Observing lay people on the road and conceiving ideas has been a passion for author Maitreyee B Chowdhury from a very young age. The author, who recently launched her latest book, 'Where Even the Present Is Ancient: Benaras', speaks to us about the book, her life and influences with us.
“The entire book consists of lyrical poems, set against the backdrop of Benaras. It is about love, death and philosophy on the Indian streets. This book can roughly be considered as a follow-up of my previous book, 'Reflections On My India', but it is more people-centric than the previous one. For example, there is a poem called 'Vishwanath', which is very dear to me. It reflects my observations regarding the Vishwanath Temple at Benaras. When I visited the temple I found out that there were a lot of restrictions imposed on the devotees. So I wrote the poem where I symbolised Vishwanath as a cow, who is not encapsulated within the boundaries of the temple. In fact Vishwanath, the cow, is more accessible than Vishwanath the God,” says Maitreyee.
Most artists go on a journey of self-discovery sometime in their lives. For Maitreyee, who has lived all around the country, the places she has lived in have given her a perspective about life, which she says she will always treasure. She adds, “I was born in Assam and completed my education there. So, North-East India plays a big part in my writing. I have worked in both Kolkata and Chennai and finally when I came to Bengaluru seven years back, I found some roots. I started my professional career as an advertising professional and moved on to web content writing. For the past few years I have been writing, as a columnist, for different journals in India and abroad about social issues, issues related to women, philosophy and cinema. So, you can say that writing was always been a part of my life,” says Maitreyee.
She feels that Bengaluru, as a city, has given her the warmth she always desired and says that she is often called a social anthropologist by her friends. “I have this weird fascination of observing people. That is my greatest influence in life. Also, observing famous writers like Sylvia Plath, Jibananda Das, Shakti Chattapadhyaya and Rabindranath Tagore has been my stepping stone into writing. Apart from that, the Bauls of Bengal have influenced me a lot with their music and free lifestyle,” she adds.
