8.17 Daisy Rockwell: On Ghosts, Secrets, and the Stories That Haunt Us

What happens when the ghosts you see are more reliable than the people you know?

In this episode, Daisy Rockwell, the internationally acclaimed, Booker Prize-winning translator and author, takes us inside the unique world of her latest novel, Alice Sees Ghosts, a family story where a young woman sees her grandfather’s ghost, who nudges her to unearth buried family secrets.

Daisy shares how she began translating Hindi and Urdu literature and what inspired her to write her own fiction. She shared how she weaves history and the supernatural into a story that travels across continents and how she creates characters that are anything but ordinary.

Plus, we get a look into her writing process, her upcoming projects, and how winning a major literary prize has changed her life.

Tune in to experience a deep dive into family, ghosts and the beautifully unsettling way the past can haunt the present.

Books mentioned in the episode:
 1. Tomb of Sand by Geetanjali Shree
2. Mai by Geetanjali Shree, translated by Nita Kumar
3. Taste by Daisy Rockwell
4. Heart Lamp: Selected Stories by Dr. Banu Mushtaq
5. History’s Angel by Anjum Hasan
6. Falling Walls by Upendranath Ashk, translated by Daisy Rockwell
7. A Gujarat Here, A Gujarat There by Krishna Sobti, translated by Daisy Rockwell
8. Our Friend, Art (upcoming memoir by Daisy Rockwell)

Movie mentioned in the episode:
 Frozen (2013)

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‘Books and Beyond with Bound’ is the podcast where Tara Khandelwal and Michelle D’costa uncover how their books reflect the realities of our lives and society today. Find out what drives India’s finest authors: from personal experiences to jugaad research methods, insecurities to publishing journeys. Created by Bound, a storytelling company that helps you grow through stories. Follow us @boundindia on all social media platforms.

Transcript

Tara Khandelwal: 0:49

Foreign Hi everyone. Welcome back to Books and Beyond. So today's episode is about crumbling family secrets alcoholic mothers and grandfathers that haunt you. But before we dive in, don't forget to hit that follow button on Spotify Apple podcast so you never miss an episode, and please leave us a rating or review. Now, let's get into it today. I'm so excited because we have with us Daisy Rockwell. She's an award winning translator of Hindu and Urdu poet literature, and of course, you must all recognize her name because she's won the international Booker Prize for her translation of Tomb of sand by gitanjadi Shri. Daisy lives in Vermont, but through her writing and translations, she's brought us so much closer to voices and worlds that cross continents and brought us closer to our own continent. And our latest story is a family story, and you know how I love those so Alice's ghost is a novel. It follows Alice who one day sees her grandfather's ghost, and he nudges her to bring up these Buried Secrets of her family's history and her family's past. And along the way, she drags in her fiance, Ronit Roy, who suspects that she might be losing her mind because she's seeing ghosts, but can't help being pulled into the chaos with her, and we are taken across the continent of India, across the country of India, in search of these family secrets and how they unravel. So welcome Daisy. So excited to have

Daisy Rockwell: 2:23

you here. Thank you for inviting me. Okay, so

Tara Khandelwal: 2:27

before we get into your book. I just would love to know, you know, a little bit more about you. So you grew up in Western Massachusetts, which is as far from India's anywhere, and you know, you're known for your translations of Hindi and Urdu literature. So I want to know, you know, because that's so unique. I want to know how you first got into learning these languages, and what about them drew you so deeply into them that it made you want to make this a focus of your work.

Daisy Rockwell: 2:56

Well, I love learning languages and I love grammar. I know that sounds strange to a lot of people, but I love grammar. I love the way that languages work. And so when I was in college, you know, in the United States, we can, we can, kind of, I don't know, browse more our interests than you can in an Indian University. So I had studied French and German and Latin and ancient Greek, and I wanted to just try a language that I didn't know anything about at all. And so, you know, long story short, hindi fit into my schedule. And so I just kind of wandered into it, and I never wandered out because, you know, for somebody that loves languages, India is a fantastic place, because there's so many of them. And you know, if you study some Sanskrit, you learn about, like, just the this intense study of grammar in ancient India. So I just kind of never quit, because there's a never ending treasure trove of languages to think about and learn about. Of course, I ended up really sticking most of all to Hindi and Urdu, but they are more than enough challenge for me as a translator. So, yeah, that's kind of the background, yeah.

