Not writing books to win awards: Manu Joseph

Bengaluru: Manu Joseph journalism may have placed him permanently in the eye of the liberal storm, which he deals with in the only way he knows how - a sense of humour. His unflinching rendition of one of the racier excerpts from his latest novel, Miss Laila: Armed and Dangerous, caused an uproar at the Bangalore Literature Festival. His audience, clearly caught in a tussle between their sense of ethics and their sense of humour, finally allowed the latter to prevail.  

"Whatever goodwill I get through my writing, I squander in my journalism," he laughs later." This good-natured shunning of his critics - he admits freely that Miss Laila... might not win him any accolades - is balanced by his total surrender to what he calls "the justice of the market." Being Manu Joseph undoubtedly has its perks and he can, one supposes, afford not to care too much in a world where "truth needs to be fabricated." It might, perhaps, be doing him an injustice, for to Joseph, the ability to "take on one's friends" is the ultimate mark of courage.

Growing up, Manu Joseph found himself relegated to the fringes of the intellectual elite, the result of his economic and social circumstances. By the time he arrived at a place where he “was wearing the right shoes and the right shirt”, he’d learned to love his solitude. In his latest offering, the riotous page-turner, ‘Miss Laila: Armed and Dangerous’, he takes on, through science student-slash-gadfly Akhila, the "liberal eggheads", politicians with vastly inflated opinions of their own importance, the "Sangh Reich" and men who are feminists with caustic insight and a sense of humour that manages to confuse a society besotted with taking offence.  He talks to Darshana Ramdev about myths like ‘happiness’ or ‘the Ultimate Truth’, of a society held captive by language, as well as the importance of ‘standing akimbo and facing the world” at a time when ‘pain has become art’.

You just talked about your book on a panel about crime fiction. How do you feel about this classification?
I like any classification! I'm not able to classify myself and I know how important a label is. I'm not afraid of anything which is ‘low brow, I have a lot of faith in the reader. Of course, there are people who might approach it with certain expectations and find themselves disappointed, but I don't care anyway about being discovered by the more sophisticated readers. I've stopped reading literary fiction over the last year or so.
 
What is this literary fiction, anyway?
Anything which is artistic today is a red flag for me - I get a sense that it's controlled by a small group of people; that's what art means to me today. Of course, art also means many great things - it's powerful, full of beauty and the only thing which has space for weakness and misery. Nobody else has time for it. Even so, it is controlled and I don't like that corruption. I prefer the justice of the market, which I have received. The Illicit Happiness of Other People didn't win any awards, it was the readers who made it a bigger commercial success than Serious Men.
 
Miss Laila... is significantly different from your other work – it’s racy, topical and provides more fodder perhaps, to the masses, who are usually itching for a good squabble. Do you feel like the essence of your achievements as a storyteller is diluted by the political innuendos on which the average reader might focus?
The core of the book is so serious and heavy, unlike The Illicit  Happiness of Other People, where the story itself was the message. In Miss Laila, however, I had many strands that were equally important. As a journalist, it's easy to forget that I'm also a storyteller, existing without any commentary. In fact, I don't even like the word. To be told that I have made one makes me uncomfortable, even if it is meant as a compliment. I feel somehow that I have failed in my basic objective, which is to tell a story.
People are seeing the political side of the book, which is good, but to me, it's the best story I've ever written in terms of internal structure.
 
You’ve been in journalism for a long time, which comes with parameters of its own. Storytelling is far more liberating, in that sense. How do you draw the line between Manu the journalist and Manu the storyteller?
I found my way to journalism because it was the only thing that would pay me at that point. If someone had paid me to write for film, then I wouldn't have been a journalist at all. Storytelling was what I was about, but that didn't pay, of course! So journalism it was. I liked some things about it and hated others.
I like to say I win a lot of goodwill through my novels, which I squander in my journalism.
 
Would you say it’s something we’re fascinated by, as a society, the need to put things – and people – in boxes? You wrote, in your column recently, about the myth of happiness...
This actually leads me to one of the themes in my novels, which I've never formally spoken about. We are misled by language. I deal with this, in a small way in The Illicit Happiness of Other People: How it creates concepts and how we allow ourselves to be entrapped by these ideas. I would, for instance, dispute words like 'happiness', where we are egged on to believe there is something wrong with us because perhaps we're feeling serious or poignant.

Phrases like, 'the pursuit of happiness' or 'the search for truth' - they're all wrong. Truth has to be fabricated — the meaning of life has to be invented. But what is this search for truth? People do yoga or go up a mountain or backpack around the world - these are the images of ‘searching’. Labels are important to the world because we're used to them. We don't see language as something that we need liberation from, we look at it as something that should colonise us more.

Mainstream discourse has grow increasingly moralistic in a society besotted with taking offence. How does this play out in art?
Problems are seen as sacred. Art has always stemmed from pain, it pushes us to transform that suffering into a thing of beauty. But now, we're using our pain and creating more pain. Now, the pain is the art. Yes, pain is at the core of art.  But today, it's "I have pain" and that becomes the art. There are campaigns on social media, for instance, that reflect it. You can't oppose them either, because the retribution is very severe.

I feel, more than anything, that what really needs to be promoted is not ethics or empathy. It's courage. People are taught the meaning of courage - don't keep quiet, take on your friends. That's why I always say that ultimate courage is taking on your friends. It can isolate you and it's horrible.

Have you ever felt that way? Isolated for taking on your friends?
I was isolated anyway, upto the age of 17. My social and economic circumstances didn't allow me access to certain circles and I was so arrogant that when they were ready to let me, I refused to go. When I reached a position where I was wearing the right shirt and the right shoes, it was too late for I had learned to enjoy that isolation.

Belonging to a group is a very special kind of existence in a society. I have always got it through love: the only sense of belonging I had through my 20s was through my lovers. When you don't have friends, the only friendships you're given are your lovers.

Which brings us to Akhila, your protagonist in Miss Laila: Armed and Dangerous...
Akhila is someone I would have been crazy about at a different age. Intellectually, she's someone who feels that the world is constantly performing and you need to disrupt that performance to extract a truth. That's her game and it comforts her. She wants to understand life without a celebration of weakness, which is the core of her personality. ‘I'm not a bad person, I care about many things but I will not celebrate weakness.’