‘Nothing influences writing as much as living’

Hyderabad: In her debut short story collection Transactions of Belonging, Jaya Padmanabhan, a fiction writer and journalist, has brought together a diverse and memorable group of characters from many kinds of backgrounds. The short stories blend feeling and contemplation drawing out and examining the texture of emotional belonging. Jaya talks about the book:

Nothing influences writing as much as living. The stories we encounter in our lives are rich and varied. Everything we do and see can be fashioned into a story. A neighbour dropping in for chai; a book or article we read; children’s drama; an argument among family members; a baby crying; a conversation with a stranger in a coffee shop; a politician’s wave... These simple events can form the pivotal plot of a story and then imagination must take over. We all have a story to tell. The only difference is that some of us take the time to write them down.

There’s more room for character development in a novel. In short stories, characters are nuanced by a few choice words. The plot, pacing and character development all have to evolve in just a few pages. These are huge constraints as well as the most thrilling aspects of short story writing. The challenges are what I define and limit myself to.

Courage, tragedy, comedy are universally encountered. These nouns knit together the fabric of our lives. We see examples of this everyday, every year, every lifetime. It’s simply a question of recording them in imaginative ways. A collection of stories can exist as disparate entities, or they can have a thread that connects them into one cohesive unit. I’ve allowed the stories to exist individually within the framework of the title.

Yes, a novel titled The Eleventh Letter which is set in Kerala and hinges on a socio-political crisis. The character Sankar from the Neyyappams story is the protagonist of the novel.