I write two kinds of books — non-fiction and fiction. My non-fiction books look at human behaviour in our society through the lens of depth psychology. Thus, there have been books on Indian childhood, healing traditions, man-woman relationships, Hindu-Muslim conflict, and so on. Moving away from purely Indian issues, I have also edited books on topics where our psychological knowledge is still rudimentary, e.g dreams, psychic phenomena, death and creativity.
My five novels are pure fiction — if novels that are set in ancient, Mughal and the first half of 20th century India and have historical characters as protagonists can ever be purely fictional,” says Sudhir Kakar, India’s best known psychoanalyst and writer. His latest book The Devil Take Love with a Sanskrit poet Bhartrihari as the protagonist has just hit the bookshelves.
Asked if the life and times of a fictional Sanskrit poet is something that would interest a reader of our times, Sudhir says it is for the readers to judge, and further adds, “Besides being the fictional life story of a remarkable poet and the workings of his mind, the book also holds a mirror to our times as far as our attitude towards pleasure and the sensual lives is concerned. By showing how our ancestors lived — the good, the bad and the ugly — it makes us look at the way we live today and the moralities we take for granted.”
The book was written over two and a half years as the historical research and mores of 7th century India and the intricacies of Sanskrit poetics took a considerable time, he reveals and adds, “For the last 12 years, I have radically shrunk my psychoanalytic practice to not more than three to four clients at a time. Also, I have chosen to live in a village in Goa where there are no social distractions and thus I have ample time for writing.”
Kakar admits he is hardly a disciplined writer, mostly preferring a walk on the scenic Goan beaches or listening to music or reading rather than engaging in what he calls “the unnatural act of filling a blank piece of paper with words. But when I am caught up in writing or rather when the story has gripped me by the neck, I can spend hours absorbed in this activity without noticing the passage of time.”
Bhartrihari happened because after Kakar finished his last book, a psychological biography of young Tagore, he was gripped by the genre of biography. He says, “I was looking for a historical character that would excite my imagination. I remembered my father reciting a verse of Bhartrihari, when I was young. I also remember thinking that growing up in the United States, my yet-to-be-born grandson would lose touch with his Indian roots. In one sense, the book is a memorial to my long deceased father and a gift to my now one-year-old grandson.”
Kakar reminisces about how writing has interested him since his childhood days when he wrote a radio play, in Urdu, at the age of nine or 10. It was a bad one, he admits and laughs, “Thankfully, it was firmly turned down.” He goes on, “Perhaps, I also prefer writing to talking as my means of communication. Since I am very shy — one could even say that I am ‘socially challenged’ — and writing, a beloved fruit of solitude, is a way out of isolation.
Even as a youth in Germany (where he got his Master’s degree in business economics from Mannheim in Germany and doctorate in economics from Vienna before beginning his training in psychoanalysis at the Sigmund-Freud Institute in Frankfurt, Germany), I wrote and published short stories in German newspapers. Thankfully, again, the only existing copies are with me and I make sure nobody reads them! My interest in writing fiction is fuelled by its demand for much greater exercise of imagination than the analytic thinking required by non-fiction.”
The best part about writing about Bhartrihari was the research. “I especially enjoyed writing the first draft of my book. The many subsequent revisions were not that enjoyable however, the pleasure a reader takes in a book is directly proportional to the pains the writer took in bringing the book to its finished state.”
When asked what his next book is going to be about, he replies with a quizzical: “I wish I knew!”
