In Shruti Swamy’s agreeable admission novel, The Archer—a advancing of age anecdotal set in 1960s and 1970s Bombay—Vidya’s determinative years are chaotic aback her mother disappears. However, already Vidya discovers the classical ball anatomy Kathak, it becomes her life’s focus, an attraction that lasts alike afterwards she leaves for academy and avalanche in love. In The Archer, Vidya grapples with accepted questions—can one be adherent to both art and family? Can one transcend a awry ancestors legacy?
Author Shruti Swamy is a Kundiman fiction fellow, a Steinbeck Adolescent at San Jose State University, the champ of two O. Henry awards, and the almsman of abundant residencies and grants. Her admission abbreviate adventure collection, A Abode Is a Body, was shortlisted for the PEN/Robert W. Bingham Prize.
Swamy and I batten afresh by buzz and discussed autograph about motherhood, publishing during the pandemic, and Swamy’s constant adulation of libraries. This chat has been edited and condensed.
Deirdre Sugiuchi: In The Archer, Vidya becomes bedeviled with Kathak, a ball anatomy that had a activation in post-colonial India. How did you become absorbed in Kathak? What fabricated you focus on this time period? The apple you congenital feels seamless. How did you conduct research?
Stories by women writers about the body’s accommodation for ruin, decay, and transformation
Aug 7 – Shruti Swamy
Shruti Swamy: I was built-in and aloft in America. My parents both grew up in Bombay in the 1960s and ’70s, and they larboard at the end of the ’70s for America. The time and abode accept been fomenting in my acuteness aback I was born.
I watched Hindi movies that were set in Bombay and fabricated in the ’60s and ’70s—there were absolute burghal streets in the background. I heard belief from my parents, from my relatives. I visited Bombay, Mumbai now. It’s absolutely altered from the time I was autograph about but it acquainted allegorical and admirable and adventurous and accustomed in a way that I capital to accumulate exploring.
My mom is a classically accomplished Kathak dancer. She chock-full assuming by the time that I entered the age of memory. I’ve never absolutely apparent her dance. But there was consistently that affectionate of ambient in my household, admirable pictures of my mother performing, books, and Indian classical music about the house. My dad is an Indian classical musician, accomplished in both North Indian and South Indian music. He plays the Bansuri, which is a bamboo flute, and he additionally sings. I grew up in, in retrospect, a beautiful, actual affluent ambiance of classical music and dance.
I acquisition Kathak blood-tingling because, while there are anecdotal aspects to the dance, there’s additionally genitalia that are absolutely non-narrative, focused on the absolutely rhythmic, intense, absolute able and absolutely fast, sharp, admirable turns that acquainted affectionate of modernist, pre-narrative, pre-language. As a biographer who’s consistently grappling with accent and narrative, it was blood-tingling to be able to be in addition art anatomy that could transcend those limitations.
DS: The fable of Eklavya (a adept archer who cuts off his own deride to amuse his Authority Drona) is axial to The Archer. Did you abound up audition that story?
SS: There are these banana books alleged Amar Chitra Katha— my dad would banal up on them aback we went to India—that characterize these belief from Hindu belief and Indian history. Some are audibly academic stories, like Dharma trumps all. But alike aural that, there’s so abundant complexity, moral ambiguity.
Eklavya was consistently a adventure that I grappled with. I couldn’t accept how if you were a teacher, if you were a guru, that you would not account your student. Abounding of the Hindu belief that accept been adverse to me, I’ve had continued conversations about with my mom, who is a feminist. She’s offered me a altered account on them. I got the adeptness to attending at altered angles of the adventure in allotment through those conversations.
DS: One of the capacity you abode is actuality a woman and a mother in a apple which is rapidly changing.
SS: The ancestry of this book came from these belief I was audition about my ancestors and aloof apperception that world, but as I went added in, I accomplished what was comestible my absorption in the adventure was that it was a way of attractive at questions that were pertinent to my own life, admitting the pressures on Vidya are altered than the pressures on me.
Vidya’s actual amorous about dance, but she’s not absolutely abiding of how to accomplish a activity of art and what that looks like. Not alike aloof in a way that’s accomplishing civic expectations of herself, but how to be a actuality in the apple and accomplish a activity of art? How to be a woman in the world? How to advance a acceptable activity and accept art at the centermost of your life? These are questions that I was grappling with as I was autograph the book and still am, as I anticipate about what our obligations are to anniversary other. To me, that’s absolutely what this book is about, and it explores it in a absolutely specific time and place, and specific cultural expectations and demands, but additionally it feels, in some ways, abutting to my adventures in this added time and place.
DS: Vidya’s mother suffers from postpartum depression. There aren’t abounding depictions of postpartum abasement in literature. What aggressive you to address about postpartum depression?
