres—prose poetry with vignettes of flash fiction and short stories. It is also, as you have pointed out somewhere else, the perspective of an observer looking at a bazaar of information, as well as representation of your fascination with lists. Is this deliberate? Or something that has evolved over time?
GM: I think I am fascinated with the multitude. For instance, I absolutely adore Edgar Allan Poe’s “Man of the Crowd”, and sometimes like to imagine myself as a man about town. A large city, especially a city in India is a veritable panorama-scape. My forthcoming book is titled A Fashion Dictionary, a literary work comprising over 130 dictionary entries pertaining not only to fashion, of course, but also that which fashion rubs up against. It is my own attempt to write a panoramic work. My style and register gravitate towards the arcane and baroque. I primarily write prose poems and short stories and would like to imagine that even my fiction reads as perhaps extended poems. They, by and large, are bereft of plot, dialogue, the usual indispensable tenets of fiction.
I have, however, never been successfully able or, for that matter, driven to write a poem in its classical form, in verse. Here I would like to ask you why the poem, why this particular form or medium to express yourself and your world?
JR: I don’t restrict myself to only poetry—I do write short stories and flash fiction, not to mention non-fiction about books, writing, or my travels. Poetry, though, is something that comes to me most naturally. I feel it’s partly because as a scientist, I’m used to being concise, and also a huge part of it comes from my experience as an editor, where I have to keep editing and extract the kernel from often larger pieces. Also, while it is a challenge to pare down the words into something that is almost the bare minimum (almost like a distillation experiment), it is also meditative for me while I am doing it, and what I enjoy the most. In my work, I often use Bengali, my mother tongue, and Hindi, which I grew up reading and speaking.
Does your work as a teacher and educator influence your writing? I’m fascinated too by your proficiency in different languages—especially, learning German on your own. Tell me more about that, and if that has been a part of your writing outlook as well?
GM: To answer this question succinctly, I think teaching and writing have been very closely associated, and I have learnt a lot from my students. I have even created a picture book for elementary school children and taught creative writing at schools of architecture and fashion long before I composed Ruins and Costumes of the Living
I think one of the main reasons I started writing was probably to use writing as a means to not have to deal with boredom and anxiety and the first short story I ever wrote when I was 19 years old (“Tears for Rahul Dutta”) was by and large a self-portrait of the odd situation I found myself in then. It really helped me cope with life, so to speak. I am not certain whether the same impulses direct me today to write, and I often ask myself why do I write and just because I write need not necessarily mean that I always will, that writing, like many other things we do, is something we are doing now and that is all I know. I like to think I am writing and not necessarily a writer, I prefer being a verb over a noun? Why do you think you write?
JR: I never set out to be a writer initially. Therefore, it was not a deliberate or conscious choice. I was always a reader, and started writing during my student days at IIT Kanpur. I realised that I am able to express a moment that eventually moves me into a story that often represents something deeper and larger. I’ve now learnt to be grateful for the fact that I can do this, and it is (to me) almost miraculous in its power. Another reason I write is that I discovered a commonality with readers, though that happened much later, and that is, again, a tremendous gift for me. I can’t call any place home—and therefore, often write about the longing for home, or about loss and grief, and I’ve realised that writing has brought me a sense of belonging into a community of readers and writers—after all, these are emotions that are something that we have all felt at some point or another.
At the same time, given the times we are in, I feel that we are responsible for testifying for what is going on around us, and who else but a writer would do so? I’ve said this earlier—my inspiration is the Emily Dickinson line “tell all the truth but tell it slant”. We don’t have to impose our views, but we do have to be witnesses of what is not expressed enough, or be the voice of people who don’t have that power. I write a lot about both, migration as well as immigration, and during my travels, again, see a pattern of injustice happening to those who are considered non-citizens. For instance, there is a memorial to those who were deported from Paris during World War II, and I wrote about it because we are still talking about deportees, and refugees, and who deserves to get asylum, and why. My work—my poetry as well as fiction—is often about these stories. While I might be tilting at windmills, at least I am doing something about what is wrong with the world around us, even if it’s just showing it to some readers somewhere. In that sense, writing has been both a salvation and sanctuary for me.
JR: The last question I’d ask is: What is it that you would like to create that you have not been able to do yet?
GM: I have always wanted to write a slim novella, but so far, have been unable to sustain a narrative inertia and endurance to complete it. Is there a form, a book, that you would dream of creating?
JR: I do have an idea of a book that combines my twin passions of history and science, and I have been working and researching on it for the last few years. Hopefully, it will be true by the time we talk next!
