AG: Tell us what drew you to a collection of short stories as a choice for your first book? Was it difficult to get a collection of stories published?

VM: It wasn’t a conscious decision. I wrote the stories one at a time. When the stories began to get accepted for publication by journals and magazines, a collection seemed like a possibility. I went ahead and wrote some more stories so I would have enough material to put together a collection.
The short story is an extremely powerful medium. I think its intensity is unmatched by any other literary form. It lets you flex your writing muscles, keeps you on your toes, and turns you into an expert miniaturist. Unfortunately, literary agents and publishers are wary of it. There is a fear (myth?) that short fiction is hard to market. The novel is readily welcomed. It was hard work finding an agent who would take a chance on the collection but after an initial round of rejections, I did find one who loved the stories. After signing up with her, a publisher came on board in about six months. The journey was tough but it was worth the effort.

AG: Your stories have an uncanny theme of modernity and its pitfalls—would you say that they cover modern life in its unfulfilled moments, desires, and promises? In the same light, tell us a little more on the genesis of such an extraordinary collection of stories on modern India.

VM: The stories are set in contemporary, urban India and they try to capture the complexity of modern living. Cities – their manic energy, their hunger and appetites, their brashness and beauty – exert a powerful pull on my imagination. The fascinating thing about cities is that you can’t pin them down. A city cannot be contained because you can never really grasp it in its entirety. It is a fluid entity. It has many faces, many guises, many secrets. The deeper you get under its skin, the more stories you discover. I’ve lived in many cities. I currently live in Delhi – a sprawling, ever expanding metropolis. I just have to keep my eyes and ears open and stories come to me.

AG: I want to focus particularly on the title story of the collection, “A Happy Place”—There’s a clash of cultures and classes in a unique setting of Delhi’s posh Defence Colony, as Delhites call it, the ‘Def Calls’—Is it this clash of identities, classes, and rural and urban Delhi that makes it the focal point of the collection?

VM: Delhi is the site of many ferocious clashes. Like in other Indian cities, darkness lurks under its slick veneer of modernity. “Modern” India is a strange beast. It craves change and resists it with equal gusto. The cliché applies: the more things change, the more they stay the same. The air is rife with the tension this tug of war creates. Delhi is no exception. It is a complex and infinitely puzzling place. To not make it the focal point of my fiction is hard. I think the only way to deal with it is to write about it. Otherwise the chances of going insane are pretty high!

AG: Tell our readers a bit about your writing history—what made you a writer, your writing habits, and what kinds of literary influences do you have, if you could name a few.

VM: I’ve always been a voracious reader. I used to read anything I could get my hands on when I was a child. Stories, poems, fiction, non-fiction – everything was grist for the mill. The desire to be a writer sprung from this. From reading a story to writing one – the progression came naturally. I choose to write fiction because it gives me the freedom to live many lives (through my characters), to question accepted truths, to explore the infinite possibilities of language, and to spin a good yarn to keep my readers entertained.
I am not a creature of habit. So I can’t honestly say that I have a set writing routine. But I do try and get some writing done every day. Otherwise the day feels incomplete and I lose my bearings.
I think everything I read influences me. Reading good writing is always an inspiration. Bad writing too, in its own way, teaches you what to avoid. My list of favorite authors is long - Michael Ondaatje, Margaret Atwood, Lionel Shriver, Deborah Levy, Arundhati Roy, Vikram Seth, Ann Patchett, Ali Smith, Nadeem Aslam, Mohammed Hanif. I could go on… Reading good poetry, listening to music, and watching films – these are vital to my writing life as well.

AG: The other story that really piqued my attention in the book is “Other Lives”—the encounter of two women from two very different backdrops, each attempting to understand the “othered” life is a very interesting setting that ends with a spur of a moment of bonding between the woman cop and the rich, elite Mrs. Kapoor. Are you consciously trying to present a case of dynamic moments of hybridity in the precarity of modern life, between people from severed worlds, two separate worlds trying to conjoin in the chaos of modern India?

VM: Modern India, and by extension any modern city, is a fractured space. Though a city is by definition a cosmopolitan place, it contains disparate worlds that can never become one. The encounters between these worlds have their own dynamic. There is potential for comedy, drama, and bitter tragedy. Sometimes these encounters lead to moments of epiphany, which create nuanced insights into the “other”. Often they end in violent confrontation. In “Other Lives”, I’ve tried my hand at the former. I could just as easily write another story in which things swing in the opposite direction.

AG: There is one story different from the rest in the collection (“A Quiet Day”), which is set in Kashmir, about a woman protagonist, a potential suicide bomber, who attempts to undertake a revenge plot for her wronged past by the Indian Army—it is perhaps the only and most politically charged narrative in the entire collection. What made you depart from the setting of urban Delhi and its surroundings, into the militarized space of Kashmir?

