‘Every writing rule and prescribed routine took me only so far’

An Interview with Devika Rege 

Illustration by Shyamli Singbal

I first met Devika Rege at her sister's wedding, and we soon realised we're both signed with the same literary agency (A Suitable Agency). Amidst lively discussions about Houllebecq, Gaitskill, the writing & publishing process and her time at Iowa Writer's Workshop, I gleaned a few things about her - her erudition, commitment to the craft, and razor-sharp insight into the interiority of characters, for a start. Over a year later, having read her explosive debut, Quarterlife, we decided to sit down and have a chat about process, craft, developing the novel, and the writer’s life, amongst other things. 

What was the journey that brought the book to life? How long did it take you to write?

I do not work chronologically, and I cannot recall a day when I sat down with the knowledge that I was writing the first page of my first novel. There must have been one, since all work begins somewhere, but it clearly did not feel significant enough to commit to memory. What I do recall is a phase in the run up to the 2014 general election in India when I felt a gathering conviction that I had found my subject, even though I knew so little of the story. It’s been almost a decade since, but did it take that long to write the novel? It’s hard to say. Quarterlife borrowed from earlier, unpublished work, and there were periods when I put it away and worked on material towards future novels that may or may not have already begun. I wish I could give you a tidier answer, but there has been nothing tidy about my journey.

You mentioned you did your on-ground research in Delhi. How pivotal was the city in the shaping of your novel?

 My on-ground research was limited to the locations in which the book is set, whether it’s small town Satara or New England. I did live in Delhi for a while, and the people I met there, from rickshaw drivers to friends in pubs were all talking politics in a way that was still to catch on in the rest of the country. Time in the capital also brought the experience of being from Maharashtra into perspective. While I felt engaged in a never-ending debate on the state of the nation, Delhi revealed to me the ways in which such conversations flatten the local and regional registers at which our politicians instinctively operate.

Do you agree when your work is termed as ‘political’? What was the genesis of the idea?

I’m tempted to ask after your meaning in using the word ‘political’. Do you mean polemical, in which case, the answer is no. I am less interested in advocating for a political position than in understanding how society and human nature works. Or do you mean political in that the novel is more of a lens than a mirror? In which case, the answer is yes. Quarterlife is a text that is deeply preoccupied with ethics, both in its form and the way in which the perspectives running through the work evolve.

What was the process of your research like?

Similar to that of a PhD student, I’d imagine, except that it was more open ended, and there was no institutional guidance or protection. You reach out to friends or NGOs or make cold calls. One connection leads to the next. You go places that could get you in trouble, or in worse trouble than you got, and catch your breath only after. In the train or taxi home, you take notes. Sometimes, a connection goes as far as a single chat. At other times, you shadow an interviewee for so long, you get invited to their wedding. I recently had the pleasure of meeting a photographer whose work on rural India I very much admire. She had a similar research process and we spoke of the incredible trust we must have felt in the world to have gone as freely into the field as younger women. Certainly, there was an element of privilege protecting us, not to mention the goodwill of many complete strangers, but there were also enough close shaves to keep us from recommending the template to anyone else.

What is your writing process? Is it daily or in bursts? Do you set a routine or wait for inspiration to strike?

On most days, I wake up early and write for a few hours. There’s a meditative quality to starting the day like that, but again, it would be too tidy to say that’s how the novel got written. The most useful insights or breakthroughs came when I was away from the desk. There was an intense period of five or six years when I worked on nothing else creatively and I thought about Quarterlife all the time. It didn’t matter where I was or what I was up to. I’d wake up in the middle of the night and write into my phone. There was a drugged quality to that phase and after a while I stopped questioning why or how I write and simply let the process lead me.

What books have been most influential in shaping your worldview and approach to writing?

