'Creativity has its own mysterious dynamic'

When a writer receives a major prize, curiosity naturally follows: what will they write next, and in whose voice? Hindi literature’s celebrated storyteller Geetanjali Shree, whose novel Ret Samadhi (translated by Daisy Rockwell with the title Tomb of Sand) won the International Booker Prize in 2022, has just released her first work since that triumph, Sah‑Sa. Seizing the moment, DHoS engaged her in a conversation about her craft and the world around her. Excerpts

Has winning the Booker Prize changed you, as a writer and as a person?

Any experience brings about change and hones your sensibility. Booker was huge, and it extended my world of literature across new borders, and that has brought much fulfilment and inspiration. Booker also brought me face-to-face with the avaricious market and the ugly side of competitiveness and jealousies that anyone’s success evokes. But all told, it has been a positive change for me as a writer and person, and the struggle now is to balance my new hectic public life with the solitude I had pre-Booker.

This novel was written after your Booker win. How much mental pressure did you feel while writing it, and did you approach it differently than before?

Creative pressure comes from within, not from outward successes such as the Booker win. A desire to unravel the world, an impulse to make coherent shapes from the tangled chaos life inherently is, a wish to dialogue with the self and the world, a curiosity to pull out hidden strands from your deepest recesses, and the willingness to face what gets revealed, these are the real pressures which fuel a writer and off she goes on paths unknown, seeking to give voice and words to inarticulations. Booker can enthuse you, but any tension it may create is superficial and not the source of your creativity. Another thing: creativity has its own mysterious dynamic, and you cannot consciously set a benchmark and decide the next work will be nothing less. Each time it is a fresh beginning, and you can only try your best and let that inner propeller move you aesthetically, powerfully, and hope the magic created will work again.

“Sah‑Sa” is being described as a love saga. Do you agree?

For sure. About losing the connection with loved ones and wondering where and when things changed. The fragility of love, and the imminence of loss in the inane rat-race of today. Or a tale of the ephemera of life and death. Sad and absurd. Or about the irony of our seeing, missing what is right in front and seeing it everywhere when it is not there. But readers, too, will define the story.

You stand at the intersection of history and literature. As a history student, you likely view the present through a unique lens. In your view, has the concept of love evolved in the new century?

There is no getting away from history. Least of all in these troubled times when society, history, and politics extend into every space, public and private. Studying history at university trained me for it formally, to an extent. Anyway, all experiences train our senses and are always imbued with history. But each one of us is an individual, even when we are a community, and not programmed robots, replicating each other. There are as many ways as there are writers, telling the same stories forever, each with her own unique stamp. Since Eve and Adam, love and its myriad threads are the same, but each love story is unique.

The novel includes an evening‑party scene with engaging dialogue, which feels stylistically distinct from the rest of the work. Was that written spontaneously or deliberately planned?

What may appear different from the rest in style is nonetheless part of the overall ‘choreography’ of a novel. Dissonances shape literature as much as flowing rhythms. As for ‘spontaneous’ or ‘deliberate’, in art and literature, every work is a performance, and therefore deliberate. Even the spontaneous is deliberate. Seemingly natural is artfully contrived, and vice versa, thereby readying a whole creative entity. A break in style, looking a trifle unnatural, leaves an impact. Its oddness gives it an unusual character and invites attention. Simple harmonious flow and obvious realism are not the only ways to bring about meaning.