Tara Khandelwal: 4:32

I mean, you know, picking up languages when you're an adult is so difficult, and then obviously, you know, translating such pieces of text and winning prizes. I mean, I, I'm so fascinated by this journey. So you were in college, and you picked up, you know, Hindi, and you really loved it, and and now cut to, you know, winning the international broker prize for translating etanjali Sri s tunes of sand, which is also a book about history and family, because it's a story of an 80 year old woman who gets depressed after the death of her husband, and she decides to travel to Pakistan to uncover some secrets about her life her family. So how did this partnership with Gitanjali Sri happen, and how did the translation work, in general, begin for you?

Daisy Rockwell: 5:23

So mostly I had been translating, you know, things that I just really wanted to see come into the English language. So it was all kind of my own choice, and the heavy focus on, like modern classics, things from the 50s and 60s and stuff like that. Because, you know, I have an. Academic background. I did get a PhD in South Asian studies, so my interest in translations kind of came out of that academic background. Although translation is not regarded as like a worthwhile pursuit by scholars, because I don't know. I think that they kind of have an oversimplified view of it as a mechanical process or something like that. But for for most literary translators, it's a it's a creative it's a form of creative writing, as well, as, you know, like a process of turning something from one language into another so, so I started out doing translation in graduate school, but I, like, there's, you know, I had, didn't follow any particular career path or anything like that. I just kind of, you know, fell into it, and then, like, abandoned it for a while, and then kind of got back into it. But anyway, eventually I had started to translate a few books. I had a few publications, and it happened that Deborah Smith, who is the editor, founder of the press, tilted axis press in UK, which is a is a press dedicated solely to translations of works from less commonly published languages, like, I mean, less commonly published in the UK. So so like Asia, Africa, that kind of thing. So she was in India scouting, like kind of looking around for books, the Indian books that she could get translated. And she heard she had read Geeta Anjali Sri book, my her novel Maya is her first novel, a translation of it. And she heard that there was a new novel that was considered very interesting. So she's friends with Aruna Singha, who's the very prolific Bangla translator, and who's also a friend of mine. And so she said, who can do this, this translation? Do you think? And he said that he thought it would be me. So I just met up with him, and we talked about it. And then I did a little sample for her, which was, like, just five pages, and it's, you know, kind of harder than I thought it would be, but I kind of brushed it off, and she liked it. So then I did more samples for, like, a book proposal, for a book proposal, you usually do, like, I don't know, 25 pages or something, so that the publishers can get an idea. So I did that. And that also was sort of surprisingly hard, but I also brushed it off. And then, and then, when I really got into it in earnest, I realized I had gotten myself into something like really insane in terms of translation, like the challenge that it presented, and, you know, I made it out the other end, but we said she and I corresponded only via Email. The whole time was during the pandemic. We never spoke. We'd never met him. We send 1000s of emails, and we're both very opinionated, so there were some, you know, clashes, but you know, I couldn't have done it without her, because I would show other people things like, say, What? What? What what do you think this means? What is she doing here? And they would say, Yeah, I have no idea. Like, you're on your own and so, so I had to get, you know, I had to talk to her at length about what she meant and how she envisioned certain things, like some of it was, you know, can it definitely could not be translated literally, because that's not what she meant at all.

Tara Khandelwal: 9:52

I think there could be another book published just of those emails and the process of translation, because that process, you know, I can't imagine how also rigorous it is. And we've interviewed a lot of translators on this podcast, including arunabh as well, and they really all echo the statement that you said, that it's a creative process, and obviously, you know, things can't help but get lost in translation. But coming to this novel of yours, the Alice's ghost, right? This is also a family centric story. It's based on family, and it's not. I love the title Firstly, because it's extremely intriguing. So it's not a traditional ghost story. It's not a spine chilling horror. It's a little absurd. It's dreamy, it's funny. You know, Alice, who's a protagonist, she sees her grandparents study one day, and she's oddly calm about this visitation and about being haunted and. And you've said that this story has been in your mind since 2014 which is a very long time. So how did this idea for your novel come to you, and how did it grow or change over the years before finally, you know, releasing this book in 2025