VM: “A Quiet Day” is an overtly politically charged story that features in the collection. I was inspired to write it after I visited Kashmir a few times and made some friends there. Travelling to Kashmir doesn’t make me an expert on the political situation of course. What compelled me to write the story was the need to paint a picture of the human cost of militarizing Kashmir. You read newspaper reports about clashes between the army and civilians, you read jingoistic nonsense in the papers about Indo-Pak relations. You are inundated with facts and figures on a daily basis and yet you feel nothing because you have no real sense of the loss the people who live there have to bear. Kashmir is one of the most beautiful places on earth. But the damage geopolitics has done to it is unforgivable. “A Quiet Day” is seeped in the sorrow and anger of ordinary Kashmiris. It was written to give them a voice.

AG: In your stories one finds an emptiness in modern life and its chaos that often ends the narrative in an existential lacunae. Would you say that the stories present a critique of modernity in 21st century India?

VM: Isn’t chaos and emptiness part of modern life across the planet? I wouldn’t call the stories in the collection a "critique" of modernity in India. I am just holding up a mirror to the world around us. There is no judgment involved and the intention is definitely not to hark back to the “good old days” when life was simple and beautiful. Life was always a chaotic business and anyone who says otherwise is lying to you!
I have a soft spot for stories (and films) that are open-ended. I am never satisfied with ends that are primly wrapped up. They seem forced to me. There is no neat resolution to anything really. If you do create a narrative with one, you are doing your reader a disservice by imposing a resolution. Narratives that end in existential lacunae pose interesting questions. I like to think that they inspire readers to search for answers.

AG: This question is a kind of a tagging back to the previous one—the story “Orange County Blues” that depicts a clash between an emerging modern Gurgaon against the old hilly town of Dharamsala—there is a line that is striking— “Orange County is home to people with masked faces and veiled eyes, a crowd dressed up for a stage on which the spotlight shines all the time” – Would you say that this holds as a larger rubric and prism for contemporary, urban India?

VM: In a certain sense, yes. There is a set of people in contemporary India who are blind to reality. Their lifestyle (publicized by big media with nauseating enthusiasm) can fool you into you thinking that they live on a planet far far away. The laws of the land don’t apply to them though they are citizens of this country. Though they live in a third world country, they are oblivious to the glaring poverty around. Why else would you build penthouses and buy private jets while a vast chunk of the population cannot afford to eat three meals a day? This sort of disconnect is absurd.

AG: This question is specifically about your writing style—the point of views in your narratives are extremely varying, ranging from a maid servant working for a consulate family to a Sikh man struggling to fit in, a wealthy, bored socialite in Delhi arrested for being a kleptomaniac, to a female radical from Kashmir or a failed male scriptwriter from the Bombay film industry or sometimes an omniscient narrator interweaving through a crop of dissimilar characters like in “Baby Baby” and others—how conscious are you of creating such diverse characters from extremely mottled backdrops, identities and classes and was it a difficult thing to do so?

VM: It is always a difficult task to speak in the voice another person (character). You have to know the character inside out before giving her/him a voice or else you’ll put your readers to sleep and give the critics ammunition. But I do enjoy the challenge. The voices are integral to individual stories. Since the stories feature characters from different classes, backdrops, and identities, it was important to give them authentic voices. I didn’t start out by telling myself that I must feature characters from different backgrounds. They just came to life as I wrote the stories. I think it helped that I didn’t have a mandate. If I had been consciously trying to bring in diversity, that would have made the process of fleshing out the characters harder for me.

AG: If you are asked to pick a favorite from this collection, what story would it be and why?

VM: They are all favorites! But since you ask, I’d say “Skin”. I really enjoyed writing it. The main characters in it are close to my heart. To use a kooky new age term – they are my “spirit animals”. Also, I’ve got many enthusiastic reader responses to that story. That definitely makes it very dear to me.

AG: Tell us about your current writing projects and what you are working on next? What other genre of writing do you delve in?

VM: I am working on a novel right now. It has two stories set in two different timelines – one in 1950s Tibet, the other in contemporary Delhi. The two intertwine at a crucial point in the narrative. There was a lot of research to be done before I started work on it. Though it is a work of fiction, I had to get my facts about 1950s Tibet straight.
An idea for a collection of short stories is brewing in my head. These are set in Delhi as well and the central character is a Londoner who has recently moved to India. The clash of civilizations is a treasure trove. I see excellent potential there!
There are times when I feel tempted to write a play. Some story ideas seem better suited for the stage. I’m not sure I have the required skill for it, but I may give it a try soon.