Namita Gokhale is the author of twenty books and Sahitya Akademi (National Academy of Letters) awardee for 2021. She is co-founder
and co-director (with William Dalrymple) of the Jaipur Literature Festival. Her acclaimed debut novel, ‘Paro: Dreams of Passion’, was published in 1984. Her latest work of fiction, ‘The Blind Matriarch’ examines the Indian joint family against the backdrop of the pandemic. Other recent books include ‘Betrayed By Hope’ , a play on the life of the poet Michael Madhusudan Dutt, and ‘Jaipur Journals’, a fictional reading of the Jaipur Literature Festival. She also written extensively on myth and religion.
Gokhale was conferred the prestigious First Centenary National Award for Literature by the Asam Sahitya Sabha in 2017, and has received recognition both for her writing and her commitment to multilingual Indian literature and cross-cultural literary dialogue.
Q 1. When did you first realize you wanted to be a writer?
> I was always writing something - there was no moment of realization - it was always part of my life.
Q 2. What was one of the most surprising things you learned in creating your books?
> I realized that books have a life of their own, and stories exist independently of us, waiting to be told and heard. The true writer only gives them voice .
Q 3. How many unpublished and half-finished books do you have?
> There are many unfinished stories in my head. Of late I have been trying to work on short stories. Many of these have false starts and I give up on them. There was a long story I worked on last year which I was quite happy with - but I lost the notebook 🙁and that was that.
Q 4. How do you select the names of your characters?
> It’s an intuitive process. I also try to keep them phonetically distinct.
Q 5. Do you hide any secrets in your books that only a few people will find?
> Yes that’s perceptive of you to sense that. There are some puzzles or ambiguities and secret messages that very few readers get - but it’s important for me to have them.
Q 6. Do you Google yourself?
> I never never Google myself and I never look at my website - it makes me uncomfortable to view my public interface.
Q 7. How do you process and deal with negative book reviews?
> I see them as positive criticism or as a point of view the reviewer is entitled to.
Q 8. In your childhood, what did you want to do when you grew up?
> Nothing really - I had no ambitions that I can remember .
Q 9. What is the most unethical practice in the publishing industry?
> I couldn’t answer that - ethical practice is difficult to define.
Q 10. If you didn’t write, what would you do for work?
> Writing isn’t work . I have done so many different things all through my life, which I have enjoyed and excelled at - work that I am proud of. But writing isn’t work - it’s as natural and necessary as breathing, even if it’s not read of published. It’s my conversation with myself.
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