Home is where the heart is - Clare Arni

People everywhere always seem to be asking themselves and those around them whether chasing passion and turning it into a career option is a smart plan, or is it being a bit too unrealistic? Some of them settle for safer jobs that assure a decent paycheck, but others pursue their passion actively and follow their instincts. Clare Arni, a Bangalore-based full time photographer fits well into the latter group.“I had no cunning plan. I sort of stumbled into photography. For a long time, I was scared that this big, giant foot would come and say ‘Get a job!’”

Fortunately for her, ever since she took up photography as a career, there’s been no looking back. Since her independent work alone doesn’t help her earn a living, she gets involved in commissioned projects as well. This includes architectural photography, which helps architectural firms document their work. “When you drive through Bangalore now, you see some generic glass structures. But this city has some very interesting work. Some of the young architects I work with now are doing some wild stuff,” she says.

Having grown up in Peru, India and England where her roots can be traced to, Clare says she feels more at home in India than anywhere else. “As a child, I spent nine years in Madurai where my father worked. So when I went to study in England, I had a Tamilian accent and people kept asking me if I was Welsh,” she says, slipping into laughter, her eyes wandering nostalgically. In fact, work took her back to Madurai recently where she shot the Madurai Meenakshi wedding festival. “Meenakshi was a real warrior goddess. The legend goes that she was born with three breasts and when she met the man who was ‘right’ for her, one breast disappeared,” she says.Although Clare’s initial years into photography were spent doing fashion photography with Prasad Bidappa, she soon realised that her heart lay elsewhere.

“There are two types of photography, one of which is studio-based. It’s a glamourous one, in the comfort of the AC. But I chose to trudge around dusty streets in my rubber chappals. What’s brilliant about India is that I can shoot here till the end of my life and there would still be enough material for me to shoot. Also, you meet so many fabulous people.” Clare takes me by surprise when she breaks into fluent Tamil while speaking to her domestic help. In fact, she speaks a bit of Kannada as well. “Since I do a lot of grass root level work, knowing Kannada helps... all doors open to you,” she says.

But what gets Clare really excited is what she calls her pet project, a series of photographs titled ‘Disappearing Professions in Urban India’. Creatively collaborating with her sister Oriole Henry who does the research work, Clare began by looking at trades that were historically and traditionally associated with a city. “It is an interesting way to understand a city... what makes it tick, what makes it grow. The trigger for me was an exhibition last year on urban changes. I documented the silk industry here in Bangalore, one of the oldest trades that’s struggling to survive. I’ve been here for 20 years now, and I wondered suddenly, where are all those guys who mend buckets, who fluff mattresses,” she says. For this project she clicked in four Indian cities — Chennai, Bangalore, Delhi and Calcutta.

“I’m not doing this for nostalgia you know. I’m a modern chick, like anyone else. But the people who are involved in these professions, they are passionate about their work, struggling against all odds.” Clare usually doesn’t take her camera out in the beginning. She indulges in a lot of conversation, understands the nature of their work, gets acquainted and then asks them if they mind being clicked. “I take quite a bit of time to shoot and I don’t want to be intrusive. Of course, photographers are intrusive, but still...”

With malls springing up in every corner and chain stores spreading like a wild rash, craftsmen and skilled labourers are getting marginalised. Mass produced goods have caught the fancy of today’s urban consumer, leaving very little room for specialised skills to thrive. Thematically, this is what Clare has set out to document. She is also exploring how often such trades have tried to find ways to adapt in order to survive. Her solo exhibition which travelled across India, consisting of 70 photographs of disappearing professions, is already sold out. In the next few months, Clare is planning to travel to work on a book that focuses on the culture of South Canara. “Now I’ve realised that I don’t want to just shoot buildings, sculptures and various historical sites. I want to put people in it.” So this time around, she intends to look into how they lead their lives, more in depth, and record them living and breathing cultural heritage.

While we discuss distinct religious and cultural practices that still prevail in parts of India, Clare says, “What’s special about India is that everybody’s still doing what used to do... and they want to, they take pride in that.” And it dawns on you that the emotional connect of a person with a place or its people doesn’t really depend on where they are from, the colour of their skin or their religion. It boils down to who they are and who they aspire to be. After all, home is where the heart is.
Check out Clare's work at http://www.clarearni.com/

With Palash Krishna Mehrotra

This was published in Deccan Herald's Sunday paper (Sunday Herald) on August 23, 2009. But I decided to put it up here since only a part of this went into SH due to space constraints. So here goes - an interview with Palash Krishna Mehrotra, author of 'Eunuch Park', a new collection of short stories, with the central theme - Love and Destruction. He also edited Penguin's collection of schoolday stories called 'Recess'. Excerpts from the interview with Palash:
Did the stories in ‘Eunuch Park’ come easily to you, or did you take time to work on this collection? Tell us a bit about your writing process.
It took me around seven years to write all the stories. There were some like 'Nobody Wants to Eat My Mangoes' that got stuck and had to be shelved for a bit. I started and finished new ones in the meantime. There were others, like 'Rubberband', which were written in one frenzied go.

In ‘Eunuch Park’, you’ve picked themes that are so familiar, so real, yet not spoken about openly. Sexuality, perversity, stalkers, cross-dressers, drugs, family complexities – all exist in our society, or any other – but Indian audiences tend to be a bit wary about discussing it openly. This being your debut collection, were you skeptical about how Indian readers would respond to your stories that are strewn with references to these themes that are still somewhat taboo?
To be honest I had no sense of the reader when I wrote these stories. That the book managed to touch a chord came as a pleasant surprise. If one writes in the realist vein and wants to hold a mirror to society, certain subjects become inevitable, choose themselves.
The Indian reader by and large is more comfortable reading fiction set in the Sunderbans than her own middle class milieu. She feels that 'real' fiction is about other things. I have tried to write about things that are familiar to all of us like ragging or feelings of sexual inadequacy. In the process if I have unsettled the reader, that's not necessarily a bad thing.

