Over the years, R.K. Narayan has held several conversations with Susan and N Ram on writing and other subjects. Frontline has the story.
OVER the years R.K. Narayan has not quite been able to avoid giving interviews about his life and work to journalists and writers in various places. But he has done this as a chore, something that needs to be gone through for practical publishing reasons rather than for any pleasure of massaging one’s ego or the self-revelation it might afford. This writer has always been uneasy about the business of the formal, structured interview. Many interviewers are unperceptive, too direct, reductionist. Basically, he has felt, they want their subject to do their work – making sense of their subject’s life or work – for them. “It’s all there,” he has always wanted to say to his interviewer. “Why don’t you read it and come to your own interpretation, speculation or conclusion?” The only difference these days is that he might actually say it, adding only half-jokingly: “Don’t worry, I’ll approve whatever you write. I won’t contradict you.” more
