Selma Carvalho in conversation with mona dash
I imagine you come here with expectations. You want to hear tales of the sari, of the mango, of cow hooves kicking up a dry dust you will want to wipe off with a scented handkerchief. You want to hear of lavender, of turmeric, of jasmine soothing the hot summer evening in a distant tropical country. You expect to be told stories of a certain woman, a certain man, in a certain way. You want to feel, but nothing beyond the ordinary, nothing you cannot stomach along with a thick steak, the knife a tad bloody from the rare meat. Prepare then to be annoyed. (Let us Look Elsewhere)
So begins our journey, with a touch of trepidation, into Mona Dash’s collection of short stories, titled, Let us Look Elsewhere, (Dalia Books UK, 2021). What sensual feasts await the reader? Imagine Anais Nin, imagine the writings of women, bold and untrammelled, indulgent of sexual desire, unrestrained by a moralising gaze, yet conscious of the constraints of marriage and motherhood. An immigrant writer in Britain, has to articulate the experience of a generation, individual and yet speaking to the collective. Often, it is the immigrant experience we write of, but what if, there were other experiences we wanted to lay claim to as writers of colour, what if we were defined by a multitude of experiences, a confluence of thoughts and an abundance of conflicted emotions. Here in conversation with Mona Dash, I find out more about Mona’s writing and her creative thought process.
Dhenkanal, Odisha, India, 1938
The river grew wide at this time of the year, increasing in girth every passing day. Baji liked to sit on the banks and watch her swell. (Boatboy)
Selma Carvalho: Stories in this collection span several countries but a couple are set in Odisha or have a reference made to Odisha, such as ‘Boatboy’ shortlisted for the Asian Writer2017. Tell us about your formative years and early influences which have shaped your writing?
Mona Dash: I am from Odisha, which is a coastal state in the east of India. I was born and brought up there. Books, both academic and fiction dominated my childhood. While I had a happy childhood, I was always seized by a desire to be elsewhere, to travel, to see more than where I was. In fact, after completing an MBA in university, I wanted to find a job in an industry that allowed me to travel! In those days, it wasn’t this (Pre covid!) interconnected world where you can jump into a plane and go anywhere, and one was limited with finances, visas and so on. Living in London allows for a different perspective, and hence a lot of my stories are set in various countries. But I do also want to write about my roots, which are definitely in Odisha. The other reason I mention Odisha in my stories, is because it not as well known as other parts of India, like say Punjab or Bengal or Kerala or Goa, and has never featured well enough in international literature. It’s my small way of giving back.
BoatBoy is a somewhat special story, since it is based on a true historical event though it is fictionalised, and it is also a very rural setting. I had to research some aspects, and this story is very specific to Odisha.
Foxes, rabbits, minks; tool sharpened, inserted into the skin like a needle, taken off like a sock, skin, discarded like clothes. (The Sense of Skin)
SC: The first story in this collection, ‘The Sense of Skin,’ a finalist for the Bristol Short Story Prize 2019, and first published in the BSSP anthology, is set partly in Finland and India. It’s a beautiful, sinister tale of cold Nordic winters, fur farming, and the solitary nature of this existence which longs to reach out and touch another human being, however distant and alien. Can you tell us how this story formed in your consciousness, how you wove two disparate cultures together, reminding us once again, that there is something innately universal stirring in all of us.
MD: This story came about at a work lunch meeting in London, where the customer casually mentioned how she had travelled on an Indian train, and how she met interesting people, like an animal skinner. An image of the completely contrasting worlds just flashed across my eyes, and I used it as a basis of the story. I didn’t ask her anything more about it, so I can clarify it is completely fictional! I used the obvious contrasts between a cold country in the Arctic region like Finland, and a hot, tropical country like India, to bring out the two very different sides of Erno, the animal skinner. It is meant to be primal, this need to feel skin, to feel wanted, to be loved in spite of whatever and whoever you might be. While he loves being an animal skinner, he also knows he is being judged for it, and he needs to find something in himself to hold on to, to make sense of this disconnect in himself.
After twenty years of living in a country where the sun rose and set at wildly different times depending on the season, and the clocks were changed to ensure a semblance of light when people woke from deeply dark nights, Renuka decided she must acquire a pukka accent. An English accent. (Natural Accents)
SC: ‘Natural Accents,’ was shortlisted for the Leicester Writes Short Story Prize 2018, and first published in the LWSSP anthology. It’s an incisive enquiry into our innate human desire to belong, to assimilate, to not be conspicuous in the face of scrutiny and stereotype. From V. S. Naipaul’s novel The Mimic Men, emerges our understanding of fragmented postcolonial identities, and the strange desire of mimicry on the one hand and asserting independence on the other. Tell us what elements in your own life inspired you to write this story.
MD: So while I grew up in a small sleepy town in India, I went to an English medium Convent school, and learnt English from the age of three or so when I went to nursery. Like so many of us in India, I grew up reading books about England, and so many ever English authors. When I came to England, I didn’t feel out of place therefore, as there was such a strong connection with literature. I could visit all the places one had read about. I could understand the language; for me the sense of foreignness has been more entwined with language, rather than the colour of skin. Yet I could see I was pronouncing words differently. When I said I am a writer, sometimes I was asked, ‘Do you write in English?’ and to my answer of yes only in English, I have sensed surprise. I did have a nanny, who like Meghan, was surprised I ‘seemed to know English so well, though I grew up in India.’ I wanted to explore language as a sense of belonging. I wanted to explore the insecurity of someone who is part of the fabric, yet is not recognised as being so. And by trying to augment herself, and assimilate perfectly, what is she giving up? Being set in London, which is in itself a literal melting pot, the question is, who is the one who belongs more than the other?
