His first collection of short stories Passion Flower is mysterious and ‘deranged’, and his characters stand on a thin line between fantasy and reality. Written over three decades, the stories re-establish Mistry (who is also the brother of another gifted writer Rohinton Mistry) as one of the greatest writers of his time, says Ananya Borgohain

Cyrus Mistry began his writing career at the age of 21 when he wrote his play Doongaji House, which has acquired a classic status in contemporary Indian theatre in English today. His short story Percy was adapted into a Gujarati feature film. His plays have won multiple awards, and in 2014, his second novel, Chronicle of a Corpse Bearer (Aleph, 2012), won the DSC Prize for South Asian literature, making him the second Indian to have won the award. Set in pre-Independence Mumbai, it documented the lives of the corpse bearers or khandhias belonging to the Parsi community. The Parsis neither cremate nor bury the dead — the khandhias collect the bodies from home and perform the last rites after which they are left at the Towers of Silence to decay or be consumed by vultures. Parsis believe in dedicating the body to Mother Earth once the soul is separated from the body after death.

Instituted in 2010, the DSC Prize for South Asian literature celebrates the rich, vast and versatile world of literature, particularly of the South Asian region. Authors’ writings should pertain to the South Asian region in terms of their content and theme in order to to be eligible for the award. The prize brings South Asian writing to a new global audience through a celebration of the achievements of South Asian writers, and aims to raise awareness of the culture around the world.

His first collection of short stories Passion Flower (Aleph) is mysterious and ‘deranged’, and his characters stand on a thin line between fantasy and reality. Written over three decades, the stories re-establish Mistry (who is also the brother of another gifted writer Rohinton Mistry) as one of the greatest writers of his time. He has been a freelance journalist and had been working a job for a long time but he says that he is now a full-time writer. Settled in Kodaikanal in Tamil Nadu, Mistry was recently in Delhi for his DSC Prize tour across the country.

In an interaction, he shares his vision.

You have been writing for decades but we rarely see you make a public appearance or being interviewed. Are you evasive by natureIJ

Evasive would be the wrong term to use because it would mean that I hide from the outside world. That is not the case at all. It is just that I am an introvert. I am 58 now, and I don’t really like to party; it’s a part of my personality.

What is your earliest memory as a writerIJ

I began writing in my school days; I used to write for the school magazine and writing continued till I was in college. When I was about 20, there was a drama group in Bombay called the Theatre Group which had placed advertisements inviting entries for a playwriting competition. I participated and won the first prize. It was a serious play that I had written titled Doongaji House and it has been published by the Sahitya Akademi.

The play faced innumerable logistical hurdles. Sometimes, changes were required in the scenes and sometimes there was a lack of an actor to portray the protagonist’s role. The management said the actor had to be as grand as King lear and hence it was tough to find someone as apt. They also underlined that this play had no commercial potential. Somebody else staged it 10 or 12 years later and it was a huge success. Doongaji House was the beginning of my writing career; I was 21 then. It made me believe that I wanted to be a writer.

What are the most important elements in your stories, without which you would not enjoy your plotsIJ How do you design your characters and storylinesIJ

I don’t think that most writers have a conscious scheme. For me, everything starts with an impression; I could imagine a character and what his life could be like. It is a kind of meditative process when you begin writing and the story and character begin to grow. One thing leads to the next. In fact, I prefer not to have too much pre-planning about what I am going to write. I like spontaneity.

What are the attributes of Parsi literatureIJ

Unfortunately, there is no distinct body of Parsi literature. There could be some books in Gujarati, although I have not read them.

Parsis played a prominent role in Mumbai. Many hospitals and public parks have Parsi names on them because they had a very strong philanthropic association with the city. More in the British time than after Independence. During the colonial era, they were strong business partners because of their fluency in English. Because of the influence of westernisation, their presence was strong. After the British left, there was a decline for them. Besides, there has been a lot of migration of the Parsis out of the country.

Talking about migration, how do you look at Indian diasporic literatureIJ Your elder brother Rohinton Mistry’s writings have strong diasporic elements, while yours are rooted in India. Do you exchange notesIJ

We don’t exchange notes and we don’t discuss writing so much unless it’s a book which he has thought highly of. He moved to Canada about 40 years ago and he has only written about Mumbai, in a sense he has not written much about the Canadian society. One could say that I am rooted in culture that is because I never went away.

literature is so infinite, independent and indefinable that you can never say that my literature is more rooted to a culture than somebody else’s. We have to look at the work itself and how it works on you. How much truth it holds to you.

Having written plays, short stories and a novel, what are you most comfortable withIJ

Now I am comfortable with all of them but for a long time I didn’t feel I knew how to write a novel. I felt the form of a novel was too mysterious for me. Writing plays, dialogues, creating a character through the words he speaks come naturally to me. I would like to write another one soon, but I think my next book would be a novel.

What kind of research goes into your workIJ

When I was in college, I never really used to take notes. Even today, I like to rely more on my imagination.

I could write Chronicle of a Corpse Bearer because in 1991, I was asked by a friend to research for a documentary he was making for Channel 4. He asked me to write a paper on corpse bearers. I spoke to them about their lives, their past, ancestors, what their present lives and works are like, and so on. At that time, one of them told me a story about his father who had spent his life being a corpse bearer in the 1940s. He had led a strike for better working conditions of the workers.

I tried to find out in the Parsi Panchayat office for any record of this strike that had happened but there was none. He was fired from the job and later became a very withdrawn person. This was in 1940 or 1941, so you see, I don’t remember the time though it was a part of my research, but I remember the story. I extended it through imagination and finally wrote the novel, which was a love story about a priest’s son and a corpse bearer’s daughter.

You mentioned earlier about your theatre management’s hesitation in staging your plays saying that they lacked commercial potentialIJ Having won the DSC prize, has that changed nowIJ

I am probably a little stubborn because it never really affected me. I didn’t write for commercial success. I have also been a freelance journalist. What bothered me was not the profit-making process of the play, but the fact that it was not staged in the first place.

$50,000 is indeed a lot of money. It gives you a sense of self-affirmation and motivation to write more. I was able to clear my debts collected over the years too and my son won’t have to carry the burden.

So that’s a great feeling. I always had the confidence but it’s overwhelming to have an external confirmation. It was a unanimous decision to give the award to this book, so it is also a major psychological boost.

The stories in Passion Flower end in a mystical way, in an unexpected or a magical and utopian way. Why the contrast from the beginningIJ

I don’t have a pre-planned ending when I begin a story. It is in the process of creating it when I begin to develop it. The creation and the creator evolve simultaneously. I develop and surprise myself. These stories were written in 30 years’ time overall.