'I wrote 27 drafts for Em and the big Hoom...'

Trust Jerry Pinto to keep a room filled with impatient cellphoneloving Mumbaiites engaged for over an hour He along with old friend and fellow authorjournalist Naresh Fernandes were discussing his longstanding love affair inside the packed CK Nayudu Hall at the Cricket Club of India Churchgate It was about a book A book which he admitted took over 20 years to complete The end result is a poignant sensitive funny sepiatinted story about four members of the Mendes family residents of Mahim whose lives and eccentricities have been cemented for posterity thanks to Pintorsquos remarkable craft Em the protagonist The Big Hoom the background score Two people locked in a relationship that defies logic Witnessed watched and soaked in by the son and daughter Beyond this Jerry wonrsquot tell We wonrsquot either Instead he takes us on a walk down rewind road What was going through your mind as you approached the end of writing Em and the big Hoom One of the good things about how the brain is wired is that we can forget pain I love writing I love the doing of it but it is also a business that is lonely and there are no markers and signposts I would wish often to be an accountant if your books balance your job is done I would wish to be a stockbroker if yoursquove made a lot of money you know that yoursquove come out ahead Or so I think perhaps stockbrokers and accountants also look for beauty and balance and transcendence in their work It is difficult to imagine but perhaps they do But as a writer you can only believe in what you are doing Faith keeps you going and it is sometimes a very thin ray of light in the encircling gloom Did Jerry Pinto and the protagonist in the book meet at some point I believe that there is something of me in everything I write Every writerly journey begins when you throw open a window and look into yourself Which window is your decision as a writer What you see from that window likewise What you choose from the welter of you youishness youment youry ditto The glorious thing about fiction is that you can mix memory and desire and the only thing you have to worry about is whether it works or not What has changed the most in our city since the time you began writing this book I began writing this book 20 years ago maybe more than that I wrote 27 drafts of it and sometimes I think there have been 27 drafts of the city outside the balcony This is the way it must be A city that remains unchanged over 20 years must be in the state that Pompeii is petrified dead everything frozen in time Much of the change has as anyone knows been for the worse We live and love on a tinderbox at any time some tectonic plate will shift and we will all be crushed You would not wish that on an enemy but for a writer it is a source of unending inspiration of magnificent material What do you think wouldrsquove been Emrsquos first comments if she read this book She would have said ldquoWhere are the car chases Put in a luscious blonde some stolen diamonds and a body in the library And have a court scene at the endrdquo u00a0No I donrsquot know For me Em is a fascinating character because she isnrsquot predictable The language and humour in this book is fluid and evokes a nostalgic charm Were you happy with the way it read Each draft would leave me terrified that I was channeling some writer that I was pretending to be someone that I was striving for some effect that was beyond the scope of my powers I remember reading the fifth draft and thinking ldquoIf I should meet the guy who wrote this book I should advise him not to give up his day jobrdquo Each time it seemed as if the book was all wrong but when I did give up my day job when I did decide that I would spend the next so many years writing my novel putting it first concentrating on it and devil take the need to earn money and to travel and to buy books I thought ldquoRight this is it If it doesnrsquot work this time you should do something elserdquo What else Teaching kids mathematics Starting a rural libraries programme Whatever And then when it was over three years and 700000 words later I found it didnrsquot work But what did work were the sections that dealt with the four lovebattered Mendeses As for the humour I believe that if you can laugh a little cry a little love a little acknowledge a few flaws and work so that you can afford meals books and medical insurance yoursquore okay yoursquore in good mental health your world isnrsquot far from being as good as it gets But laughter is important very important The many moods of Mr Pinto Em and the Big Hoom lived in a different time How different would they have been in todayrsquos day and age I donrsquot know how different they could be I believe the pharmacopoeia has advanced greatly and so perhaps a modernday Em would have more choices But India produces 22000 doctors a year as opposed to 200000 engineers from Maharashtra alone How many of those 22000 doctors will become psychiatrists How many will work in small towns How will you deal with a case of paranoid schizophrenia in a village that has no primary health care centre and where you might lose a baby from diarrhea every other month What will happen to the man who loves the paranoid schizophrenic in that village How will he cope with the decisions he must make Whatever else changes one thing will not we will never be immune from the people we love Their hurts will always make us ache more than our own If that ceases to happen we will lose our right to call ourselves human Em and the big Hoom Jerry Pinto Aleph Book Companyu00a0Rs 495 Available at leading bookstores Finally your first stories for a newspaper were published in MiDDay what was it like to see your byline in print How different if it all is the feeling from now after yoursquove completed this book When my first piece appeared I carried the paper around and kept taking surreptitious looks at it confirming that my name was still there that I now belonged to the tribe of writers and journalists and thinkers and wordsmiths and mindbenders and thoughtformers and nountinkers and adverbers and hacks and scribes and journalists and protohistorians It was magic and whenever I crib about what I am paid or what scutwork one must do to make a living I remind myself that Irsquom paid to do what I love doing and it doesnrsquot get better than that MiDDay has a special place in my heart My first pieces came out on its back pages I still have a handwritten note from Hutokshi Doctor who was then Features Editor asking my agent if I would like to write some stories hellipAgent Yes agent I was at the time making a living on teaching mathematics privately And my friend Rashmi Palkhivala would keep saying I should write for the papers I should write funnies I said only halfjoking that my ego would not take rejection So she said ldquoYou write them Irsquoll type them and take them to the editors You wonrsquot have to know whether they reject you or notrdquo In the next week fourteen pieces came pouring out of me She typed them up and took them to MiDDay They accepted twelve I was over the moon but within twenty seconds I was asking ldquoWhich were the two they didnrsquot like And why didnrsquot they like themrdquo The Buddha was right there is no end to desireu00a0