1. You have lived in Delhi, Chennai and Mumbai at different points in your life. How did these cities influence or shape your long writing career? Can you tell us if and how your time in a place corresponds to a particular phase in your writing journey?

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I have lived in Bangalore the longest as I did my schooling and college there and Bangalore is still my place to go to, to meet my old schoolmates and other friends. My parents were there till my father died in 1980 or so. The old Bangalore I grew up in, still figures in my stories. It is now a huge cosmopolitan city but it is the other Bangalore that is in my memories. I have not lived in Chennai in that sense except that I did my post-graduation there and later have been there for very short periods for my research. I have many writer and other friends there but it is not my city in that sense. Delhi again, is a city where I stayed for some 11 years for my studies and a short period of work. It is a city I never got used to after I left the JNU hostel. Not an easy city to live in. Mumbai is the city I spent my childhood till the age of 8 and later came to settle down in. It is also a city I feel most comfortable in and a city I relate to. 

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Where stories are concerned where one is at a given point of time really does not matter. It depends on the content of the story. Some stories have content that suits a particular city and works well in that city. While in Delhi I have written about Bangalore and while in Mumbai I have written about Delhi, places in Tamil Nadu and about cities in Rajasthan. My husband is from Rajasthan. Sometimes I write about a city like Birmingham, London or Chicago years after I have been there, sitting in Mumbai. The city you are in at a given time does not shape the story you may be writing at that particular time.    

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2. Across your books, even if the spotlight is on the characters, the backdrop of a cosmopolitan city is ever-present. We witness the streetscapes: birds chirping, announcements in trains, traffic, blaring music or the noise outside the window. The weaving of the temporal and spatial aspects of the city is deliberate isn’t it? What is the importance of writing the city into your stories?

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It is not possible to write a story without a spatial aspect. And I am basically a city person and when you are part of a city, without any deliberate attempt to do so, the city naturally becomes a part of the story being told.  

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3. You have been writing for over six decades both in English and Tamil. For our English readers, could you share more about the themes you have explored in your writing in Tamil literary journals? Who are your primary audiences and what has been the difference in the reception of your work in the two languages? 

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I have not written in English at all. I am a fiction writer in Tamil. I have been translated into English. So, there is no question of exploring different themes for Tamil literary journals. Your question seems to indicate that when one writes in Indian languages one explores themes that are different from those you may explore when you write in English. This is something I totally object to. And since I have only been translated into English the question of different audiences does not arise at all. Even if you are referring to my non-fiction writing, the question of using English for a different kind of audience does not arise at all.

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As for primary audiences I really don’t know who have been my readers before the social media came into prominence. My first short story collection got reviewed some ten years later.  Now,students, and those who do podcast and audio books and those who write in readers’ forums do write about my stories. Often, they read my stories totally wrongly but I have no problem with that. Some younger writers too stay in touch with me and review my stories and share their own stories with me. I don’t think there is anybody out there in Tamil Nadu going crazy about my stories exactly!

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As for the English readers, I think basically students and teachers of comparative literature read me as some of my stories are prescribed in the courses they do. 

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4. In the collection A Fish in a Dwindling Lake, the stories are written from the perspective of diverse female narrators. Some of the stories in the anthology are titled ‘Journey’ and chart the literal and metaphorical journeys women make despite familial and societal challenges. There is autonomy, a sense of abandonment and independence. What did you set out to achieve when you began writing these stories? 

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The Journey stories which I number 1,2, 3 and so on are just an effort to capture fleeting moments in life that happen to you or someone else. They are like brush strokes and then you add more to those moments and it becomes a canvas with different strokes of colour. Like painters call their paintings, Painting 1, 2 and so on, I also number these stories.  

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When one is writing, the motive is not to achieve something but to try and put into words both subtle and complex emotions that one encounters at a particular point. That encounter need not be that of the writer. It could be anybody’s that the writer has made her own. Such journeys must be happening to many but in the course of life forgotten. The Journey stories are a way of recalling the memories of such journeys which in a way, inform about elements in relationships that suddenly come alive or bring out different aspects of oneself that one did not know existed.     

