Hope Amidst Turmoil
MARWAR | An interview with author and novelist Alka Saraogi. We speak to the recipient of the 2001 Sahitya Akademi Award for Hindi for her novel Kalikatha: Via Bypass to learn more of her work and life.
Tell our readers a little about your recent novel Jankidas Tejpal Mansion.
It’s the story of Jaigovind, alias Jaydeep, (the writer of the autobiographical novel in the novel), who comes back to a Naxalite-infested Calcutta after studying computer engineering in America in the Seventies. When the Metro tunnel is being dug up, Jankidas Tejpal Mansion, his home on Central Avenue starts tilting towards the road. The desire to save the mansion from being pulled down by the landlord leads Jaigovind to counter the nexus between capital, bureaucracy, politicians and the police. But eventually he is co-opted by the system as all forms of idealism in the great Indian democracy have invariably been.
How does the old crumbling Jankidas Tejpal Mansion form the crux of the story? Does it bring out the concepts of the new replacing the old and the old being neglected in a city of changes?
It’s an allegory of destruction, not only of Jankidas Tejpal Mansion, but of family, community, relationships, values, all our ideas of the sacred, the beautiful and so on. It’s the story of undermining roots and replacing the old heritage with new monstrosities without a sense of history. In a way, the tearing down is a validation of the moneyspeak culture that’s eroding all the four pillars of our democracy.