Daisy Rockwell: 11:05

Yeah, I guess one thing I would start by saying that, you know, I'm sure people think, Oh, she, you know, she got a translation price. I know she wants to write her own novel, but I actually wrote it almost, you know, the bare bones of it I had written when I had only translated one book. So back in 2014 2015 that's when I was writing it. And then, you know, it's very hard to get fiction published, and I was getting having a lot of success with my translations getting published, so I just kind of put it in a drawer like I wasn't. You know, sometimes people will tell you stories like, I sent it to like, 100 publishers or, you know, like, like, so I didn't do that like I was. I sort of tried to get it published, but, like, not hard enough, so it's but then it, and then I kind of even forgot about it, but then it just kept lingering in my mind. Like there's something about creating characters and creating a story where they become real in your mind, you know, like they like, sort of take birth in your mind, and then they don't go away, you know. So Alice stayed in my mind that whole time. And so I eventually when an editor, my editor at Bloomsbury, was the one who asked me if I had any fiction, I think that he'd like my agent had hinted that I did, and so he said he'd like to see it. I've actually written three novels, and one of them was published by a small press in the US, like back before I started, wrote Alice called taste, but then that that publishing company went under. So anyway, I've had a checkered career as far as as publishing my fiction goes but, yeah, so how did I get this idea? That's what you asked me, right? So, you know, there are just these things that float around in our heads, like from our lives, right? Like little fragments. And what this story started at is me trying to kind of put into words this sort of culture that I grew up in, partly of like these kind of this kind of dying aristocratic culture in New England, so which means, like Massachusetts and Connecticut, that kind of Northeast of the United States. So they these families that were once very wealthy and very grand, and like there's the resources are dwindling, and they have these big houses that are sort of falling apart, and nobody has enough money, but they all still feel very grand. And they also become very, very eccentric. Like these are very eccentric kinds of people. And I know I've, I've met people like this in India too. So is like, there are these communities can probably be found in all different places. But I kind of wanted to express, like, kind of document, almost that that life, and I think I first started imagining the grandmother Nanette was, kind of she came into my mind first. And this person with a um, kind of a somewhat shameful secret, but like, incredible elegance, um, who was very reluctant to let go of her control over the family narrative.

Tara Khandelwal: 15:08

Yeah, yeah. I'm always very fascinated by also, you know, the how wealth decays, and I think you've shown that really well. And what's also interesting is that there's an India side to the story, and there's the America side to the story, because we start off, you know, as you said, in this house with Alice's family, and then as his grandma, Nanette, she passes away. And what happens after that? We see a whole host of characters. We see Alice's mother, Claire, we see her Claire's siblings, and then Alice. Goes to India with her fiance, and we see his family. And you take readers to Kolkata. You take readers to the hills. So I wanted to ask you, you know, firstly, as an American who's deeply connected to South Asian literature, how did you make sure you're writing about India? Because it's very authentic. So what was your writing process to write about? You know, these habits or these rules, like you focused, you know, you showcased Alice's mother in law really well, debashree, the relationship between them. Even drawn. It's character, right? It was very, very Indian. And the whole flavor of the travels and everything, you brought that out really, really well. And since it's fiction, it's obviously different from translation. So how did you go about sort of getting in that Indian flavor?

Daisy Rockwell: 16:44

Well, I mean, for one thing, I have spent a lot of time in India, and I know a lot of Indian people, so that certainly helps. I think my focus was on, yeah, making sure that I, you know, you don't always have to follow that, that old rule of right about what you know. But I felt like it was really important for me to do that in the context of India, to write about what I definitely knew. So like I, I avoided, you know, like I didn't, didn't try to write about places or kinds of people that I didn't know. I like I, I specifically know many Bengali intellectuals, and I was, at one point, had a job at University of California, Berkeley, where we were raising money for a Bangla program. And I had to meet donors constantly and go to like Bangla, you know, kind of festivals in the San Francisco Bay Area. And we and even went to Kolkata for this, and we went to Shantiniketan, and we were, like, talking to lots of people that talking about an exchange program. So I got very immersed. And so in that kind of community, this sort of upper middle class intellectual community. So I felt like very confident about that. And you know, because, like, let's face it, a lot of writing by non Indians about India is very cringe. And, you know, Orientalist often. So I was my specific goal, also to not get fall into those traps and like some kind of Eat, Pray, Love, kind of trap. So again, focusing on what I absolutely know is a good way of doing that and writing with respect, you know, so even if like a character is somewhat comical, to not like go overboard with the parody, because I think you it's better to if you're gonna do like crazy parody, to do it on your own community rather than somebody else's like, that's just a better bet in the long run. So, so trying to write with with love and affection, you know about the characters that I created was, I think, a big part. And then, yeah, not inserting anything exotic. And, you know, that probably will, like, make Western audiences not like it that much, because there's she doesn't like go and and find some sort of spiritual redemption. And she has that had that, like, bad stomach problem. And Rishikesh, and, you know, when she went on a yoga retreat, so, like, I was actually kind of writing against the grain of of that sort of spiritual tourism and that kind of thing. In fact, she's the most Alice is really the most, you know, illogical person in the whole book, you know, so, like, I wasn't making the Indian people be the like, the the mystics and then the Western person seeking enlightenment. She's actually more mystical, as you said, very matter of fact about the mystical phenomena that she's encountering,

