As part of a book launch in Bangalore recently, a panel discussion had been organised to discuss the transformation of the city. One thread of the discussion led to what seemed to me at that point a specious question: 'Why has Bangalore not inspired fiction writers as much as Mumbai?' It sounded to me like: 'Why has Mumbai attracted more investment than Bangalore?'
The rudimentary blocks of the two questions did not appear dissimilar. The premium being attached to Mumbai in the discussion was that it was a metropolis and presented a wide variety of life to a writer and hence itself became a character, unlike Bangalore, which had only now reached an important bend. I did not participate in the discussion, but in the days that followed, the question engaged me in a slightly different fashion.
Far from listing reasons for the absence of 'creative capital' in Bangalore and its lack of glamour to walk the ramp in a writer's mind, I wondered to what extent a place makes a writer. Does he/she have to live amidst a physical ruffle to write insightfully about life? Or is a metaphorical stir in a quiet, secluded corner of the world enough to produce a masterpiece? Does a writer have to be exposed to a great deal of transient life - living in a city, running into a varied bunch of people and perhaps even partying a bit - to understand its nuances or can he keep his distance? Can he be a reflective recluse?
If we take even a cursory glance at the biographies of masters, we'll quickly arrive at the conclusion that there is a case to be made for both schools of thought. An interesting work can bloom in the din of the city as well as in the solitude of the country. A writer can be at home or in exile to write his tomes. Which one of those books you may prefer to read is a different question, but the fact is that both modes produce an intense volume of words. Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn and Boris Pasternak were Russians, but one wrote in exile and the other did not leave the confines of his home, not even to collect his Nobel prize.
A writer may choose his comfort zone. Some may have the luxury to sit amidst scenes that are familiar to write and those excommunicated from such a setting may work on the familiar agitation of their minds to produce. It also could be a matter of choice, some writers may want to roam the world to write and others may only let their imagination roam. To conjecture the process, setting and the influences of writing is an impossible assignment. At best you could only draw broad patterns that constantly beg revision.
I came across a paragraph in Orhan Pamuk's Istanbul - Memories and the City that throws light on what I am trying to suggest here:
"Conrad, Nabokov, Naipaul - these are writers known for having managed to migrate between languages, cultures and countries, continents, even civilisations. Their imaginations were fed by exile, a nourishment drawn not through roots but rootlessness. My imagination, however, requires that I stay in the same city, on the same street, in the same house, gazing at the same view. Istanbul's fate is my fate."
Similar would be the statement of many writers in my mother tongue - Kannada. The genius of 'Kuvempu' or K V Puttappa never required him to step out of Mysore and Malnad to write his books. His two novels (Kannuru Subbamma Heggadathi and Malegallalli Madumagalu) could any day count as classics of world literature, but Kuvempu was by and large a recluse. In an interview in February 1983 (Kuvempu, Collected Prose: Volume Two), he was specifically asked about this and his reply was characteristic: "There is no need to experience all that you write through your eyes."
Poet laureate D R Bendre sang within the confines of Dharwad, but he was gregarious. When he was once asked by a literary critic why he had turned down an invitation to attend an international poets' meet in Geneva, he said: "My fights with folks in Shukravarpet (a street in Dharwad) are not yet over, what do I do in Geneva?"
Shivaram Karanth too found peace in the little known corner of Saligrama, but yet roamed the world when it was not so easy to do so. For that matter R K Narayan too made good of the unhurried world that he saw around him in Mysore, which he called "a good-looking idiot". . Interestingly, none of these towns possess the vibrancy or variety of Mumbai, they are slow towns locked in leisure, yet, they inspired or anchored great literature.
It would be fruitful here to note that what perhaps is more important is not the place where the writer is situated and his method of interaction with the world, but the intensity with which he/she takes in an experience and refines it into literature. A mediocre writer may miss the nuance while staying in a historical milieu and the talented one may develop the most substantial exegesis to an ordinary happening, like so many of those commoving little chapters in Dostoevsky's Brothers Karmazov.
Whether a writer roams the world or stays at home, he essentially seeks the universal in a small world around him. But yet some worlds look bigger to us and others look small, some languages more important and others less, some cities bustling and some dull, but that has to do with history and politics and little with writing itself.