SS: Aboriginal on aback I was writing, I apprehend a absolutely sad New York Times commodity about a mother who committed suicide by jumping off the top of her architecture with her adolescent in her arms. Studies appearance that you’re added acceptable to acquaintance postpartum abasement if you don’t accept any adolescent care, if you’re the alone ancestor demography affliction of a newborn, and you don’t feel like you accept a lot of affecting or concrete activity support, that that absolutely predisposes you to acquaintance postpartum depression. I anticipate of (postpartum depression) as a civic abortion rather than an alone problem. It seems to me, if you were demography affliction of a child, a bairn baby, and you’ve aloof accustomed birth, it’s actual attainable to brainstorm how somebody could bound lose all faculty of cocky and angle and maybe alike joy.
There’s added things activity on with Vidya’s mother. This accomplished book, in some ways, is an accepting about the complication of motherhood and the things that are harder to allocution about. This is additionally a book about a adolescent who has been greatly bootless by both her parents and how that impacts her. I was cerebration about it added broadly as what it agency to be a mother and what it agency to abort as a mother.
DS: I grew up in the Mississippi Delta and aboriginal on accustomed how the degree anatomy of India and the abysmal South are similar. Can you altercate autograph about degree and chic structure?
SS: Yeah, it was absolutely terrifying, but I capital to acquaint the accuracy as I accept empiric and apprehend about and researched. I additionally accept to accede that I’m American, and I capital to be acute to my position.
I’ve had conversations with bodies area they’ve been like, “Oh, I didn’t apperceive somebody could be poor and Brahmin,” about Vidya. At the alpha of the book, Vidya’s ancestors is appealing abundant on the border of abjection but she is in a position of advantage because she’s Brahmin, and that is article that is airy to her.
There’s some characters I capital to pay absorption to, but I didn’t appetite to address alfresco of my experience. I didn’t appetite to acceptation to acquaint anybody else’s story, but I capital to accomplish abiding that those characters were bodies and that I, as the writer, looked at them and saw that those were animal bodies accomplishing these acts of labor.
DS: With the opening, you use accent to aback a ambit amid Vidya and her mother. What were your decisions advancing into that?
SS: One of the things that this book is about is how alike afore you anatomy memories your parents affectionate of actualize this little careful anatomy about you, that you can body a cocky into, which, in a advantageous situation, they booty the anatomy abroad and again there’s the self, animated there that has been able to aloof abound in this way, protected. So abundant of what I feel like a ancestor does is aloof attractive at that adolescent and saying, “I see you, I still see you.”
If you don’t accept that, how do you accomplish a self? Vidya does it through dance.
That she/I about-face is absolutely important to me. I was aggravating to analyze area you appear into a faculty of self. If we’ve been lucky, we appear into it gradually, because we’ve had our parents, our caregivers, giving us this adventure of ourselves. But if you appear into it yourself, you appear into it all weird, about violently. Maybe it’s scary, or exhilarating.
DS: I acclimated to be a librarian. I heard on this podcast (with Daniel Handler) that you were already declared on a account articulation as a “library user” and you admired that, that actuality a library user was the aboriginal way you beheld yourself. Can you allocution about libraries?
SS: How abundant time do you have? I could absorb hours talking about how abundant I adulation libraries.
I was absolutely aloof cerebration aback to the alpha of the communicable aback I was like, “What did I do?” They’d beatific an email in March 2020 saying, “The libraries are closing for two weeks.”
I actually ran to the library.
DS: Me too!
SS: I was aloof bazaar spreeing, avaricious books off the shelves… And again they bankrupt and you couldn’t alike acknowledgment books, which was so wild. I was aloof active with these accidental books that I had panic-checked out for eight months or a year or something.
Now I accept a abhorrent faculty of what my activity would be like after a activity library system. This is the longest that I’d anytime gone after accepting admission to a library. If I bought all the books that I read, I would not accept any money for annihilation else. I’m a ardent reader.
The library is the aspect of American association that brings me the best achievement and the best activity of absolute patriotism. My parents didn’t abound up with attainable library systems. They didn’t accept those in India. I anticipate they had lending libraries. My mom consistently talks about abject bottomward to read, aimlessly account for a little while, a book in this lending library, but she couldn’t booty the books home with her. Aback my parents got to America, they were both ardent library users. Some of my ancient memories are at the library.
It’s admirable to me that a authoritative academy exists to say that, “Books matter, art matters. That everybody should accept access.” If somebody wants to apprentice how to comedy the guitar, they should be able to advise themselves for free. If somebody wants to apprehend James Baldwin, or assignment on their resume, or apprehend a poem, or whatever, we accede this is a attainable acceptable and that this advice and ability and amusement should be attainable to all of us.
It’s so adored to me, and I can’t even, sometimes, accept libraries still exist. Just. I can’t. Words abort me.
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