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5. The Calf that Frolicked in the Hall is an intricate narrative that depicts hope, youthfulness, love and friendship among Kartik, Udayan and the narrator. It begins in the 1970s, but the story weaves the past and present. The shifting timelines, marked by change, the death of a friend, and rekindling of love, guides the reader through complex emotions. There's also a love letter - which the narrator writes as an admission of her love that is intercepted by the family and becomes public. Can you tell us more about the writing of this short story, which is among your most celebrated stories. 

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In the seventies there were many small groups in Tamil Nadu, including the one I was in, which were trying to run literary journals. The Calf that Frolicked in the Hall tries to bring the experiences of many such groups into one narrative. Those were days when young writers and those aspiring to be writers and poets wanted to come into their own, moving away from the literary icons of those days. There was a great sense of alienation and also a sense of frustration when one was struggling both in the family and the work place. This could be seen in all the groups for several reasons. Those were also times when woman-man relationships were being redefined. The story is an attempt to weave all those experiences together into a specific narrative. The characters are not imagined ones but they are also not specific people. Many different people become one character in a story and it has happened in this story also.      

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6. The characters in the short fiction in ‘’A Red-necked Green Bird” are ordinary people leading ordinary lives. But while each story might initially seem like a simple snapshot of everyday life, something startling eventually unravels— there are acts of rebellion, resistance, helplessness, even surrender. Where did these stories of such complex negotiations and extraordinary outcomes come from? 

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Actually Divya, all of us are dealing with complex negotiations in our lives without ever realising them! These stories are only windows that reveal what one often does not pause to think about. Once I was in a crowded bus and at Andheri station the last destination, when I got off, I saw a woman struggling with two heavy bags. I rushed to her and told her I could carry one for her. She looked at me and said, “But you look like you are my age!” For a moment I had forgotten my absolutely grey hair and my age! Life is full of such complex memory loss! Stories are synecdochical where parts become the whole and sometimes the whole becomes an expansion of just a part. 

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7. The women in your stories are persistent. Their defiance is not outlandish but there’s a sense of assurance in it. Like in the case of Thenmozhi, who cannot hear and resists the pressure from her father to speak. She writes in her essay “language is communication. It can happen without sound” (in A Red-necked Green Bird) or Sandhyabai (in A Meeting on the Andheri Overbridge) who has left home at sixty in search of independence. I am curious if their defiance is autobiographical. I don't mean in terms of plot lines, but in reflecting your values as a feminist writer?

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Let me begin by saying that one cannot create characters which are not in life just because one wants to “reflect values of a feminist writer.” If that was the writing one did, it will not be different from propagandist writing where ideologies are made to fit into characters. From my college days I have been involved with groups working with differently abled people and for a long time I have done reading for blind people. People close to me have in their families hearing impaired children and I have watched them grow into resilient, strong people. 

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Many years ago, in one of the groups where counselling used to be done there was a woman who was sixty or so, who came with the plea that she wanted to sell her flat in Mumbai and move to the village she came from.  Her family thought she was going mad. And once I saw a woman who looked like a middle-class person sitting on a neat sheet with a bag along with the beggars. She was not begging and when I returned in the evening she was still there. She ignored me when I tried to talk to her but when I told her it may not be safe for her to sit there in the night, she packed her things and got into an auto and went away. Sandhyabai character in the story is a combination of the two women. Women who defy havealways been there. They did not call themselves feminists but they have been more feminist than many of the feminists! Like my mother, about whom I have written often, just took me to Chennai and admitted me into a college of my choice, quietly defying my father, and who stood by me in my extremely idealistic Gandhian days when I wanted to be a school teacher in a small town. She also stood by her son when he wanted to marry a Christian and went to the church and shook hands with the priest. And she shocked all the purohits when she came to the cremation ground when my father died and sang a song that he liked. And then she came to Chennai where I was doing a field trip and learnt veena from a teacher because she wanted to excel in one particular aspect of Carnatic music that that particular teacher was adept in. When she was 90, she joined a Sanskrit class and used to sit and do class home work.   