Tara Khandelwal: 20:31

yeah, and it's actually her fiance, Ronit, who is from India, who's also the psychiatrist, and that's how they both meet, because she has, she goes, you know, for a visit to his clinic, and he comes in with the logic and skepticism, because he. Often thinks that Alice is imagining things. And I really like how those two perspectives played against each other, because, you know, you never know who's right throughout the book. And what I also really liked is, you know, the concept of seeing ghosts, and how in different cultures, it's accepted versus not accepted. So in India, you know, you see Alice, who's kind of not being shame, but who's not believed entirely by her fiance, Ronne, who lives in the West, and who is sort of this very logical and rational person. And then you see her come to India, and she talks about seeing her grandfather's ghost with ronit's parents. And Ron and friends are like, Yes, I mean, you know, very nonchalant about it, and just accept it as par for the course, of course, you've seen your grandfather's ghost, and I really like that difference. And even then, when she goes and meets, you know, some family of hers in masoori, and they also talk very casually about, yeah, I mean, your grandfather's ghost is right here. So then you really start questioning it even more and more, you know, who's, you know, seeing things and who isn't, and is the person who's at other people who actually sort of seeing the ghosts? You know, should we believe them or and should we always look at things with that lens of skepticism? So I really like that contrast that you brought about in the book.

Daisy Rockwell: 22:17

Thank you. I, um, you know, it was funny when the book was first announced, like, with a blurb on Instagram, and everybody, like Bloomsbury put up a little blurb and stuff. And lots of people said to me, Oh, wow. Like, I didn't expect you to write speculative fiction. And I thought, did I, like, I didn't think I had written speculative fiction, because I don't think of it as you said. It's not a spine tingling ghost stories, you know, it's not a sort of genre type ghost story. And I thought about it a lot, and somebody said to me, Well, what if it's not speculative fiction? What is it? What do you think you wrote? And I said, Well, I think it's literary fiction. And I, you know, I was brought up to believe in ghosts, and so to me, it's realism, you know, like I was, my mother told me when I was very young that ghosts that actually scared me a lot, but she said ghosts could show up at any time, and you just ask them what they need, and like, you know, help them out, because they just sometimes they have stuff they need to finish up, and so you have to help them out. So she was very matter of fact about it, and she herself when she died. Well, seven years ago, she she kept saying that she helped, you know that she would come and haunt us if she could. And you know we haven't. We haven't seen her, but certainly her presence is felt, and I know she would show up if she could. So to me like, yeah, there's always this possibility that a ghost will appear, even if I myself have not had, you know, interesting conversations with my grandfather or something the way that Alice has,

Tara Khandelwal: 24:05

yeah, I kind of also believe in ghosts and so like my grandmom, she used to live with us like she's not exactly my grandma, but she kind of raised us. And I remember asking her, you know, mean, have you ever sort of hung out with ghosts? She's like, Yeah. I mean, they would just hear a bunch of them. The other day, we were all chatting together. I was like, Who are these people? She's like, my friends. I was like, great. That's fantastic. I'm so happy for you. And I just found the whole tonality of it as well. It was so normalized. But coming back to sort of, you know, the publishing part of this, because this book is published, I think, is it? It's only in India right now that it's published. Yeah, it's only in India. It's only in India. So and I and, as I said, you know, I love, sort of, it felt like a very Indian book, and some parts of it didn't feel as American, I know, in the first part, you know, it's set in America, and we get to see Alice's whole American family and all of those things. But since sort of this book was getting published in India, Were there certain things that you edited out of the American part of this book to make it more palatable to Indian readers.

