Confession time for writers

By Lakshmi Balakrishnan

NEW DELHI, OCT. 14.

It was confession time alright, but one that will make a lot of book lovers in the Capital feel a little down. New Delhi, it seems, does not really figure in the favourite city list of Indo- Anglian writers.

Upamanyu ``English August'' Chatterjee calls it horrible, Radhika Jha of ``Smell'' fame believes that there is an indescribable odour that seems to cling on to her everytime she comes here, and writer M. Mukundan thinks the place is simply uninspiring for any writer.

The candid confessions came at a discussion ``The writer and the city'' organised by the French Embassy today. While television personality Sunit Tandon played the role of the mediator, the three authors, who have a city playing an important role in their novels, bared their heart on whether a place matters.

While all three seemed to agree that a city does play an important role in any novel, Chatterjee, who appeared a little ruffled when repeatedly asked if he would write on Delhi, was perhaps the one to come down the hardest on the Capital. ``I don't think anyone who has lived in Delhi will have anything nice to say about it. You have to be mad to actually like this place,'' was how he put it.

Radhika Jha, whose book was mainly set in Paris, seems to feel that Delhiites are increasingly becoming self-centered. ``Everyone seems to be moving away from relations in an attempt to gain individuality. While Paris is a place where one can loose himself, here it is just the opposite,'' Radhika said.

Malayalam writer Mukundan appeared to be the only one to have some soft corner for the Capital. ``Whether you like it or not, you just can't ignore it,'' he said; agreeing with other writers that it is not important to stay in a place to write about it.

On being asked to choose between Mumbai or Delhi for any of his possible future plots, Chatterjee was quick to select the former; citing its fast pace life as the reason. ``I don't think the city is important. It's which part of the city you live in that matters. I would love Delhi if I where to live in Sujan Singh Park or in Malabar Hills in Mumbai. But if it was someplace like Rohini, it would be almost impossible to think about a story,'' he remarked.

But it is not just the developing part of Delhi that the writers seemed to dislike. When asked if any of the three writers could write a story with Greater Kailash as the background, Radhika was the only one to take up the challenge. Chatterjee and Mukundan were just not interested.

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