“As someone who has lived across languages and cultures, I find the quest to be accepted on one’s own terms to be the most painful. How does one evoke a sense of self in such an instance? ”
By Selma Carvalho
Reshma Ruia is a British-Asian award winning writer and poet. Her first novel, Something Black in the Lentil Soup was described in the Sunday Times as ‘a gem of straight-faced comedy.’ Her second novel A Mouthful of Silence was shortlisted for the SI Leeds Literary Prize. Reshma’s short stories and poetry have appeared in British and international journals and anthologies and commissioned for BBC Radio 4. Her debut poetry collection A Dinner Party in the Home Counties won the 2019 Word Masala Award. Reshma has a PhD and Masters in Creative Writing from Manchester University (Distinction) as well as a Bachelor, and a Masters Degree with Distinction from the London School of Economics. Born in India and brought up in Italy, her writing portrays the inherent preoccupations of those who possess a multiple sense of belonging. Here in conversation with Reshma, we discuss her newly released collection of short stories titled Mrs Pinto Drives to Happiness (Dahlia Press, 2021) exploring characters who are trying to heal from their wounded selves.
Selma Carvalho: I find myself in unsettled but oddly familiar territory in Reshma Ruia’s newly released collection Mrs Pinto Drives to Happiness (Dahlia Press, 2021) in which she explores the lonely rituals of dying. For watching death unfold in its protracted manner and the indignity it wreaks, is what those of us with ageing parents are confronted with every day. To see people you’ve known in their prime waste away, to see them lose all sense of their former selves, and to witness how very dehumanised their lives become, is a disturbing experience, and it is this watchfulness over loss of essential self, that Ruia articulates with poise and subtly in her work. ‘The Lodger’ for instance, opens with a reference to ageing: “Old age. It still catches them by surprise.” In ‘A Birthday Gift’, one of the most complex stories in the collection, Anita, the narrator tiptoes around her parents, observing their bodies yield to the humiliation of age. “Dad’s tablets are scattered on the plate, a kaleidoscope of red, blue and green. Each pill is an arrow pointing to a tired liver, an erratic bladder, an unreliable heart. I hand him a glass of water and watch him gulp them down.” Perhaps the trick that old age plays on all of us, is that it reinvents the past, makes us glorify its legacies, and erase the many uncomfortable memories that skim the surface of our consciousness. Eventually, Anita uncovers the uncomfortable truth about her parent’s young selves, ugly and irreparably flawed, a truth she’d blurred from memory, but must now confront and come to terms with. Death makes its presence felt in many nuanced ways throughout the book and weaves its thread of thematic unity. How did this collection come about and was it a conscious choice to build a collection around grief?
Reshma Ruia: The fourteen stories in this collection have grown organically over the years. Some of them have been listed for awards and commissioned by the BBC. Whilst they span continents and cultures, there are certain unifying themes, a kind of leit motif that lends them to being together. You have already alluded to ageing as a source of bewilderment and pain. There are other kinds of sorrows that bind this collection together—displacement, death, disappointment. The anxiety of shedding an old way of life and leaving behind the familiar. As someone who has lived across languages and cultures, I find the quest to be accepted on one’s own terms to be the most painful. How does one evoke a sense of self in such an instance?
Enjoy a reading by Reshma Ruia from the story, ‘Mrs Pinto Drives to Happiness.’
SC: What makes the collection such a joy to read, despite its dark undertones, are the many countries one encounters. The opening story is about Mrs Pinto, a protagonist who immediately endears herself to me on account of being Goan, and who, although not a revolutionary nonetheless revolts in her own timid fashion against everything that reduces her life to insignificance. Other continents and countries, readers will encounter are Africa, middle America, England of course, but also Japan and Korea. Ruia elevates her writing with the many details she furnishes about these settings. Describing Rwanda:“They step outside into the shimmer of the mid-day sun. Neel reaches for his sunglasses. The airport has expanded since he last saw it. In place of the prefabricated shed stands a steel and glass building. A large billboard leans against a wall. It shows a young white couple snuggling on a beach, sipping Coca Cola. ‘We guarantee happiness,’ the red tagline screams. Men in high-vis jackets scuttle around, holding ropes and ladders, trying to hoist the billboard up onto the airport roof. Dewdrops of sweat sparkle on their foreheads. The familiar sound of crickets chirping and the cawing of the Hadada Ibis rises from the trees across the barbed wire boundary fence. The heat floats up like mist from the asphalt car park, catches Neel’s throat, turning it dry.” Can you tell us a little about your influences and why the stories are set in such diverse countries? Are the descriptions drawn from lived experience or a gift for world building?