Daisy Rockwell: 25:29

No, no, this is, I mean, there, whatever editing was done was pretty minimal, and this was exactly, you know, basically, exactly what I gave my editor. And, you know, sometimes he would question things that I put in the Indian, yeah. Section, um, and, like, he would say, Why? Why is Alice wearing a sari like to walk up the hill in Missouri? Like, that's so impractical. And I said, you know, come on chirog, like, you know, white people are weird, right? Wear funny clothes in India. And so, you know, we would have, like, some small arguments like that, but not that much. The only other problem he had was because I never the draft I gave him. I had never explet made explicit the time period. So he was very confused. He's like, why didn't she take a cell phone to with her to Maine, you know, in that last section. And so I said, Well, I in I have realized, I said, in my mind it was like 2001 and so, like, I got my first cell phone in maybe 2003 so, like, this was a time when some people had cell phones and some people didn't. And so when he once he understood the time period, like, because he also felt like the Masri I was describing, like, nowadays it's like, really, really fancy, you know, but when I was describing still had a kind of dilapidated aspect. So once he understood the time period, he asked me to make it a little more clear, so I dropped in references to 911, in different parts of it. I don't know if you noticed, like, just little subtle references, like someone's reading the paper and, you know, or, like, there are these big banners about, like, these colors don't run and united we stand. These were big, like, say phrases that were printed everywhere in the United States at that time. Or, like, Ron had having trouble getting through security at the airport. So, so that was actually the biggest change that we made, was like to really nail down the time frame.

Tara Khandelwal: 27:55

I think that makes sense, and before we go little deeper into it, you know, for those listeners who are who are new to the book and who may not have read it yet, because Alice is such an intriguing character, and you know, we speak about how she sees ghosts, and she goes on this quest, and she has all these amazing relationships. Can you tell me and our listeners more about the Alice character in this book? Who is she? What does she want?

Daisy Rockwell: 28:24

Yeah, so Alice, like I was talking before about this sort of crumbling aristocracy, and Alice is, you know, a wasp, like an white, Anglo Saxon Protestant as I am, like, I'm not Alice, but, though, I'm Sure there are parts of me in, in her, but she, so there's a lot of qualities that are very waspy about her. So, like she, there's a certain coldness to her, which is one thing that the US publishers don't like, because they want all the characters to be like, you know, like the main character has to be hashtag, relatable kind of person. And so she's so kind of chilly that they find that off putting. But to me, that's a really important quality about her. She is a little bit of their worldly in her chilliness, and she's, you know, she's had this upbringing that was very weird and eccentric, and it's cut her off, you know, from probably a lot of normal socialization and that kind of thing. And she spent a lot of time in this old house where all the books are, like, you know, 50 to 100 years old, like with her grandmother. And, you know, her education has been spotty. She didn't go to university or anything like that. So, so she's very, very well read in a certain way, but she's not very educated, and that's part of the sort of conflict with her fiance, because he's extremely educated and, you know, rational, as we've said, and she's, like, a little bit kind of disconnected from reality, but he is really fascinated with her because of that too, like I there's this whole part where he, you know, it's revealed that his his NRI cousin had come to visit him when he was young, and they watched these like Olympic ice skating. Um, stars, and become sort of obsessed. And so she's like an ice princess, dude. So he likes the coldness. She's like, you know, like Elsa and frozen only I wrote her before Elsa existed, obviously. But anyway, yeah, so I think that kind of sums it up, that she's like another he's not really that connected to reality. And the the title, which you'd mentioned, Alice's ghost, like, to me, is also a little bit of a pun, because, you know, we say like she looked like she'd seen a ghost. So it's like, she's, she's sort of very, she's very sanguine about, like, the actual ghosts. But there's these, you know, let's call them living ghosts in her life that are freaking her out. So she, like, is less common and even becomes, you know, like actually loses her ability to speak at times because of the sort of the horrors of the living ghosts in her life, like her mother.

