What author or story about writing most
inspires you?
I love to think about Emily Bronte, who
wrote Wuthering Heights, while she
lived in a small house on the moors with her family in northern England. She
never traveled outside the country, or had any great contact with the world
outside her home. She was not part of some sparkling social set. She wrote one
of the most powerful and disturbing stories of English literature. It's almost
as if her short, confined but productive life is, in itself, a metaphor of the
power of the imagination.
India
is the setting of your book and short stories. What is it about the country
that inspires you? India has a sensory richness that has to be experienced
to be believed: the sights, sounds and smells and tastes stay with you and
haunt your dreams. I feel honored to have lived there for a small part of my
life, and to remain connected to this amazing place. I am particularly
fascinated by stories of India's history from independence to the emigration to
the West of my parents' generation in the 1950's and 1960's and how subsequent
generations have adapted to life in the West, still dreaming of their former familial
homeland.
It has been fun to see the recent cultural
interest in India with books and movies like The Namesake, The Best Exotic
Marigold Hotel or Slumdog Millionaire; there are some great stories out
there about India and her people. I always seek out South Asian authors to help
me understand the complexities of life there: I think it's important to
remember that India is not a blank slate on which to impose a fantasy, but a
bustling, thriving and diverse place with its own rich tradition of poetry and
storytelling.
What
advice would you give to someone starting out as a writer?
Write, write and write! Don't be
afraid to write nonsense at first. The physical act of putting pen to paper, or
typing on those keys, can stir something that takes on a life of its own. Remember
that perfection is a process; your first draft is just the beginning. Don't
forget to read either—good literature that captures the magic you would like to bottle
in your own writing. When you read something worthy, think critically: what is
this writer's secret? Is it their ability to craft a surprising plot, or do
they have a way with words that makes you feel as if you are listening to
music? What do you admire about their writing, and where do they come up short?
I want to keep learning as I write, so that each one of my titles is better
than the last.
If you
could choose to be any one of your characters, which would it be and why? I
would chose Safiyah of The Dust Beneath
Her Feet. I wanted to create a female character who faces hardship with
spirit and resilience. Poverty is the
cause of many insults to her dignity but she holds her head up high, even when
circumstances seem to conspire to humiliate her. She is clearly a good, loving
mother and will do whatever it takes to hold her family together. I don't know
if I would be able to handle her circumstances with such grace. I based her
character on my eldest aunt, who had to make a similar decision about whether
or not to travel across India and join her husband in what was the new country
of Pakistan at the time of India's Partition. Sadly, my aunt's story did not
end well. I will continue Safiyah's story in my subsequent Purana Qila Stories series, but I'm not yet sure if she will
ultimately share my aunt's fate. I'm very fond of her and I'm not ready to let
go of her!
You
told us which character you would choose to be, if you could. Who was your
favorite character to write?
I think it would have to be Khan Sahib,
the ghost who haunts Mirza in A
Deconstructed Heart. Khan Sahib is disoriented by modern life and by
Mirza's helplessness: it is a shock to him to see how isolated his former
student is, without a close-knit extended family living situation once typical
in India. You can see that Khan Sahib is very much a product of tradition: he
comes from a rigid social and family structure that might seem confining to us
today, but he also enjoyed a life rich in connections and community. You can't
help admiring his assurance in his place in the world. I based him loosely on a
chess teacher I knew in India, who was a rather upright, dogmatic fellow but
ultimately very entertaining.
In A Deconstructed Heart, Mirza's wife
leaves him and Rehan is abandoned by his father when he is young. In A Change in the Weather, Imran leaves
Emily. In The Dust Beneath Her Feet,
Aarif leaves Safiyah, to find work in the north. I'm sensing a pattern here…
It's interesting how many times in
life we have to say goodbye. In my book and short stories, every physical move
is a sloughing off of an old life and an intended or unintended betrayal of
those who are left behind. I'm interested in exploring the repercussions that
occur when one person decides to change course in life.
The times in which I set both short
stories were ones of great upheaval in India: firstly the tragic circumstances
of Partition in India, and secondly, the incredible "brain drain"
that took place when Britain, America and Canada opened up work opportunities
for highly qualified Indian citizens. A whole generation of doctors and
engineers, like my parents, who could not brook the corruption that was rife
and the lack of job opportunity in India at that time, moved across the world
to start over in the West. They left with their blessing of their families, but
in the process, they left behind the comforts of a tight-knit community and the
chance to be close to their parents in their old age. In A Change in the Weather, I placed the character of Imran in a
difficult dilemma, torn between conflicting duties in two worlds.
What is
the central theme of your writing?
I would say that loss is at the
heart of my stories: loss of identity, homeland, family or love. With every
loss, however, comes some kind of rebirth: a new way of imagining oneself, a
new sense of connection or a relationship. My characters are often forced to
adapt and grow as a result of something or someone being taken from them. In A Deconstructed Heart, Mirza has to
adjust to the fact that his wife has left him and he realizes that his way of making
a life in England is just not working. His niece, Amal, has been cocooned in
her life in the north of England and feels pressured to join her parents at
their new home in India; Mirza's breakdown is the catalyst that shakes up the
lives of both characters and forces them to reassess things and figure out what
they really want. They have to reinterpret what family means to them when the
old traditional set-up has unraveled.
In my short stories, A Change in the Weather and The Dust Beneath Her Feet, the theme of loss
is centered around physical displacement, as characters travel far away and
loved ones are left behind. I'm interested in the immigration/emigration of the
Indian diaspora and how every transition has a profound effect on personal
identity and loyalties.
I'm looking forward to exploring
that idea as I continue the Purana Qila
Stories series. I will be writing about the children and grandchildren of
characters in my first two stories. Some of them will be second- or third-generation
immigrants to the West, and I want to explore how their lives have turned out, the
unexpected ways in which their fates overlap and what remains true to the
Indian side of their identity.
Contact information and links:
Shaheen received reviews for The Dust Beneath Her Feet at IRevuo and Curious Book Fans and for A Change in the Weather from Curious Book Fans
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