A veteran journalist and a celebrated writer, Vaasanthi is likely best known to English readers for her political biographies on former Tamil Nadu chief ministers M Karunanidhi and Jayalalithaa, and her book Cut-Outs, Caste and Cine Stars. As an editor of the India Today Tamil for 10 years, her keen interest in the overlaps of cinema and politics in the southern state has found space in her columns as well. She has also written several short stories in Tamil, which have appeared in leading magazines such as Kalki and Vikatan as well as in the literary specials of India Today over the years. Her latest book Ganga’s Choice and other Stories is a collection of these short stories, translated into English. 

In an interview with TNM, the writer talks about gendered spaces and women’s defiance, the love for cinema and how it acts as an avenue of escapism for women, how political reportage and fiction writing inform each other, and more. Ganga’s Choice, published by Nyogi Books, came out in 2021.

Trigger warning: mentions of suicidal ideation.

In the story ‘Dance of the Gods’, there is a line that stuck out: “There were many cages, one for women during their menstrual cycle. The kitchen was another …” Not only does it describe many of the women characters in your book, but also real life. There are cages women fight through our lives to be free of. This is how I understood the stories. Was there something else you had in mind while writing them?

This story was based on a village near Salem, which I visited long ago. There, living spaces were demarcated like cages. The kitchen was just for the women, the men were not even allowed inside. But at least that was the only space women had just for themselves, to call their own. I saw paintings on the walls of one kitchen – all female figures in a style that reminded me of Jamini Roy’s art works. These figures were stretching their arms towards the sky as if they wanted to fly, as if they wanted to escape. It was a surreal sight for me, almost like I was witnessing their inner desire for freedom.

All of these stories are from real life. Fiction writers draw from lived or heard experiences, or something we have witnessed. Interestingly, in this village the people believe they are descendants of the Pandavars, which is why the women are expected to be like Draupathi or Panchali. In my story too, the woman character is named Panchali.

I don’t know how many women truly get to rebel from the cages they live in, but my Panchali does. The only way she could rebel was by taking her own life. It is her protest. People say that anger is what fuels many suicides. Her death was an expression of her anger against the system and the betrayal of men.

You brought up a point I had planned to ask you about. Your political biographies have a wide audience. How much biography goes into writing fiction about women, particularly since there is an after-life biography of sorts too, when women read themselves in your stories?

The lived experiences of others become our own for writers. Another’s agony becomes our own. The story ‘Ganga’s Choice’ is about a woman who worked as a househelp when I lived in Bangalore. It is her life. She is a jovial, smart woman, full of fun and desires. She loved to dress up, sing and watch films. But she had a medical condition, just like in the story. She couldn’t have children – a condition that disqualified her in the eyes of other women. What happens in the story really happened to the Ganga who worked for me. A man who came to see her for a potential alliance actually asked for the lease on her house, which she had bought with her own money, to be transferred to him. As it happens in the story, another man told her to take down her Rajinikanth poster. She drove all these men out of her house and narrated the events to me proudly. She was financially independent and that gave her the courage to say no to these men. Like this, my stories come from the people I meet.

I agree that literature is in its own way biographical. In that regard, what is the politics of fiction-writing in your opinion?

Firstly, I believe every writer is political. There is no such thing as an apolitical stance. The subjugation of women, patriarchal pressures are all political. It is a political act to write stories, to write fiction.

Earlier you had mentioned how suicide was Panchali’s form of protest. In the story ‘Murder’, Chelathaayi is forced to live under the control of the old family patriarch. After she takes her own life, he lives in terror of her avenging spirit. This reminded me of the origin stories of many female folk deities: real women who are killed off or driven to suicide for ‘honour’, and then worshipped out of collective guilt and fear of retribution.

I based that story on a family I once met. A family of 145 members. I have been to their house. There, the women had no access to education because the patriarch was afraid they would question his authority if they did. He was a man who refused to accept that the world is changing. A girl in the family was believed to have died by suicide. He imagined that her spirit was going to throttle him as he slept. It is his sense of guilt that made him think so. I felt the suffocation of the women in that family as they went about their daily work. That is what I wove the story from. I tried to imagine what that young girl’s life might have been like, living in that suffocation. The idea of a spirit went with the ambience of the story. An old woman tells this patriarch that he needs to make offerings to the spirit. That is their belief. They feel guilty but neither do they break out of this oppressive system.