RR: I have had a fairly cosmopolitan upbringing. I was born in a small town in Northern India, Motihari, which incidentally is where George Orwell was born. My formative years were spent in Rome and I’ve lived in Paris, London and now Manchester. I visit America frequently as my immediate family is based there. Being fortunate enough to travel has opened my writerly eye not just to the obvious but to the more particular cultural tics and nuances that differentiate us from one another. What makes the world so fascinating is how varied it is and yet scratch the surface and go beyond the superficial and one finds the same yearning to connect, to understand and be understood.
SC: A number of stories in the collection address the issue of belonging. With immigrants as protagonists, Ruia draws out the isolation and awkwardness one experiences in alien lands. In ‘Cookery Lessons in Suburbia,’ an unlikely and brittle alliance is formed between an Indian and Korean woman. Lonely and alienated from everything around them, they become intrigued by each other’s cuisines. “There is fruit –crescent cut oranges and little wheels of kiwi looking dull and shrivelled. A sheen of brown covers everything. Little Verdi-Gris mould springs out of the congealed rice and the aroma that I had mistaken for soya sauce is the stench of decaying fish heads that nestle among the rice. Their dead eyes, the colour of sea washed stone, stare back at me.” In the story titled, ‘The Lodger,’ Ruia introduces us to an elderly woman in Nevada, America, and an Arab father, who bond over that most universal of griefs, the loss of a loved one. Another story, ‘Soul Sisters,’ is at once intriguing and disturbing, in which a divorced woman takes an unhealthy interest in a famous author. So convincing is the creation of this fictional author, (who I confess to googling) in many ways for me at least, it produced a heteronymic effect. Tell us why so many unmoored lives populate your stories, the immigrant, the refugee, the lonely and the vulnerable. These are beautifully observed lives: what sparks the interest and imagination that eventually comes together as a short story.
RR: I am instinctively drawn to the periphery rather than the centre. The characters who inhabit my stories are outsiders, they have lost their bearings because of circumstances or choices and must navigate a different kind of reality. Their lives run parallel to the mainstream happy-clappy lives lived by the majority. They lead a multi-layered existence with the past firmly entrenched within their present. It is this complexity that makes them interesting. It takes a lot of strength to leave the gravitational and emotional pull of the old and step into the new.
SC: The descriptions in the book are quite exquisite, the prose is measured but also poetic. From “Be a Soldier”: “The English countryside passes them – a streak of green verges, brown-hatted houses huddled close and blinking neon signs for burgers and sun beds. For much of the way, Mrs Chen dozes, her body folded in an awkward c-shape, arms folded across her chest, her cheek pressed against the grey tinted bus window.” Tell us a little bit about your creative process and what’s next in the pipeline for you.
RR: My creative process is very erratic to say the least. Life gets in the way, but that does not mean I’m not thinking about writing. An overheard conversation in a café, a trip to the supermarket, a newspaper article, all these can be a catalyst for a new story that ticks away quietly like a time bomb and one day, there is no stopping it. The words tumble out. But as you well know, writing is rewriting. The redrafting can take months, even years. A novel will follow Mrs Pinto Drives to Happiness. It will be published next year. It is set in Manchester and is about love, betrayal and belonging.
A lonely woman develops an unhealthy obsession with a celebrity writer. A young man attends the funeral of his gay lover. A feisty woman escapes a life of domestic drudgery. Reshma Ruia’s stories feature characters who confront ageing, love and loss with anger, passion and quiet defiance. They are in search of new beginnings and old certainties; everyday people whose lives oscillate between worlds – geographical, cultural, and emotional – in a constant flux, shaped and reshaped by an imperative to anchor to a map or a feeling. Mrs Pinto Drives to Happiness can be purchased at Dahlia Books.
The banner picture is by Darby P and downloaded from unsplash.com