Unless we’re speaking of a narrow aspect of the work, more than any one book, it’s usually a movement or a cannon that opens me up to a new conception of literature that I find valuable. The 19th century Russian novels I grew up with inspired me with their social criticism and ethical concerns. Later, post-colonial novels gave me the idea of writing about my own world. The modernists were significant; this notion that literature is a way to explore consciousness and not just tell a story came to me from them. And perhaps what felt most significant was the cross-pollination of these streams, at least on this first novel.

In the current political climate, you’ve written something urgent, and contentious for some. Were you surprised by the degree to which people have related to the novel?

While writing Quarterlife, I did not have any particular reader in mind. It might have been a Marathi reader encountering the book in translation in small-town Satara or an English reader in Delhi or New England. I was simply writing into the heart of my subject and towards my fullest comprehension of it. There were times in the publishing process when my editor and I joked that the book won’t sell more than three hundred copies but it still needed to be out there. I was fortunate to have an editor, the formidable and idealistic Rahul Soni, who still thinks in these ways. So to answer your question, yes, the novel’s reception has been a surprise.

Could you talk a bit about other works, both from South Asia and overseas, you feel speak to Quarterlife/have been pivotal in shaping it?

There are many South Asian works of art, literary and otherwise, that I felt in conversation with while writing Quarterlife. Some poetry collections that come to mind instantly are Shrikant Verma’s Magadh, Namdeo Dhasal’s A Current of Blood, Arun Kolatkar’s Jejuri, and Mirza Ghalib’s Temple Lamp. In photography, Gauri Gill’s rural Maharashtra, Ronny Sen’s protest works, and M S Gopal’s working class Mumbai showed me my world in new ways. V S Gaitonde, Nasreen Mohamedi, and Zarina Hashmi are inspirations that go beyond this book. If I may be honest, what I did not consume much of was novels set in post-2014 India. I often felt at a loss while trying to find ones that treated the subject in a way that was personally instructive, and perhaps what I attempted with Quarterlife, whether or not I have succeeded, is to write the novel that I wanted to read.

I know you’re a graduate of the Iowa Writers Workshop and have attended Yaddo as well. This is a question I’ve always wondered about; how important do you think formal education is in shaping an author’s voice? How helpful/ useful was the MFA experience in terms of constructing the novel?

I don’t think of the MFA or artist residencies as a formal education so much as modern day literary salons. At least in the places I went to, all of which were fully funded and therefore a gift, there was very little structure outside of reading copiously and critiquing peer work and attending talks on craft. You’ve already got access to that if you’re coming from Brooklyn or Oxbridge or have the privilege of counting intellectuals among your family friends. I did not have any of this when I was starting out, so my experiences at Iowa, in Delhi, and the two residencies I attended were crucial in giving me a wider sense of the artistic and literary conversations of my time. Ultimately, the process of writing Quarterlife challenged a lot of what I’d encountered, but it doesn’t invalidate those experiences. Because you have to learn something to unlearn or interrogate it. For several years after, I was not in contact with any literary circles or writers’ groups, and this isolation was as important as the company that went before it in shaping the novel.

What’s next for you in terms of writing? As trite as this might be but we have a lot of young writers who read Hammock; what advice would you give them, both in terms of  craft and the life of a writer?

I’m always writing things with no idea if any of it will take a form I’d like to publish. And what can I say by way of advice except that every writing rule and prescribed routine I encountered as a young writer took me only so far? When you have been writing for over a decade, and if you’ve done so with a sense of genuine exploration, you’re going to find long periods of time when you are utterly in the dark. When no one can tell you how to write the book you’re writing, or how to salvage all the missteps you have taken with your life to make this work possible. Try to remember in those moments that this is a good sign. That these are not the symptoms of creative failure, but the essence of creative freedom.

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Devika Rege was born in Pune, India. She holds an MFA from the Iowa Writers' Workshop, and teaches at Azim Premji University in Bangalore. Her debut novel, Quarterlife, released earlier this year. 

Alina Gufran is an editor for Hammock Magazine and a writer based in Goa, whose debut novel is represented by A Suitable Agency.