The Interview : Shinie Antony

Rachna Singh, Editor, The Wise Owl in conversation with Shinie Antony, a writer, editor and columnist based in Bengaluru. Her novels include The Girl Who Couldn't Love, Can’t, and Eden Abandoned: The Story of Lilith. Her anthologies include Boo, Why We Don’t Talk, An Unsuitable Woman. Founder of the Bangalore Literature Festival and director of the Bengaluru Poetry Festival, her story A Dog’s Death won the Commonwealth Short Story Asia prize in 2002. A collection of essays co-edited with AT Boyle, exObjects: The Art of Holding On, Letting Go, will be out this year.

Thank you so much Shinie for taking time out to speak with The Wise Owl. We are delighted.

RS: You have written several novels as well as short stories and essays. You also write regular columns for Indian dailies. For the benefit of our readers, please tell us how your journey as a writer began? Who or what were the creative mentors and triggers in your life?

SA: I have lived (and studied/worked) in Mumbai, Delhi, Kochi and Bengaluru, as my dad was in the defence. Like most writers, I read a lot and loved languages. I remember particular teachers and friends who made me passionate about this book or that. Thankfully, my parents were too preoccupied to monitor what I read. I remember reading Thomas Hardy and understanding his books only a decade later. Poetry too, I am sure, I understood lesser than I should. But the electric charge I got from just reading (even what I could not grasp)! Any book, I would read anything back then.

RS: You won the Commonwealth Broadcasting Association Short Story prize and I have heard you say often that your genre of choice is short story and that even your novels emerge from short stories. Tell us a little about what makes you gravitate towards short story writing?

SA: To me a short story contains with it a single arc, an ebb and flow all its own. Obviously, it is not written in one go, and that’s the fun part. To follow a complex piece of prose into its rhythm and mood, all the while counting the number of words… I have always felt short stories are poetry and maths.

RS: The protagonists of your novels and short stories are mostly women. In fact, your latest novel Eden Abandoned, is the story of Lilith, the first women on Earth, who becomes a she-demon, when she is replaced by the more amenable Eve. So the women that people your works are strong, unconventional women. Tell us a little about why your novels/stories are stories of unconventional women who do not hesitate to challenge the status quo.

SA: I have reached that stage in life when I am aware, despite a privileged upbringing and doting dad, that everything is less than equal between the genders. And partly I feel at fault. Like I could have opened my eyes earlier, done something, raised my voice. Better to convert a lifelong passivity into specific observations scattered among fictional characters than cart it around unto death. I have known some exceptional women, women of compassion and empathy – I feel morally bound to explore my emotions regarding all that I absorbed about generosity and resistance. Women are dealt an unfair hand, like they are somehow secondary, but they manage to routinely stun. How do they do that?

RS:  Two of your books Eden Abandoned: The Story of Lilith and Can’t have been released almost simultaneously. Tell us a little about these books and the inspiration or creative trigger behind these very different books. Switching between the characters of Nena of Can’t and Lilith of Eden Abandoned would not have been easy. How did you manage this fine balancing act?

SA: Actually, I wrote Can’t pre-Covid, it just happened to come out now. Can’t is me getting all ambitious about plot and ending. I started to think, okay, so I have this woman, she is dying, and she makes a new friend who is the opposite of all she is in every way, he is a young introvert poet. What will they do together, what will they tell each other, because they sure as hell won’t get romantic. That was it, I wanted to weed out the boy-girl stuff and see where a much older woman and an unformed male will go. Eden Abandoned: The Story of Lilith, on the other hand, was like automatic writing. I would try to sleep early, else around midnight this woman would start talking urgently to me. Lilith was forceful and articulate, with lots to say…

RS: Your books do not follow the conventional format of writing novels. For instance Eden Abandoned starts from Chapter 13 and moves backwards to Chapter zero. Our readers would be curious to know about your creative process when writing. Do tell us a little about it.

SA: Since Lilith was telling her story backwards, I thought it only fair that I relay it that way too.

RS: You are not only a writer but also an editor ( I believe you were Chetan Bhagat’s editor). Tell us a little about the challenges faced as an editor.

SA: I love editing fiction. Writing I am iffy about, it is a complicated joy, you never know where you stand as a writer. But editing absolves you of the burden of creation. You are walking in someone else’s shoes, on a road already walked. You are trusted enough to be allowed entry into another world. It is someone else’s story, that is the seduction.

RS: You are the Founder of the Bangalore Literature Festival as well as the Director of the Bengaluru Poetry Festival. They are both great initiatives. Tell us how you began on this journey of nurturing literature and poetry. Share with us the challenges faced in this journey.

SA: BLF is community-funded and unbelievably into its 13th year now, and it has been a catch-your-breath experience throughout, a complete respiratory upheaval! Both festivals have a spiritual element to them – the books of course, and also the authors, with their on-stage and off-stage dynamics.

RS: You wear several hats. You are a writer, columnist and editor. How to you juggle so many different roles?

SA: When you put it like that it sounds a lot. But you know how it is, we do only one thing at a time, and at that time we are not fully present in the other roles. For example, we hear about a good wife and a good mother, but I hope for the woman’s sake it doesn’t have to be simultaneously.

RS: Our readers would also be very eager for quick tips from you on how to hone their craft as a writer.

SA: Read, read, read. Really, nothing can replace reading.

Thank you so much Shinie, for taking time out to speak with The Wise Owl. We wish you the best in all your literary and creative pursuits.