None of this means that I endorse the idea of suicide. I only want to show how many women are pushed to that corner with no way out in such a constricted society. They can’t even run away. The only option they have left is to hurt themselves in anger. That story wrote itself.

Did any other story in the book write themselves, similarly?

Some stories did. They developed a personality of their own and progressed towards an ending that seemed inevitable. For another story ‘Testimony’, I was asked why it had such a “limp” conclusion. But I could imagine how easily a young woman, facing murderous men in court who have destroyed most of her family, would be intimidated. She would fear for the only family members she had left: “what if I lose them too?” I put myself in her place. What would I have done if I was under that kind of pressure, vulnerable to that degree, with men crying for your blood. I would back away too.

Yes, as journalists we are aware that there aren’t many heroic or victorious moments in courts, because the system is such. How much of your journalistic career and fiction writing have influenced each other?

I didn’t begin my writing career as a journalist. I began as a fiction-writer, but I have been interested in politics. I moved to New Delhi at the time of Indira Gandhi’s assassination. There were so many political events unfolding. A few Tamil magazines then asked me to write journalistic articles about what was happening. I did a cover story for Kalki on the assassination. My stint as the editor of Tamil India Today was interesting, because until then I had never lived at a stretch in Tamil Nadu. I was born and brought up in Karnataka. Later, I went away to the North East and eventually to Delhi after my wedding. My time in Chennai (then Madras) was an eye-opener. I was going on tours to do stories for the magazine. I learnt a great deal about the Dravidian movement — the politics and culture behind it. I met a Devadasi woman much like the main character in ‘Symbol’. I understood the pain she and her community have undergone.

My political writing became more defined by these interactions. I had a news column going, which also complimented my fiction writing. The stories I covered as a journalist later became fiction. ‘Murder’, ‘Dance of Gods’ and ‘Symbol’ had been sociological articles in India Today. Those memories later came out in the form of fiction.

But did you feel like your writing has influenced your political opinions?

Yes. This had happened, for instance, when I wrote Jayalalithaa’s biography. I have been very critical of her when I was the editor of Tamil India Today  from 1992 to 2001. There were many objectionable issues that came up during her time as the Tamil Nadu Chief Minister. It wasn’t a concern of gender. I could never excuse someone’s wrongs on the grounds of her being a woman.

Around 2009-10, Penguin asked me to write her biography. I was initially hesitant. I knew how difficult she could be, her disdain for journalists. She refused to give interviews. Even when she wasn’t in power, it was difficult to get information out of her bureaucrats. They were all scared of her. It was in this period that I began to empathise with her. Both in the fields of cinema and then politics, she struggled in a man’s world. I realised how a woman could get transformed in that kind of an atmosphere. I could understand her façade: that arrogance. Many journalists like me used to think that was her nature. But it occurred to me when writing the book that it was a garb she wore. So, I suppose my fiction writing helped me understand her as a person better.

Speaking of women and Tamil cinema, I would like to go back to ‘Ganga’s Choice’. The character’s love for Rajinikanth is so reflective of the way cinema is embedded in Tamil Nadu. It is almost all-permeating. But just like Ganga has to defy a potential groom to have Rajini’s poster on her wall, women’s access to cinema is a gendered space. For many, there is defiance in just the act of accessing it. Could you comment on this?

I agree that there is a great deal of defiance that goes into women’s love for cinema. In the 60s and 70s, when the favoured hero was MGR, there were women who saw him as the ideal romantic hero. There were women who fantasised about a lover like him – always a saviour of the ‘damsels in distress’. They fell in love with his charming smile. I had heard a story about a woman who ran to see MGR every time he visited her neighbourhood. At one point, her husband tried to stop her saying this was no way for a woman to behave. He was slut-shaming her. In response, she apparently removed her thaali (sacred marital thread in Hinduism) and threw it in his face, asking “is this what makes you think you can control me?”

When Rajini ruled the screen, he symbolised defiance to his fans. He wasn’t a pink-faced hero like MGR. Here was a fellow who didn’t care for anyone’s authority. He smoked, he drank, and looked dishevelled. Even though he wasn’t as popular among the women as he was with the men, there were certainly many (like the Ganga I knew) who liked all these factors about him. His fans loved this image of him. For them, his on-screen attitude meant liberation. It was liberating for them to watch a hero of this sort.

For women, the fantasy of such heroes too is an act of defiance. They may have had a hard life at home, but they could always imagine that there is a better person out there. We all like fantasy, don’t we?