louise Fernandes Khurshid tells Divya Kaushik that her book talks about issues and incidents faced by common people in an interesting way
Mostly you would have encountered taxi drivers with opinions on every topic under the sun. But in this case, it is not the taxi driver, Madath Singh Yadav, but his taxi that grunts and even refuses to start if she doesn’t like the passenger. Chachi, a DlY taxi, has a life of her own and if she likes the politics or the attitude of the person she drives well and if she doesn’t she has her own ways to object. Chachi and Madath Singh Yadav are two fictitious characters coined by louise Fernandes Khurshid to narrate interesting stories that talk about several issues and incidents happening around. The book titled, Travails With Chachi (Hay House), comes across as an interesting travelogue with some thought-provoking stories. Talking about it, the author said that her writings that ultimately found space in the book were written over a time span from 1980 to 2000 as a series of columns and two publishing houses she approached suggested her that she should turn them into a novel. “But it is a travelogue, observation on various issues, it did not lend itself to being a novel. And then Hay House came and I linked them all the articles, one story leading to other. They are short stories, partly political, partly sociological, talking about superstitions, health issues and simple everyday problems people have. The characters in the book are fictitious. Originally when I set out to do columns I thought of using a pen name, Paul Patwardhan Pasha Singh, to create a sort of ‘everyman’ character not identified with any political or religious denomination or caste clarification or anything that puts one in a predisposed slot. But then I decided to write in my own name and I wanted the character through which I could experience various things. Singh is a person like everyone of us, not very moralistic, he is an aam aadmi, a man who is not necessarily very straight. To contrast him he has got his father, who is a staunch, moralistic man, continuously telling him where he is going wrong. Singh’s son is of a different generation. So they are three generations with three different kinds of attitude. The son who talks about environment consciousness and things that Singh would never think of. These three generations represent these three different thoughts. Essentially there are three different levels at which people operate. There are people who have still got the old-fashioned attitude and there are people who are much more practical about how things should be and then there is this new generation of people who looks at life differently. Singh’s generation would look at a popular tree and think how many matchsticks can I get out of this tree, and the son Babloo will think that you can’t cut these trees down. A lot of my own personal interest in wildlife and conservation has also come in the book,” explained the author.
The book comes across as an interesting read with light political undertones. The author says that some of her opinion is reflected in the book through Chachi. “Chachi objects to someone who has a very fundamentalist point of view whereas Singh as a taxi driver would be happy to give a ride to anybody, but the taxi doesn’t drive properly if she is not liking the person. I suppose it is through Chachi more than Singh, that I bring my own little opinion to the book,” she said.
Each story mentioned in the book is true. The last chapter of it is called The Ways of the Badlands, “where I start with an incident of killing of a political candidate and it is absolutely true. The stories also share my experiences. I am a Christian from Karnataka, so I was tempted and I did the taxi down South, we did travel to Karnataka, we have gone to Tamil Nadu, Goa, a couple of places.”
Talking about the badlands of Uttar Pradesh she said, “These places like Etah, Etawah, Mainpuri and Farrukhabad might be maligned but people are simple and honest. For example, if at a disputed place they are asked if they would like to fight over this to build a mandir or a masjid or would they like to build a hospital, I think the women of the area would say lets build a hospital. So they are simple people whose opinions I have tried to reflect.”
Most of the articles were written when her husband, Salman Khurshid, was a minister with the government but louise says that “even at that time those articles were fairly balanced, I just had to bring things into context. New characters were brought in who were not there in original story but I didn’t change because even at that time I was writing as a fairly uninvolved person.” She added, “If I would have completely changed the content as per today’s context a lot of valuable stories of the past, would have gone. Also when I was reading the book I realised what happened 20 years ago is happening till today, there hasn’t been much change. People have changed but they have not changed, mindsets have changed but they have not changed. When I was reading my first chapter again, called The Miskeen Messiah which is actually about VP Singh, I thought to myself that it sounds very much similar to another person in Delhi today. So these articles are perfectly relevant for today.”
louise is open to another series of write ups, which may have an article on social media apart from history and politics. “But when I will write about social media I possibly might say that it is not completely a good thing as social media has resulted in people committing suicides, people being hounded unnecessarily,” she ended.