Tara Khandelwal: 31:53

You know, I didn't know that American publishing didn't like such characters, but they're very interesting. I felt I was very fascinated with her because she's sort of, you know, as you said, very chilly and cold and and and sort of impervious in a way. So you want to break through that. I said, you want to get to know her. And you said, you know, spoke about her mother, and one of the standouts to me in the book was her mother, because her mother's is raging alcoholic, and she's very, very manipulative, and she wants to be needed from she wants Alice to sort of, you know, need her. But when she does, when Alice does portray that, you know, I need you, then she becomes resentful. And Alice is a very naturally independent child, and that drives her mother even more nuts, because she's not getting her mother's not getting the attention that she wants. So I really love that relationship. That was a very fascinating kind of portrayal of a mother daughter bond, which I don't think I've seen before, like I've seen books about, you know, moms having the Munchausen syndrome, and TV shows about that, I've seen, sort of, you know, obviously moms that are addicted, but I've not seen this kind of a relationship that, you know, this mother really wants the child to be dependent on her, but at the same time feels sort of very resentful, and at times, almost feels like she loves her, but she also doesn't love her. So can you speak more about that?

Daisy Rockwell: 33:37

Yeah, I think it's actually very rare to find like fiction that describes a truly toxic mother daughter relationship. Like, there's always this urge to, how make there be a happy ending. Or, like, you know, like that, like, there's the reason why it's toxic is because there's some unresolved issue that they have to understand one another. There's a generational divide, or, you know, a terrible secret, or something like that. But yeah, in this book, like, the only resolution is kind of that the mom can only has to, can't stay in the house if she comes to visit, like, So, sort of a quasi restraining order on her, because she's not really like, like, to me, she's like, I don't know if you're familiar with personality disorders, like as a psychological category, but she has, in my mind, she has borderline personality disorder, and I know I have known a lot of people, and my Well, my own mother, I would say it was mildly borderline, but not an alcoholic. And, you know, obviously nothing like this person, because she's really over the top. But borderlines are sort of considered incurable. And so I think that I was kind of striving for that, like to think about a kind of a relationship between a mother and daughter that's just truly toxic and and I think that the solution, you know, the thing that Alice is looking for some way to, like, have a sense of family outside of her mom, you know, because it's not possible to have any family with the mother like. It's just simply not gonna happen. The mother's not gonna come around. So think that was what I was kind of driving at with with her,

Tara Khandelwal: 35:57

yeah, it almost seems like yeah, as you said, right? Irreparable. And that's something that we don't see often at all in mother daughter relationships. So I want to come to, you know, how's your life changed after winning the Booker Prize? And I can imagine that even sort of like people's expectations and the expectations from your work would have increased a lot. And, you know, has it changed any way, the way you write or the way you look at your work at

Daisy Rockwell: 36:29

all, yeah. I mean, it's changed things a lot in the sense that it's, you know, it's easier to get my work published. I am asked to, you know, give a lot of lectures and podcasts and new interviews, and I go like to festivals, so I'm sort of very much busier person because of it. As far as my work goes, it's always been important to me that my work, like exists in its own space, and that I rise to my own standards. So I don't, you know, I don't work for other people. I don't write a novel that I think everybody's going to want to read like it's, you know, if nobody wants to read my novel, that's okay. I mean, that the only problem with that is that then, you know, it's hard to publish the next one, because you have to have some sales. So in that sense, I do want people to like my novel, but I don't. I don't write it for a specific audience or to please anybody, or to fit a trope or something like that. It's just something that comes from inside me. Translation, like it's not, as I wouldn't say, comes from inside me, but like I I work on my own, and it's a it's a solitary pursuit. So no matter how many like lid fests I go to, that doesn't impact the way that I translate. And I always have held myself to high standards, and I just continue to plug away, because what's most important is to work and do the work and write, and I try to keep contact with that. That's the most important thing is not what how people feel about my work or whether or not I get a prize for it,

Tara Khandelwal: 38:34

yeah, it's sort of like the process that matters, right? Yeah. And what I what I'm really loving, is that, you know, for us here, it was just such a win for this book to win such a huge prize, and even now, heart lamp is also sort of won a prize. And I think that there's a lot of Indian stories that are now being accepted into the larger world, and I think there's a demand for Indian stories globally, but that's just sort of based on what I'm seeing in people talking about it and the prizes. But from your perspective, what do you think about this? Do you feel like there's more of a demand for Indian stories in the West?

