The Devgarhians Are Here
With even the most modest mofussil minds moving to the metropolis, what is one to make of the quintessential small town? Does it even exist? Doubts persist, but not justifiably. Ask anyone who did not grow up in a big city, and they’ll tell you that smallness does not always translate to inadequacy, and that a city not known for its size and rise is more than a mere evoker of nostalgia. Why does the cosmopolitan heart still want to return to places that have remained immune to ostentation and blind emulation? These places still offer a lot, without asking anything in return. They trigger a slowness that is waiting to flower in the midst of unremitting chaos. They inspire an ambition whose course is not governed by the usual ways of the world. The minds that still contain small towns come across as the richest. Some of us can still visit yesteryear topographies that have escaped defacing and erasure. And some of those who cannot, invent new ones. Regardless of the reason for his invention, Aditya Sharma takes us to a town that deserves multiple visits.
Devgarh may be a fictional place, but some of its details are rooted in reality. We spoke with Aditya Sharma about the town, its inhabitants, and its origins. Since your debut novel, Champs of Devgarh, was set in this same fictional world, how did returning to the small town feel?
I have lived in a small town for most of my life. The fictional world of Devgarh is inspired by my own experiences of growing up and living in a small town. Even when I was living in big cities like Delhi and Mumbai, I would return to my hometown as often as I could. So there was no question of returning to the small town for me. It has always been there with me. I actually started writing the short stories long before I started writing the novel. My earliest story in this collection dates back to 2002. I wrote this book slowly, over several years, one story at a time, whenever I got a good idea.
Your career has spanned law, journalism, and cultural reporting for major publications. How much do your real-world observations influence characters like the moonlighting medical representative or the tipsy railway guard?
Nearly all the characters of my short stories are drawn from real life. Working as a journalist and a lawyer exposed me to a wide variety of people with interesting lives, and I have written about them. The story of the moonlighting medical representative came to me from a journalist friend while the tipsy railway guard was introduced to me by someone who had started out as a lawyer alongside me before getting a job in the railways.
What is your blueprint for a great twist? Do you start plotting with the final revelation already in mind and work backward, or do the characters take over and surprise you mid-draft?
I mostly start a story with a rough idea, it isn’t always possible to visualize the twist initially. As I start writing, new characters often force their way into the scenes and new situations develop organically. At times, a writer loses control of both his characters and situations and what emerges is something very different from what was first conceived.
After writing a full-length novel, feature journalism, and individual anthology entries, what challenges did you face while putting together your first standalone short story collection?
I had already written about five short stories when I started working on my novel. When the novel was published in 2014, I turned my attention to writing a few more stories so I could bring them out as a collection. My novel was a success, and I thought that I would be able to easily write the stories and have the collection published soon. But I soon realized that writing a good short story was far tougher than writing a novel. The initial drafts of my early stories were quite raw. For a time, I felt that my attempt at writing short stories was a failed exercise. It was only after years of writing and rewriting them and reading great short-story writers such as Anton Chekhov, Somerset Maugham, Guy de Maupassant and many others that I finally got the hang of it. I am glad I didn’t give up midway.
Are there any stories that you chose not to include in the book? If yes, why?
I had written two more short stories, actually, two long stories, which were published in two different anthologies brought out by Amaryllis. One was set in Delhi of the ’80s and dealt with the horrors faced by a Sikh family that found itself caught in the middle of the 1984 riots. The interesting aspect of the story was that it was narrated by a 12-year-old girl, a member of this family, who witnessed the riots. The other was set in Devgarh, and chronicled the life of a young man, a bungler, whose biggest problem in life was his repeated failure in his relationships with one woman after another. Both stories were very different and felt out of sync with the stories in this collection. That’s why I left them out.
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