On 35th Anniversary Of The Anti-Sikh Riots, Radhika Oberoi Speaks On Her Novel Stillborn Season
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00:00 Hello and welcome to Outlook Bibliophile. Today marks the 35 years of the 1984 anti-Sikh
00:09 riots that had broken out immediately after Prime Minister Indira Gandhi was assassinated
00:14 by her Sikh bodyguards. We have with us today Radhika Oberoi, who's done a book, her debut
00:23 novel called Stillborn Season, which is a fictional account of what transpired, what
00:33 happened as the riots broke out, the fears, the apprehensions of people back then. It's
00:44 a fictional account but you can get glimpses of what people must have felt, those who were
00:50 directly affected by it, those who were indirectly affected by it. And then there's a other part
00:56 of the book, the second part of the book, which is more recent in terms of dealing with
01:04 the reminiscences of that period. It makes for a very interesting reading because there
01:11 are different kinds of narratives that come into play. It doesn't have a single viewpoint,
01:17 it doesn't push an agenda, it does not follow only one protagonist as most books do, but
01:25 has multiple narratives and brings together different viewpoints of the riots. We thought
01:32 this would be a good discussion to observe the 35 years that have passed since the riots.
01:42 Radhika, welcome to Outlook Bibliophile. Thank you very much. It's an unusual idea
01:53 for a debut novel. What made you choose the '84 Sikh riots, anti-Sikh riots? Well, the
02:04 book isn't entirely about the 1984 anti-Sikh riots. It's a story of this little girl called
02:10 Amrit who grows up in a neighbourhood which is relatively peaceful. And then the peace
02:16 of her childhood is broken by this riot that creeps in suddenly. So the book begins by
02:23 capturing a lot of childhood snapshots of children playing in parks, old people walking
02:30 around, a very peaceful colony that is suddenly there's news that the Prime Minister has been
02:35 assassinated and absolute chaos breaks out in the city. The second half is of course
02:41 about Amrit growing up and becoming a reporter herself and then deciding to investigate what
02:47 happens. By then a lot of very seasoned reporters have already reported on the '84 riots and
02:53 she feels that her stories perhaps may not resonate with the kind of reality that she
02:59 hopes for. But it captures her despair and it captures the fact that there is no one
03:06 truth, no one truth emerges. Hence the multiple perspectives. A challenge particularly dealing
03:17 with something like this and something that's also part of our history is that one often
03:26 tends to follow a particular narrative, a particular propaganda or a particular viewpoint.
03:33 In that sense your book is different because it deals with various people, a person, a
03:38 beggar, a taxi driver. It deals with, as you mentioned, Amrit who grows up, who's a survivor
03:46 of the riots in a way and then grows up to be a journalist. So multiple narratives. Was
03:53 it a conscious decision to treat the book that way or is it something that while you
03:59 were researching for it you thought that this was a better approach?
04:03 Yeah, well, you know, one starts off by imagining a linear narrative but as one begins to write
04:09 and as one begins to research you begin to understand that all narratives around the
04:14 riots are unpredictable and are unreliable. Hence the need to get multiple perspectives.
04:20 So there is this one chapter called 'Rioter' which is actually a sympathetic view of the
04:25 kind of people who were recruited during the riots and he was actually someone who was
04:32 clueless about who the Prime Minister of the country is and why she was assassinated. He
04:36 just sort of wanted his daily meal. He just wanted to sleep on a full stomach that particular
04:43 night and that's why he decided to use the riots as a means to earn his money.
04:49 Hence, I mean it does not sympathise obviously with the rioters or with those who perpetrated
04:55 the violence but it tries to delve into realities from all sides. Hence you have these stories
05:02 which actually work independently as well and then are stitched together to form this
05:07 one fictive universe of comics.
05:10 What I particularly like about this book is the way it ends. There's a kind of fictional
05:19 interview naturally that she ends the book with where Amrit, one of the protagonists
05:26 of the book, is interviewing the Prime Minister, the dead Prime Minister. How did that idea
05:36 come about?
05:37 Well, I spent a lot of time at Indira Gandhi's memorial on Safsajung Road and I actually
05:43 stood around staring at those artefacts and it really humanises the Prime Minister. You
05:47 get a view into her life, you get to see her bedroom, her dining room and there are these
05:53 little plaques that explain how she invited guests, the kind of guests that were there.