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8. When you first started writing, was there any push back against strong female characters that make their own decisions about their bodies, love, life, sexuality, marriage and motherhood?

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Many before me had written stories with strong women characters. Our epics are full of strong women characters. But I came from a different generation of writers and while writing about sexuality in classical literature was okay, writing about it in the modern context and as lived experiences of many women, and in a different kind of language, was considered writing for shock value. There was the usual thing of linking the stories with the author’s personal life and there were some bad experiences of lampooning but since I lived in Delhi at the time, it did not affect me much. But the stories themselves were not taken seriously by many who were leading writers then. It was only 11 years after my first collection that I could bring out another collection. 

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9. In another interview, you suggested that you chose Ambai as your pen name because: “Ambai is the woman who becomes a man called Sikandi in Mahabharatha and takes revenge on Bhishma who she feels ruined her life. I liked the androgynous quality of Ambai and liked the idea of a borderless gender.” Can you elaborate on this. I also wanted to ask if your relationship with your pen name has changed over the years? Has it come to mean other things?

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I have spoken about this in an interview given to Kunal Ray. I had also spoken about another reason in that. Quoted here is a part of that interview which is relevant to your question.  “In the early ’50s, when I was about nine years old, the editor of the Tamil magazine Ananda Vikatan, Devan, wrote a novel titled Parvathiyin Sankalpam (Paravathi’s Resolution), which was serialised in the magazine. It was about a woman from a small town being ridiculed by a city-based English-educated husband and how she makes a name for herself as a writer, after he tells her to leave the house. She writes with the penname Ambai, as her name is Parvati and Ambai is another name in Tamil for Devi. Finally, the husband returns, but she has no desire to go back to her earlier life. I liked her rebellious nature. Later, the androgynous nature of the Ambai in the Mahabharatham, who changes her gender in her second birth where she is again born a woman, and seeks revenge on Bhishma, also appealed to me. So Ambai became my name at age 17 or 18.”

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About my pen name meaning other things now, not really. I like genders remaining undefined and like the fluidity of one becoming the other without any bodily controls or attributed qualities.  

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10. I often think about the ways in which fiction archives particular personal, social and political moments in time. As a writer but also as someone who has been deeply involved in the feminist movement, what according to you is the role of fiction in writing history?

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I don’t believe that fiction mirrors reality or that it should. Fiction as I always say, is about the relationship one has with what oneconsiders truth at a given point of time. I don’t think there are certain givens which remain unchanged. Change is constant. The role of fiction is to put into words in an abstract way or impressionistic way what one perceives around one. It is not “the truth.” In that sense its part in writing history is limited. History is and should be based on facts. Stories are like camera frames; there is a lot beyond the frames that are left out. It is good to be aware of that. 

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11. Can you tell us about your relationship with your translators, especially since you also write in English? What does your collaboration with them look like throughout the translation process?

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I don’t write fiction in English; only non-fiction. And English is not the language in which I think. My relationship with my translators has been one of collaboration. I don’t like to hand over my story and pretend that as an author I am dead. I like to engage in constant discussion so that the story does not become a consumable product for a western or English reader who does not have to make any effort to read a story that is originally in Tamil.

  

12. You have built the incredible Sound & Picture Archives for Research on Women (SPARROW). Can you share with us how it has evolved, where it stands today, and what do you envision for its future? 

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It has survived for more than 35 years which speaks for the many ways in which it has evolved.  “Built” is the right word because it was founded with the support of two incredible women who were considered grandmothers of Women’s Studies, Dr Neera Desai and Dr Maithreyi Krishna Raj.  Today we have a place of our own which we call The Nest. Over years we have done some very interesting workshops, women writers’ meets, publications, films and our newsletter now reads like a journal! We now have virtual archives, just the beginning of it. Our dream is to set up a physical museum of women’s history. We are desperately trying to get a corpus that would help us to keep going. To begin with we need a small amount of Rs. 5 crores. Why don’t you raise it for us?!