Daisy Rockwell: 39:22

Um, I wish there was. I think, like that publishing in the West is very, very white. So, like, even if a publisher isn't technically a white person, like the just the tastes are pretty insular, and there is kind of really a reluctance to open up to other kinds of stories. And now that, you know, we've had two Indian books win this prize, they're sort of forced to consider more works. But I still, they still sort of act like they're being backed against the wall, like they you know, the problem is that I think a lot of being a publisher or being an editor is focused on the idea of that you have taste right, that you have like, a particular taste, and you have some way of like, identifying a work that's quote, unquote good or excellent, or would sell a lot of copies, or whatever, that you have this special kind of radar, and it's important for them to feel really kind of. I'm proud of that, because they don't actually get paid very much, right? So, like, it's, that's the currency they're paid, and is, is that they're gatekeepers, and they have really great taste. So when you have works that come up, that have an esthetic that they never considered, or that they're not exposed to, or kind of storytelling that seems weird to them, then it's really hard for them to adjust their ideas of what is good and so like what the way I like to think of it is, you can say, so, oh, that person has very discriminating taste, but that could mean two different things, right? Like it could mean that they are choosy and only pick the best, but it could also mean that they discriminate in their tastes. And so I think that phrase really sums up the publishing world in the US and UK, for me, there's a lot of discriminating taste.

Tara Khandelwal: 41:52

I think you've said that really well, and I do hope that, you know, these prizes do force more people to pick up more books written by Indian authors in the West. And maybe sort of the taste is because, you know, because I workers in it, and you always told, you know, read as much as possible, and your taste gets developed, and what's out there for you to read in the market. And then, if you're only reading a certain kind of book that's being presented to you, and if you know the books that you're reading, which are about Asian cultures are only sort of, you know these immigrant stories or oriental stories, then maybe that's how your taste also develops, which is why it's so important to have books that are doing things which differently, present those books, have those books win prizes, so that everyone sort of perspective broadens in the kind of stories that can get told. So I definitely think that's important.

Daisy Rockwell: 42:55

Yeah, that is absolutely true. And something I think that Tim of sin and heart lab have in common is that these are stories that were not written for. You know, a white person sitting in Iowa, or something like, so there. So it's that is, I think, a real struggle in their minds to kind of accept stories that weren't written for them. Because, you know, a lot of like is not, not to be mean about Indian English writing, but the works that got published in the West, imagine an audience that doesn't know anything. And so, like a lot of in my opinion, a lot of time can get wasted in sort of sociology lessons, you know, to like, so that people can be brought up to speed about, like, a religious, you know, practice, or like something to do with food or whatever. So what I like about literature, Indian literature, that's not written in English, that's not meant for an international audience, is that they don't bother with that, right? You know, like that. They just go into the story. So you get, in my opinion, more story, more kind of depth, if you aren't trying to explain, like that. People sometimes eat off of a banana leaf or something like that.

Tara Khandelwal: 44:29

What is your favorite book by an Indian author? Or a few of your favorite books,

Daisy Rockwell: 44:36

like in any in any language,

Tara Khandelwal: 44:39

maybe English, because yeah,

Daisy Rockwell: 44:46

well, I did enjoy the early Salman Rushdie books. I like Anjum Hassan, I blurbed Her most recent book. Now I can't remember the title is something about history. But like, I'm always going to give you more answers of translated literature. So like, I love Nayar Masood, who was an Urdu author, and he's been very well translated, and he's just an incredibly mystical writer, like everything is you never really know what's happening, but it's really beautifully put together. He was a Persian scholar, and so there's a lot of kind of a Persian influence on. On his writing. I love, you know, my my author that I first translated, Upendra Nath, because he goes into just incredible detail about like Punjab in the 1930s I love this level of detail, and I love Krishna So, but the by whom I've also translated, because she's just insanely experimental and, you know, all around, just a badass author that I love,

Tara Khandelwal: 46:27

awesome. So what? What are you working on next?

Daisy Rockwell: 46:33

Well, I'm just finishing up a memoir called our friend art. It's about growing up in my parents were both artists, and my grandfather was a famous artist, and so it's about growing up in a family of artists, and it's kind of gives equal space to text and artwork by all different people in the family. And I am translating a collection of Geetanjali SRIs short stories, which is really hard because it's a collection she wrote kind of maybe the last thing she did before term of sand. And it's like every story is an experiment, but they're not the same kinds of experiments. And so a lot of people think that translating short stories would be easier than a novel, because they're just little but actually it's like you have to kind of create a whole, like a new world for every story, like with a novel, you you can decide, okay, this is what I'm going to do with this, and this is how I'm going to handle that. And like, so every time she brings up this thing, I'm going to translate it this way. So, like, you have a kind of comprehensive set of rules that you build for a full length narrative, but if it's short stories, it's like, oh, you have to start all over again every time. So I keep taking really long breaks. And I'm also working on a collection of short stories and novellas by the Urdu sort of Queen of romance and horror called hijab, Imtiaz Ali. And so it's these are all horror stories. So this is actually pure genre, but she wrote in the 30s and 40s and 50s, and she has the same characters in almost everything she writes, whether it's an awful or a short story as the same narrator is a woman named Ruhi who's a writer, and then these, and then this, her same friends that show up, and her like her daddy, Zubeida, and her like various uncles. And then appalling things happen, and everything is very elegant and luxurious, like, you know, she like, stares sadly at the chandelier and things like that, you know, like, so everything says impossibly elegant, and they have lots and lots of servants.