The geographic settings in these stories seem to have a connection with a lot of the places that you have lived in – Dehradun, Mumbai, Delhi and Oxford. How much of it is fiction? What’s been the inspiration, if you could cite a few examples?
Every writer writes about the milieu she knows best. There is no point me writing about Istanbul or New York if I haven't lived in these cities. The cities I write about are cities I am intimate with. When I am sitting at a restaurant table in Allahabad or Delhi, I can make a guess at what people at other tables are thinking. It's very important for a writer-- this link she feels with her surroundings. So Dehra Dun and Allahabad are the small towns I write about, Delhi and Bombay the big cities. Between the four of them--their slums and narrow bylanes and posh apartment blocks-- I get enough physical space to explore what I want to: human folly.

Most of the stories in ‘Eunuch Park’ end somewhat ambiguously, or atleast don’t have very definite endings. Do you prefer to leave your stories open-ended?
Every good short story is open-ended. This is what distinguishes a story from a novel. Stories, like poems, work by implication. They don't give you a neat narrative with all the loose ends tied up. Because life is not like that. A short story has its own twisted logic. When it runs out - and a good short story writer knows exactly when to stop - the story comes to its natural conclusion.

You don’t seem to hold back at all when you write. Your writing seems to spill effortlessly, without being strained, bringing along even the dirt and grime. But has there been a conscious effort from your side to conceal nothing, and strip the stories and its characters of all pretension, leaving them bare and vulnerable to the readers’ eyes?
I did work a lot on the language. The stories went through many revisions, mostly to do with language. I wanted the language to be close to what we speak everyday, not self-conscious, not grand. I was looking to tell each story as simply as possible and I think I came close to achieving this. There was so much happening in the book anyway, I didn't feel the need to clutter it with linguistic gymnastics.

What is it about short stories that appeal to you, as a writer and as a reader? And also, these are stories about ‘love and destruction’. Why ‘love and destruction’ as the central theme?
The short story is a wonderful form. It provides the reader with few of the consolations that a novel does. Time and space extend indefinitely in the novel. The short story is not interested in such illusions. It's hard and precise. When a novelist stops writing for the day, she asks herself the question: "How many words did I write today?" When a short story writer takes stock, she asks herself: "Did I get any closer to the truth? Did I nail anything?" Believe me, they are two very different questions and they come from very different imaginations.
Speaking specifically of the stories in Eunuch Park, I really had so many stories to tell (I always do) that the novel seemed very constricting as a form. 'Love and Destruction' because my characters are capable of enormous love but also enormous destruction, of themselves as well as of those around them.

Have you been reading all the reviews and criticism on your book? How important do you think these reviews are to a new author’s morale?
I have been lucky to receive good reviews. Praise is always encouraging. But there is also a deep, unshakeable faith that an author has in her own abilities which has nothing to do with external praise or criticism.

It is said that a writer’s debut novel, especially in cases of fiction, usually has large doses of themselves in it. I don’t know how far it’s true, but does it seem like that in your case?
I am an autobiographical writer. Like Saul Bellow I believe that all fiction is disguised autobiography. I see and hear things. They might happen to me or I might see them happening to others. I might read about them. At some point my imagination takes over and a new story is born. By autobiographical, one doesn't mean that these are true stories. 'Fit Of Rage', for example, was written for an anthology called Delhi Noir. The editor wanted me to put in a murder. I haven't murdered anyone nor do I know anyone who has.

‘Eunuch Park’ and ‘Recess’ seem to be as different as it can be from each other, in most ways. How has it been working on books that are so starkly contrasting?
It's been fun and very fulfilling. Editing anthologies is a thankless task. Writing fiction is much easier. I enjoyed editing the anthology though. Once one begins researching a subject, one finds material everywhere one looks. It was hearbreaking to leave some of the stuff out. I spent a lot of time and energy stitching the anthology into one seamless garment.

Are you likely to extend your writing skills to anything other medium – maybe theatre, or film, or music or something else?
Not really. I do different kinds of writing and I want to continue doing that rather than spread myself too thin. There are a couple of proposals for writing film scripts. I am looking at them.

Tell us about the authors whose work you’ve admired. Any authors you think who have influenced your own writing?
There have been many Logan Pearsall Smith, Patrick Hamilton, Vilas Sarang, Arun Kolatkar, Raymond Carver, Salinger, Roy Heath,David Sedaris to mention a few.

There’s a lot of Indian English writing being churned out nowadays. Anything you’ve read that’s really impressed you?
Arun Kolatkar's collection ‘The Boatride and other Poems’, published after his death. I also like Amit Chaudhuri and Upamanyu Chatterjee.

Most writers have certain themes that they keep obsessing over and returning to. What are some of the themes that you continue to be intrigued by?
Death, perversion, self destruction. Also, the individual's struggle to find out what makes her happy, what makes her sad, what fills her with rage.

What clichés about writers do you find yourself agreeing with, in your case that is?
They drink too much.They smoke too much.

Apart from writing, what are your other interests?
Swimming, cycling, reading, music.

What is ‘The Butterfly Generation’, the non-fiction book you are working on currently about?
It's a non-fiction narrative about urban youth in the cities. It's partly a memoir of growing up in eighties socialist India, partly a travelogue through India's big cities. I try and paint a portrait of a generation that has made the remarkable journey from steam engine to broadband in a very short time.