In conversation with Ira Trivedi.
Ira Trivedi is the best-selling author of four books, most recently India in Love, a seminal work of nonfiction on India’s sexual revolution. Ira is a contributor to Foreign Affairs, Foreign Policy and several others, where her work on gender and culture has won several awards. She has been called one of India’s most important youth voices, and she speaks regularly to media and forums in India and internationally. When Ira is not writing she is teaching yoga. She is the founder of the NGO Namami Yoga and most recently she led the first international day of yoga celebrations at Rajpath, New Delhi, where 36,000 people including the Prime Minister did yoga, creating a world record.
Recently, Ira contributed her piece ‘Rearranged Marriage’ to Walking Towards Ourselves: Indian Women tell their Stories, an anthology edited by Catriona Mitchell and published by Hardie Grant Books. Ira sat down with Catriona to chat more about the book and the stories that have shaped her life.
Catriona: Ira, you had your first publishing success at the age of nineteen, in the form of a novel about the Miss India beauty pageant called What Would You Do To Save the World? (2006). You yourself were a Miss India finalist. How did that experience shape your thinking about gender, if at all?
Ira: At that point in time, when it was happening, I didn’t think much about it. But it was only later on, years later, that I realised how important this experience was in shaping my thoughts about gender. These pageants, this pageant, stereotypes women in the most absurd of ways, in a way I had never experienced till I got to the pageant. You have to remember that I was coming to this pageant from Wellesley College one of the finest women’s colleges in the world, from an environment which was the polar opposite of the beauty pageant. This polarity is what struck me so hard that I could put words on paper and produce a book, where earlier I had intention of writing at all.
C: You did an MBA at Columbia University, and were then offered a sizable salary and a life you’d always dreamt of in New York. You turned it down though, because you came to realise that what you really loved was the ‘buzz of writing.’ Corporate life lacked meaning in comparison. Was it difficult to make that career decision? Have you ever looked back?
I: It was incredibly hard but also strangely easy. When the money loses meaning, when the illusion wears away, there isn’t much left to stay on for. But at the same time, once you leave, you realise what the perks of that life were. You were like a little robot, living a sequenced life where you didn’t use your intellect at all but just went at it, day after day after day. Being a full time writer on the other hand is far more difficult but also very easy, in the sense that if you decide to not write, then well you just don’t write. No boss is screaming at you, nothing else is at stake except for the words. It’s difficult though because you have to constantly self motivate and this can get incredibly tiring after a while. Have I looked back- yes definitely. And at low moments, which come more frequently than I would like to admit, I still very much wonder what a corporate life in NYC or London would have had me doing right now.
C: As a writer with a large following on social media, and having been hailed as one of the important youth voices of India, you have the power to influence minds. Is it important to you to impart a message to your readers, even if writing light-hearted fiction? (please provide an example)
I: Always, in every single book, in every single piece. Without a message writing is meaningless, and is no better than mindless entertainment. At the heart of “What would you…” was revealing the “dust behind the diamonds”, the “thorns behind the tiara” and basically how the world of glamour was very much a thinly veiled illusion.
C: Your non-fiction book, India in Love: Marriage and Sexuality in the 21st Century (2014) is an incredible social commentary, while being riveting to read because of its highly accessible writing style. Does this book impart information that simply wasn’t in the public sphere in India previously?
I: I would like to think so, yes. That was the purpose of writing this book. These incredibly important topics had never been written about in a comprehensive way before. As a witness and participant of the sexual and marriage revolutions, I knew that these stories and this research had to be documented.
In other words, are you playing your own part in the sexual revolution you describe, by putting this information out in the world?
I am part of India’s sexual revolution as much as any of the characters in the book. That is why I’m always there in the backdrop. Initially there was more of “me” in the book till I realised how much more poignant other people’s stories were, and then I replaced my stories for theirs.
Being part of this sexual revolution allowed me to colour the book in a way that I wouldn’t have been able to as a mere observer.
C: You spent five years on the research for India in Love and ventured into all kinds of situations you wouldn’t have been exposed to otherwise — including spending time with the Love Commandos, in marriage bureaus, in brothels, or visiting families of potential brides as you describe in Re-Arranged Marriage. Which experiences marked you the most?
I: This is a hard one. The experiences were separate but also felt cohesive as if they were but one. I look at the experience as a collective one, and what was most hard hitting was the extent of the social change I chronicled- that went from small towns to big towns, from the Middle class to the rich. Hundreds of millions are affected by these changes and I saw this as I ploughed ahead.
C: What did you learn about your country and your people that most surprised you?
I: What I learnt was that India can never be boxed or defined. There is no one India, and to try to summarise India in one book, or even a hundred is impossible.
C: Have you experienced any backlash to publishing this book, whether in person or online? Given that you expose a lot of dark facts, and address provocative material?
I: Unfortunately yes. Let’s start from the beginning. Internal backlash, family back lash, community back lash, publishing back lash, and yes also some dangerous back lash from khap panchayats or village councils. Ive developed skin of steel at this point :)
C: As you describe in Love in the Time of the Internet, you’re on the board of a dating app, and you directly witness how digital dating is shaking up traditional approaches to marriage in India. “Boy browsing” is a phenomenon that was an impossibility just a few short years ago. Is arranged marriage a thing of the past and if so, will there be negative as well as positive consequences for this?
I: Not a thing of the past at all. It’s still a very important part of Indian culture. For any one further interested in this, I recommend watching my short TED talk on the subject. But basically arranged marriage is not ending but changing and evolving in a curious way.
C: You believe that conditions are changing for women in a positive way across India. Can you give an example (a story, an incident) that confirms this for you?
I: Recently two young women on a bus in Haryana, a state infamous for its inherent patriarchy, beat up a man who was “eve teasing” them. The way millions of young women poured out on the streets after the Nirbhaya rape (many with their fathers and brothers) prove to me that we have reached an important turning point in India’s feminist movement and there is no turning back.
C: What freedoms do you have in your day-to-day life in Delhi that you really appreciate? What freedoms do you wish you had?
I: I appreciate that I can go out on the streets of this town and talk to whomsoever I want, and they will stop and talk to me. I appreciate the warmth and honestly and time that people give to me, for no reason at all. I appreciate the living stories that are quite literally on my doorstep. I appreciate the spectrum of stories that are here and no where else.
I wish I could go walk on these streets without having to turn and look over my shoulder every few steps. I wish I could feel safe on the streets of my town. I wish I could step out after dark without holding my breath, I wish I didn’t have to mistrust every single man I saw. I wish I could get rid myself of the fear of rape. I wish I could walk holding my head up high instead of wanting to be invisible so no man would stare at me with lustful eyes.
Ira Trivedi is attending Sydney Writer’s Festival thanks to funding from the Australia-India Council.
