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Interview with Sarah Das Gupta, Poet

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Sarah Das Gupta is a poet who has been published several times in both Rural Fiction Magazine and in The Chamber Magazine (both published by Slattery Publishing). Recently, I sent several questions to her for an interview. Below her published works in RFM and The Chamber (following) are the questions I sent and then her responses.

Poems Published in The Chamber and in Rural Fiction Magazine
Questions

Q: Correct me if I am wrong, but I have seen in a couple of bio notes for other magazines that you are about 83 years old. So you were born about 1943 and graduated college around 1965 (maybe?). Then I take it you taught for sixty years, meaning you retired about 2003.  That period from about 1965 to the present day (assuming you read a lot during that timeframe) was an interesting one for the evolution of literature. Have you seen an overarching trend or tendency in the literature of the English-speaking world during that timeframe?  Does anything about this period fascinate or disappoint you?  What genres or styles of literature from then or from other periods do you enjoy most?

Q: You have lived in India and Tanzania per your bio notes. Have you read much of the literature of either one or from any other nation(s)?  

Q: Did you live in rural areas while in India and Tanzania?  What did you enjoy most and what did you find most challenging about living in each? Do you find living there peaceful, idyllic, chaotic, frightening, or what?

Q: While in Tanzania, did you live near Kilimanjaro or the Serengeti plain? These are probably the two most famous landmarks our readers will recognize. What do you treasure or dislike most about living in India?

Q: You taught English in Kolkata and Tanzania.  Did you primarily teach grammar and conversation or did you also teach literature? Were you employed by an organization or university?   What were the joys and challenges of teaching in these two nations?

Q: Did you learn Bengali or Swahili while living abroad? 

Q: What is your writing process? What is a typical day for you as a writer?

Q: How do you come up with ideas for stories or poems? Do you sit and try to think up things or search your memories for something to write about? Or does something trigger a memory (like in A Remembrance of Things Past/In Search of Lost Time by Marcel Proust) or an idea and then you write it down quickly? 

Q: Are you a disciplined writer or one that basically flows with the stream of consciousness or somewhere in between?

Q: Do you have any works soon to be published that RFM’s readers should watch for and where they might find them? Are you giving any talks, presentations, or lectures?

Responses
  1. Early Background: I was born in 1942 in the middle of World War 11. My father was in command of a team of gunners on the cruiser, HMS Orion.

I saw little of him in the first three years of my life. My maternal grandparents lived near Biggin Hill, the Royal Airforce Air Base from which the Battle of Britain was fought. Apparently, my mother watched

with me in her arms as German aircraft come in to bomb London and then flew over the house, dropping untargeted bombs, to save fuel on the return route. 

My godfather was drowned off the Irish coast when his cruiser was tragically cut in half by the liner, The Queen Mary, carrying American troops to Glasgow. Nobody ever talked about him.

I never heard my father talk of the war. In fact, only last year, I discovered his ship, The Orion, was one of two British ships which won the most battle honours in the War.

We lived at the highest point of the North Downs. Our house was a menagerie first and foremost. We kept over thirty horses (some ours, some at livery), every type of poultry, five or six dogs, farm cats and Burmese cats. The garage never housed a car but all the injured wildlife which the locals brought to my father. When you opened the garage door, a falcon would fly at you or a snake slither over your feet! I have remained a great lover of animals all my life.

  1. University: 

When I arrived aged 18, at London University, I think it was the first time I had been to central London. I studied medieval and modern history, a subject I had always enjoyed at school. Here I first met a young Indian student whom I was later to marry.

3.  Trends in Literature

 I became an English and History teacher after graduation and teacher        training. Certainly, in the UK at least, I taught Literature and in the course of my work I covered the range of the subject from Chaucer to Joyce. I have always particularly enjoyed teaching and reading poetry. As I only retired at eighty,  my opportunity for developing other interests and hobbies has been limited. Certainly, from the 1960’s, Western literature has changed in style, content and authorship. Women have become increasingly important, voices like Maya Angelou and Toni Morrison are not only women’s voices but also Black voices too. In fact, in the post-colonial era the number of Black and ethnic minority writers has increased prodigiously. This perhaps has been most evident in ex- British colonies, specially in India, the Caribbean and African nations like Nigeria. Many of these nations have not only written about colonisation but also engaged with Indian or African cultures more deeply, for example, in novels like ‘A Suitable Boy’ by Vikram Seth. In much of Europe and North America the voices of recent immigrants have forced countries to look at themselves in a less favourable light as in ‘White Teeth’ by Zadie Smith.