You want alcoves and nooks. Instead of the smooth neutral walls, you want bumpy recesses. You want to hang threads of garlic and pans from a trellis in a large stone-floored kitchen. You want to bake cakes, stir soups, in a kitchen with warm burnt-orange walls. You want to dream, to morph into someone else. (Secrets)
SC: The story ‘Secrets’ was longlisted for the Bath Short Story Prize 2019. Like so much of your writing, this story evokes the interior lives of women, articulated elsewhere by writers such as Anais Nin and Daphne du Maurier, who struggled to reconcile the role of wife, the well-behaved woman with those uncontrollable desires of their sexuality. This is almost a leitmotif in your writing, stilted marriages, dangerous liaisons, callous lovers, doomed love affairs and abandoned hopes. Do you see an exploration of female desire as being central to your writing?
MD: That’s some great company to be in, thank you! I think passion and desire is core to every human being; having the drive, a hunger to achieve, an urge to be creative, to seek yourself. Women more often than not, tend to lose it as they grow older, partly due to society itself which lays stake about what good women should do or should not do, and partly because women naturally veer toward becoming nurturers and care-givers. While I have every respect for motherhood, (in fact my memoir is about my journey to motherhood) I do also believe that within the construct of marriage, family and children, the ‘core woman’ is almost invisible at times. If you look at Indian marriages for example, the expectation from the woman to ‘leave her own family’ and suddenly become so many things to the husband’s family, is so unfair a concept. The women in my stories are trying to find themselves, often through love, intimacy, they are often rebelling against the spaces they have been forced into. This exploration into the complexity of a woman’s mind and her often ambiguous secret world is of interest to me.
It is November. Rukmini wakes at four in the morning just like she did at home in India. Except here, in her daughter’s home in England, the darkness lies deep and heavy. By the time the sun breaks through the greyness, and shines in its typical muted manner, Rukmini has done her pujas, showered, cooked the breakfast, and read a few pages of the Gita. (Formations)
SC: The story ‘Formations’ won the Asian Writer 2018 prize. This story juggles the ambivalence an Indian woman feels—a juxtaposition of a new modernity against traditional expectations. What are your thoughts about British-Asian women, how are they coping with the many demands placed on them by the weight of family tradition while living in a society which strives for gender equality.
MD: The two women in this story, the mother and daughter are very different characters. The mother is quite secure in her tradition and belief, but the daughter is ambivalent, at one point imaging herself to be successful, independent, free, and on the other, wanting to be part of the core family structure, to adhere to what is expected of her. I think one has to make a distinction, since the first-generation British Asians normally revel in the relative freedom a country like the U.K provides, even if it is in the small things like the clothes one wears, the spaces one can inhabit, travelling alone, being out late etc. Being away from the community, they have less of answering to do. But with the British Asians who have grown up here, it does seem they are still quite bound by the community’s tradition, of long ago. Typically what happens is the older generations who migrated hold on to the value system they grew up with, forgetting a country like India is always evolving and changing. I feel that British Asian women need therefore to consciously take a stand, they need to know that breaking out of conforming to tradition is not tantamount to moving away from their culture and roots. Since their counterpart in India, especially in the cities and large towns, have moved on and are probably more liberated or are at least trying to be, in a society construct that is not fully supporting them. But they are striving! Yet, here when the society structure itself is meant to foster gender equality, it could be so much easier for a community to take advantage of it, rather than feeling it is moving away from their own beliefs.
SC: Your writing is so exquisite, filled with imagery and poetic-prose. Often, I had to stop reading and dwell on a sentence to take in its beauty. How did you come to adopt this style?
MD: Thank you, that is a lovely statement coming from a writer like yourself! Again it was not something I consciously thought of developing. Perhaps, it has been more organic, after a lot of reading and writing. For example, I prefer to read literary fiction and writing which is not peppered with too much bombast and is trying to be clever. I like multi-layered nuanced stories, where words have a life of their own, and one very quickly sinks into a deeper level of emotion.
My writing journey, started with writing poetry, so the style of having shorter, simple sentences, has stayed with me. Imagery is key to poetry as well. I have a visual memory, in the sense that I remember things like colour, smell, the sense of the place. So that creeps into my writing I guess!
SC: You’ve had a memoir published, A Roll of the Dice (Linen Press UK), two poetry collections, a novel, and now a short story collection. What are you currently working on?
MD: I have a novel languishing on my laptop. The Rise of the Setting Sun was longlisted for the Novel London 2020 and got a commendable mention in the TLC Free Read competition 2020. Sometimes I feel I have a duty to it, and need to find it a home soon. I am also working on another novel, though it is in early stages. Then there are some poems waiting to be compiled into a collection…there’s a lot to do!
Mona Dash is the author of A Roll of the Dice, which won the Eyelands Book Award 2020. Her other published works include two collections of poetry, A Certain Way and Dawn-drops, and a novel Untamed Heart. She has been listed in several competitions, and published widely in journals and anthologies. She lives in London. Visit her website here.
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Let Us Look Elsewhere is forthcoming on 19th June, 2020.
Pre-orders will open soon.