A conversation between Rochelle Potkar and Nisha D’cruz

Rochelle Potkar’s latest collection of short stories, Bombay Hangovers, invites readers on a journey across 16 immersive short stories about characters that traverse class, caste, and religion in the bustling city of Mumbai. Rochelle’s writing nimbly explores the interior lives of people who aspire, struggle, lust, dream and love, all the while weaving a powerful sense of time and place through her stories. In the midst of an unsettling and grim situation in India, Rochelle allowed me the privilege of exploring her new book with her, as we reflected on the human experiences that connect us all. 

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Nisha D’cruz
Where did your writing journey begin, and what drew you from poetry to short stories? 

Rochelle Potkar
I began my writing career away from a corporate job, following upon a compulsive instinct to write. I had no blueprint or map. I wasn’t a literature student. It was pure discovery, finding a route through the labyrinth of ideas, epiphanies, rejections, and acceptances. I expressed first through short stories and detoured into poetry for a bit, and have now re-circuited to the short story form in a half-strategy, half-serendipity kind of way.  

Nisha D’cruz
What was your writing process for Bombay Hangovers like? Did you curate stories you had already written, or were you writing new stories with the intent to fit into this collection? 

Rochelle Potkar
Bombay Hangovers wasn’t a conscious book project. The first story, ‘The Metamorphosis of Joe Pereira’, was written in 2005 and the last story was written in 2017. Once I looked at the material, I saw that these stories shared a similar vein of the city and decided to string them together. 

Nisha D’cruz
Right-wing Hindu Nationalist party, Shiv Sena, ordered that Bombay be renamed Mumbai in 1995 to rid it of the unwanted legacy of the colonial period. Bombay Hangovers spans years both before and after this change. What’s in a name? Can you talk to me about the title of your collection? 

Rochelle Potkar
Yes, some stories in the book, especially ‘Fabric’ speaks of the closure of textile mills as witnessed in the early 1980s, while the rest are of modern-day. A city by any other name is the same – when I awakened to this fact, I realised you could change names of streets, stations, cities, even countries, but not what they were made up of – its heartbeats: its people. 

‘Mumbai’ is what the locals called it…from the iconic six-century-old Mumba Devi temple. So precolonial history wrapping around postcolonial history. I came to Bombay and live in Mumbai, so the book’s title had to reflect this journey of citizenry. Bombay Hangovers is for the bustling city, that intoxicates all five sensoria. Even its characters seep under your skin. Add ‘memory,’ which the Japanese consider the sixth sense where one feels truly hungover. 

Nisha D’cruz
Your characters are intricately crafted, highly nuanced beings. ‘The Arithmetic of Breasts’ takes readers on a journey through the early stages of lust and infatuation all the way to a long-term love that transcends physicality through the eyes of Narain. ‘Fabric’ explores the ambition and vanity of Kailas, and simultaneously the legacy of abuse left to his mistress and widow who find solidarity with each other. I even found myself sympathising with Joe in ‘The Metamorphosis of Joe Pereira’ – finally taking action in his old age, albeit in the form of violence. What is your process in crafting characters so raw and honest, those who do not shy away from exploring the full spectrum of the human experience? 

Rochelle Potkar
The process of crafting characters, for me, begins with the self-diagnostic process of knowing oneself better with each day until self-acceptance, and people-watching that is neutral, disallowing judgement or a categorisation into archetypes, for as long as you can hold it. I have also lived in close proximity or watched most of the characters in this book who became my hesitant muses.  

Uncomfortable truths and situations bring out the character in the character and as you rightly point out helped me explore ‘the full spectrum of human existence.’ 

Also…I don’t pre-empt the ends of character arcs or story arcs, but prefer being brave and foolish (all at the same time) by following them through the woods, to see where they will really go, when they will stop, apart from my second-guessing. Then the story that is discovered and developed is new even to me. 

Nisha D’cruz
Perhaps it is the English teacher in me that must ask – most of your stories take a third person point of view; a few (‘Mist,’ ‘Our Lovers,’ ‘Pyramid,’ ‘Slice’) insert the narrator as a character as well. Was this intentional? What makes them different to the others? 

Rochelle Potkar
I think every place, corner, window, courtyard does something to us. It’s a subconscious seeping in. In Mumbai – teeming with industrious ants and bees of working people – your home address and window view matters (like probably any city/town in the world). I thought of geographic racism – very real when one of my characters in Paranoia faces it, because he travels for two sweaty hours from a distant suburb to his downtown workplace, that he becomes game for discrimination. The significance of the Eastern and Western Express Highway is such that the western side is rumoured to be more developed – this, the subtleties of a postal address in which characters are judged, with prejudice.  

Nisha D’cruz
I’m not sure if this is an impossible question but – your favourite story in Bombay Hangovers and why? (Mine is ‘The Scent of a conscience’). 

Rochelle Potkar
I am glad to hear that! I was once trying to write a screenplay of it. Yes, it’s very difficult to pick a favourite. Let’s go with a Story-for-the-Day flavour, so we get to read and write as many.  

Nisha D’cruz
Your stories tackle gritty, honest and sometimes taboo subject matter. Did you ever experience any pushback or attempt to tone down or censor your writing in the publication process? 

Rochelle Potkar
Since I deliberate on social and psychological issues more than politics, and these are agnostic of political parties, I manage without much hesitation. But I did replace the word ‘beef’ in the last story with ‘meat.’ Ideas may have elasticity, but reality doesn’t.  

Nisha D’cruz
How do you feel now that Bombay Hangovers is out in the world, for others to experience? 

Rochelle Potkar
I am thrilled. I don’t regret the book being out in a pandemic. If we exist as writers, we have to roll the pen for as long as we live.  

Nisha D’cruz
What are you reading at the moment? 

Rochelle Potkar
I am reading a lot of poetry and screenplays, besides researching for my upcoming novel and fine-toothcombing my forthcoming manuscript of cross-translated English/Marathi poetry with poet Sanket Mhatre, where I will be debuting as a translator of Marathi poetry. 

Nisha D’cruz
You are an Indian woman who writes boldly and unflinchingly. What is your advice for emerging writers who might not always see themselves reflected in the mainstream? How do we persevere with authenticity and honesty? 

Rochelle Potkar
I follow the notion of the Temple and the Bazaar. When I write I shut out windows of distraction and noise: judgement, fear, phobia and write, edit, rewrite, submit, accept rejections, rewrite, resubmit until I succeed.  

When it’s the Bazaar time, I open doors and windows embracing all bouquets and brickbats. Even though they say public memory is short, things do stick on, like characters and stories. I am a believer of transience and temporality, just not a subscriber to malice.  

The new writer should view the road as a journey, less of a race. Embrace the sine waves, peaks and troughs I’d suggest and the lessons en route. With a long-term view of the hills and horizon, we are more forgiving of our own creative mistakes and the world hence follows suit. So write with faith, belief, self-awareness before memory evaporates. Before the sunset, create your footprints. If you are convinced about telling your stories, bet everything on that conviction. It’s a very short life. 

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For Australian readers, the book is available here.