Q & A with Vikas Swarup

I was glad to have caught the Vikas Swarup book signing last week at National Book Store Glorietta 5, even though I had to sit through an hour of horrible traffic just to get there.

I saw Slumdog Millionaire when it was released and I enjoyed it, but I hadn’t gotten the chance to read the novel Q & A, on which the movie was based. But I enjoy meeting authors and talking to them, so I really wanted to interview Mr, Swarup. I was worried because he was scheduled for dinner over at the neighboring city, so I was glad he obliged when I ambushed him for an interview over cocktails (ooh, samosas and kebabs, and it was almost as if I could hear Jai Ho! in the background)!

Read on for an exclusive Q & A with Vikas Swarup!

Q: What brings you to Manila?

A: The first [Manila] International Literary Festival, organized by the National Book Development Board, that brings me to Manila, and it’s my very first visit to the Philippines. One has heard about the Philippines over a long period of time, and I have Filipino friends, but I never got the opportunity of coming to your beautiful country. When the invitation came I accepted almost immediately; I thought it was an interesting opportunity to visit a very interesting country.

Q: How did you get into writing?

A: Well really, it started as a challenge to myself. I had no expectations of success; I did not even write for fame or fortune or anything like that. It was just that I used to write in my school days… but I suppose everyone writes in their school days, you know, for the school magazines and things like that. And then I joined the public service, and the writing stopped completely. I was writing a book — non-fiction, political dispatches for my government. I suppose that creative energy was always there inside me; it was just lying dormant. When I was posted in London it suddenly came to the surface and I thought to myself, can I do a novel? Do I have a novel in me? And at that time this game show was the number 1 game show in the world, “Who wants to be a Millionaire?” and that inspired me to try and write a story set around the game show, but with a contestant that’s not your typical contestant.

Q: Who are your literary influences?

A: I’ve had so many influences because I’ve been a reader for much of my student and adult life that I can’t really name any one particular influence. But I think that any book which has vivid character, a good plot, simple language that is able to convey a deeper sense of emotion, I think these are the kinds of books that have attracted me.

Among the established writers presently writing, I would say J.M. Coetzee, Haruki Murakami. In the past I used to be a sucker for the thriller genre – Agatha Christie, Erle Stanley Gardner, Alistair Maclean, Desmond Bagley, I read them all. But I also read Irving Wallace, Franz Kafka, Albert Camus, so I really read everything and anything I could lay my hands upon and I think that helps. If you have an eclectic reading habit, then it helps you in your writing because you can drop hints from various influences.

Q: How did “Q & A” get picked up for the movie?

A: Well the film people approached me one year before the book was even published. I think what happens is the moment the publisher gets hold of a book which they feel has cinematic potential, they pass it on to the scouts because they are always interested in a film-book tie-in, as the sales go up when the movie comes out. The film people took the rights, I had creative control in terms of the contract, so they showed me the screenplay, I approved the screenplay, and they went ahead and produced their movie.

Of course, nobody had any expectations that the movie would become one of the movies of 2008, and that it would go on to win 70 awards, including the Oscar for Best Picture.

Q: How did the popularity of the movie affect the novel?

A: I think what happens is that because many more people see films than read books, people who see the film and come to realize that it was based on a book are curious to find out what the book’s all about, how different it was from the movie and all that… Any movie that’s based on a book adds to the experience of the movie the second time around. That’s what happened with Q&A, which was a modest success even before the movie came out. It had been translated into 36 languages by then, it had sold very well in a number of countries, including Israel, where it sold more than 80,000 countries, in France in Germany, Great Britain. In America  it had not done so well, but once the movie came out it became a bestseller once again in all these countries.

Q: Some editions of “Q & A” carry “Slumdog Millionaire” as the title. Did you have a hand in this?

A: The title “Q&A” is slightly mysterious, in the sense you don’t really know what the book is all about.  “Slumdog Millionaire” suddenly is a more evocative title and you know straightaway what you’re gonna get.

At first I was a bit put off; I was thinking, can they really change the title of my book in such a way? But then they explained it to me. They say, look, this edition is going to be called a film-book tie-in edition. This is really targeted at those people who have no idea that there is a writer called Vikas Swarup, or a book called “Q & A.” They just go to see a movie in the theatre, they like the movie, they want to read a book, they go to a bookstore, and they’ll say, give me “Slumdog Millionaire.” If you do not allow your book to be published in a new title, then the bookseller would say there is no book by that title. Your book will not be sold, your story will not get told. You want your story to reach more people.

Q: Can you tell us more about your new book, “The Six Suspects”?

A: “The Six Suspects” has been classified as a murder mystery, because in a bookstore you have to put books in a particular section… But more than that, it’s a very wide-ranging look at contemporary India and in a sense, at modern civilization. It’s a critique on our present consumerist way of looking at things, just becoming mindless consumers of everything. And also the values we have now, where beauty and richness is appreciated and poverty and ugliness are put down.

Through the medium of a murder mystery, it tries to look at the psyche and all its ramifications with a very interesting and diverse mix of  characters, some belonging to the upper strata, some the lower strata, some insiders, some outsiders. The idea is to present to you six different views of India.

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Prior to the interview I had books signed — a trade paperback of Q & A for myself, and the film tie-in edition of Slumdog Millionaire for my best friend Mika:

Here’s what Vikas Swarup wrote out to me:

I’m glad I made it to the book launch, and I’m looking forward to reading the novel. I’m really interested to find out just how different it is from the movie. Oh, and The Six Suspects looks interesting too, I think I’ll get myself a copy this Christmas.

Vikas Swarup’s books are available at National Book Store: Q & A trade paperback at P579; Slumdog Millionaire mass market paperback at P299 and The Six Suspects trade paperback at P695.