Tara Khandelwal: 49:24

Sounds very interesting. Can't wait to read all of them, and especially also the memoir, because I did read up a little bit about your family history and your grandfather as well. So love to know more about it. Now we just have a few sort of like lighter questions, which you can answer in one word or one sentence. So if you like Alice kutsy goes, but only one, which historical or literary figure would you most like to have follow you around, and why?

Daisy Rockwell: 49:55

That's really hard question to be followed around. For some reason, the name that popped into my head is Edith Wharton, and I think it's because she she lived near where I grew up, and her mansion was, like, felt, became derelict, and then it was taken over by this Shakespeare Company. And they, they were, like, probably all kind of high all the time, but they, they were living in this derelict mansion, and they all said they'd seen her haunting the house, and she, in fact, herself, wrote ghosts, some ghost stories. So like, I just think she was a very elegant person, and she had these little dogs, and she wrote in bed. Yeah, which I really identify with. And so I would, I think I would like to be followed around by Edith Wharton. Love that answer.

Tara Khandelwal: 50:59

If Alice's ghost was turned into a movie, who would you dream cast as Alice and Ronald?

Daisy Rockwell: 51:05

Oh, that's hard. Okay. You know Alice could be like somebody. I think the chilliest person I'm immediately thinking of is Kristen Stewart or like but if you know Nicole Kidman, could play the mom, maybe. But I don't know, you need to suggest Ronette. Who do you think, Oh,

Tara Khandelwal: 51:30

my God, hmm, I'm blanking right now.

Daisy Rockwell: 51:35

I'm trying to think of like Indian actors that aren't, you know, totally pumped up.

Tara Khandelwal: 51:42

Yeah, exactly. It's so hard, right? It could

Daisy Rockwell: 51:47

be an intellectual but not Dave Patel.

Tara Khandelwal: 51:51

I know all of them are sort of very popped up nowadays, maybe like a wiki commercial type person, yeah,

Daisy Rockwell: 51:59

maybe I have to be like an art

Tara Khandelwal: 52:02

film, yeah, like an artistic kind of person, yeah? But those are good choices. Nicole Kidman is a good choice. And yeah, finally, you know one author past or present who's shaped or inspired your career the most?

Daisy Rockwell: 52:18

Well, I think that I would choose two. One is I mentioned before. Ask the Hindi author, because he's, like, I wrote my dissertation about him, so my PhD thesis and I just translated three of his books. And even though, like, they're not the books that I'm known for, they're the ones that I learned how to translate on, and I feel like he taught me a lot about how to be a writer and how to observe and even just to think of how to be an artist. And then the other one I would choose is Krishna sovati, because I think she taught me how to kind of translate, you know, sort of like, if you think of translation as a high wire act, like a trapeze artist. And she taught me how to do it without the net underneath where, you know, to just like, do the wildest things and without falling off, I guess, and without being afraid.

Tara Khandelwal: 53:34

Oh, that's really lovely. Yeah. Thank thank you so much for this conversation. It was very interesting to get to know a little bit more about you, your writing process, about your latest book, Alice's goals, and about, you know, of course, the International Booker, Booker Prize winner, book as well. And yes, I, I hope to read more of your work, very, very soon.

Daisy Rockwell: 54:00

Thank you so much for having me. This was fun.

Tara Khandelwal: 54:04

Hope you enjoyed this episode of Books

Michelle D'costa: 54:06

and Beyond with bound. This podcast is created by bound, a company that helps you grow through stories. Find us at bound India on all social media platforms.

Tara Khandelwal: 54:16

Tune in every wedding day as we peek into the lives and minds of some brilliant authors from India and South Asia. You.