05:59 So I decided to use that to create this stream of consciousness if you like. If you want
06:04 to call it that, you could but it is an absolutely imaginary account of a journalist standing
06:10 within those lawns imagining what would have happened had the dead Prime Minister been
06:15 alive and what would that interview have sounded like. When we launched the book we did a dramatised
06:21 reading of it and Sonam Kalra actually dramatised the dead Prime Minister. She was extremely
06:27 passionate and it was an absolutely beautiful reading in that sense. I'd also like to point
06:33 out that the book begins and ends with a garden. The prologue begins with Peter Ustinov actually
06:41 waiting for the interview, for the appointment and then he hears these shots ringing out
06:47 and it is of course just before Diwali and so somebody says it's firecrackers but it
06:52 isn't and it ends with an incomplete interview. The prologue ends there and then the epilogue
06:59 ends with an imaginary interview between a journalist and the dead Prime Minister.
07:06 Now it's been 35 years as we keep mentioning since the riots. This is one of the accounts
07:20 that is a fictional account but based on the riots. Multiple books, research material,
07:29 everything has come out on the riots. But people who were directly affected by the riots
07:36 and I believe you spent a lot of time, four years, researching the book and you met a
07:42 lot of these people who were directly hit by the riots. You researched with widows and
07:49 there is no sense of closure in this case. What is it that struck you the most when you
07:57 met the survivors, the people who were affected by the riots?
08:02 Well there is a lot of apathy to begin with and there is a lot of cynicism if you are
08:07 walking around as a journalist with a little notepad or a camera and you want to interview
08:12 them. They don't treat you very well. They don't welcome you into their homes and they
08:17 don't say that come let me tell you my sob stories because so many years have gone by
08:23 and it does seem to be this endless struggle for justice and we have seen in the recent
08:27 past that things have reached some sort of conclusion in terms of what has happened recently.
08:36 But when you speak with them you understand that their lives have been extremely difficult
08:39 for the past 35 years. Their children have grown up without fathers. They are mostly
08:44 derelict or they have turned to drug addiction and alcohol and you can see empty bottles
08:49 lying around. Several governments have come and promised all kinds of things but done
08:54 nothing. So they live in these little matchbox sized apartments in Tilak Vihar which are
08:59 riddled with all sorts of problems. And of course I wanted to capture all of that with
09:05 a lot of empathy and humour which I hope I have done because there is this one character
09:08 called Nirmal Kaur who wants to send this journalist off and she says that if she wants
09:13 to hear a sob story I could fake a few tears and show her my scars and say that this is
09:17 what happened but she prefers not to do that.
09:22 The other thing with not just the 84 riots but any riots or any kind of social churning
09:32 is we tend to focus while writing on the disaster, the carnage, the pogrom. What very few people
09:45 deal with is how while all of this is going on there is also the society which is removed
09:58 from the politics of the entire episode and how people irrespective of their religion,
10:05 their social status come together in these trying times. And that is something that this
10:12 book captures, the people at large. Radhika what was the motivation or the trigger because
10:26 for your book the sense that I got while reading it was that the central character is not one
10:31 or two different people but it's largely a community. What made you approach it in that
10:43 manner?
10:46 The fact that it was a community that was impacted, the Sikh community was impacted
10:52 but there were Hindus and Muslims that came together to protect their Sikh brethren and
10:59 that is captured in a chapter titled Tenants. In Tenants there is this young couple that
11:06 live in a barsati of this huge house and the husband is a young Sikh boy who decides to
11:13 go for a jog every morning in his vest and in his shirt and he is told that the riots
11:19 are going on and that you should stay indoors or cut your hair and he refuses to do that.
11:22 And then eventually when the action picks up they are rescued by their Hindu neighbours
11:29 and they seek shelter in one of the homes within that very neighbourhood. So a lot of
11:34 it is also inspired by my own childhood because where I grew up it was rather safe but there
11:43 was a lot of news that was filtering in and so as I mentioned the riot creeps into this
11:47 utopian world that children create for themselves and so there are memories of adults talking
11:52 in hushed tones, birthday parties that are cancelled, schools that are closed and hence
11:59 I have tried to capture that. So the first half really is about a childhood that is interrupted
12:04 by a riot. There is this one story called The Novice which is really about a convent
12:07 school that reopens after a few weeks of rioting.
12:14 Thanks Radhika a lot for your time. Do catch a copy of this book and I am sure you will
12:23 enjoy reading this. Thank you.
12:26 [Music]