Author Shabnam Minwalla’s new book Zen is not a historical book even though it takes readers back to the pre-Independence era and then brings them back into new-age India; to the days it was a British colony and when it is the world’s largest democracy. Still, the author packs a lot of history into it to provide the characters with a socio-political context. In an exclusive interview with t2, Minwalla, the mother of three teenagers and author of several children’s books, talks about her ‘Bombay’, the extra mile she went for the book, and the influence of her journalistic career on her passion — writing. Excerpts.
What made you set 1935 Bombay as the premise of one part of your story?
I have grown up in Bombay. This entire book was partly born out of my cousin’s grandmother’s diary, which she shared with me. We read the diary and that was the diary of a young teenager, a young Muslim girl of the 1930s. We were absolutely amazed by how modern her tone and sensibilities were. Normally, when you imagine a Muslim woman living in the 1930s, you will probably think of somebody stuck in the house on the other side of a purdah and living a very small life. But the diary was really a revelation to us. She would go to different places and she would have her fortune told. She has views about everyone in her family. I think that kind of inspired the story of Zainab Essaji. I think my knowing the city so intimately, especially Colaba so well, has helped me shape the plot of this book so smoothly. And I was armed with a Mumbai diary written by a Muslim girl in Bombay. As a writer, it makes sense to write about something you know intimately. That’s why Zainab is based in Bombay rather than in any other part of the world.
Zainab of 1935 and Zainab of 2019.. we find a lot of socio-political undertones in this book...
It was important for me to create the city of 1935. I read almost 400 newspapers to understand what life was like. I wanted to know the basic fabric of their life. As I started reading the papers, I realised that the big event of that time was the freedom struggle. It could not be ignored. By utter coincidence, I realised that the Indian National Congress was celebrating its golden jubilee at the same time as the events in Zainab’s diary. At this point, it became clear that the mysterious K had to be involved in the freedom movement somehow. And Zainab’s brother Faizullah as well.
As I started fleshing K out, to me it was obvious that he was in some way connected to the freedom movement. And I have already introduced Zainab’s brother Faizullah into the whole political picture and the ensuing freedom struggle of that time.. so in a sense, the two shall be connected. Zainab is sort of a go-between between these two boys; that is how she is brought into the movement.
The character Zainab Currimji (Zen) actually came about in December 2019, when the anti-CAA protests were happening. I was nervous and did not know how to sustain a book in the voice of a girl from so long ago. So I was just dragging my feet. In 2019, my daughters were going to the protests. So when I mentioned it to Sayoni Basu (an editor at Duckbill) that my daughters were taking part in the protests and making interesting posters, she said that’s a lovely topic for a book. And somehow the two characters, the girl now who goes to the CAA protests and the girl then who wrote the diary, came together in my head and somehow the structure of the book came to me.
Is Zen historical fiction or a contemporary love story?
I think it’s both. It’s a short period in the lives of both girls. For Zen, it’s three weeks while for Zainab, it’s a couple of months. So it’s a love story as well as a glimpse into life in India then and now.
Which was the most difficult character to write?
Zen was a difficult character to write. When I started writing, all I had on my head was she is about 17-18 years old, has untidy hair, and that she has very liberal views. She herself remained a puzzle for me because she is quite shy and a withdrawn kind of person. She is not very talkative and does not make friends easily. She makes music, loves history and loves silence and her own company. Now when she meets Yash, everything about Yash is wrong in her eyes. Having said that, there is one thing that drives the relationship forward. And he is the one person in the world with whom she can speak easily and freely, despite so many ideological differences.
Tell us a bit about the research work you did.
There was a newspaper called Bombay Chronicle back then. I managed to get a copy of their daily editions of 1935 and until March 1936, and the writing happened parallelly. I tried to recreate the city as it was then. I got all those details from a particular newspaper’s directories. I wrote things down to the last detail: the buildings on all the roads and the name of people who lived in those buildings and the shops. I was able to map all of Colaba. I did a lot of research on the occupation the young, middle-class Indians. I was looking for a profession for K connected with art, which would also connect with Zainab’s. So I started researching various industries and trading companies. And I found a lot of fabulous academic papers about the dye industry in India in the 1930s — various Dutch and German companies that traded with India. One aspect of the dye industry was because these companies belonged to countries like Germany, even those who upheld Swadeshi believed that it was fine to do business with them.