One subject I feel less at home with because perhaps of my age, is that of gender. When I submitted an article for an American magazine, I had to consult the dictionary and the internet to find how to classify myself. I am sorry to admit, I have now forgotten the correct term. Positive discrimination seems to me to be in danger of alienating the majority of the population from the very causes it is trying to promote. That being said, there is no doubt that the causes remain valid and very much worthy fighting for. Therein lies the dilemma.

Not only the ethnicity of authors has widened but also the socio-economic class. Writers from working class backgrounds have had opportunities to be published and have had considerable success which is certainly to be welcomed.

Certainly, the development of communications and technology have challenged the printed word. A whole new band of critics has found a voice on twitter/X, Facebook/ Instagram etc. Writers are expected to maintain a presence on these platforms and face criticism, often from anonymous voices who are without any knowledge or qualification. Everyone appears to have a right to express a view on any subject.

  1. Living Abroad

 After my graduation, I married and went to live in Kolkata, West Bengal, India where my husband worked as a journalist on ‘The Statesman’, the main English language newspaper at the time. I taught in one of the main girls’ schools in the city. We had two daughters who were able to attend this school from the age of three as it had a Nursery department. 

I taught English language/ literature and all the staff spoke fluent English, as did my husband. This meant I did not learn Bengali, apart from day to day essential phrases. My husband was a great admirer of the songs, poetry and writing of Rabindranath Tagore one of the major figures in the Bengal Renaissance of the mid- nineteenth and early twentieth century. Tagore was a true polymath: poet, short story writer, song writer, social reformer, philosopher, essayist, educationist, artist and the first non- European to win the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1913. I read many of his poems in translation which never quite captures the lyrical beauty of the original. He died in 1941 so never lived to see India’s independence.

I greatly enjoyed teaching in Loreto House, a school for girls run by an order of Irish nuns which Mother Theresa belonged to, before founding the Missionaries of Charity.   At the time, many sisters were from the Irish Republic but on a recent visit, I found most of the Sisters were from South India. It was a great school to teach in where the majority of students were Hindus, a minority were Moslem and a small number of Anglo-Indians, Christians. The academic standard was high, behaviour, exemplary and students highly motivated. English Literature was widely covered, also Bengali, Hindi and Sanskrit. We read and performed a number of Shakespeare plays: ‘The Merchant of Venice’, ‘A Midsummer Night’s Dream,’ ‘Julius Caesar’ and a full performance of ‘Macbeth’. In sixty years of teaching, I have never worked with such talented and responsive students and such a friendly and devoted staff. Nearly half a century later, I am still in touch with most of my Loreto students!

Most of my memories of Kolkata are positive, especially my work. Of course, as anywhere, you have problems day to day. A major crisis arose when our ground floor flat flooded, and we had to move to the roof! It was also rather frightening when I had to find my way alone in a blackout to the hospital where my second daughter was born, only a few minutes after I arrived. This was during the war between Bangladesh and Pakistan when my husband was away reporting. Then there was the crisis when my husband’s elderly aunt, threw all our beautiful clay water jars out on the pavement because the bathroom cleaner, from the lowest class in Hindu society, had walked past the ewers in the hallway.

Later in my career after I returned to the UK following my husband’s death. I taught for a short time in Tanzania. This was a very different situation from Kolkata. The children were younger and the emphasis was on language and oral English. Many children came from poor families of agricultural workers. Often, they walked many kilometres a day to and from school. In some cases, they shared a pair of shoes so were not able to attend every day. In one school, the classroom overlooked the Rift Valley. There was an unforgettable view of thousands of bright pink flamingos standing along the river bank. Here, rather than use English text books, I used local African legends or stories which the children dramatized. They all had a remarkable sense of rhythm and great singing voices. They were lively and dedicated to mastering English. I remember, one day, I came back from lunch to see the older children had organised the youngsters into class groups and they were practising the songs I had taught them. When I asked,’ Why?’, they said, ‘So they will remember and sing them perfectly!’ I wondered if you’d ever find this enthusiasm in Europe or the US? 

One of my greatest experiences was climbing half-way up Kilimanjaro, the  highest peak in Africa. The climb to the summit was a little too much, so I kept to the limited option. I had an outstanding guide who suggested I should extend his English vocabulary and I would learn basic Swahili! His English was already reasonably fluent and he definitely got most out of our agreement. I explained to him I was a geriatric and had to move slowly. He immediately repeated ‘geriatric’ until he had mastered the word. In return he advised me to go ‘slowly’, ‘polepole’ in Swahili. That evening he came to the hostel and left  a red and white t-shirt for me with the slogan written across the front!

I also stayed in a hotel in Tanzania which looked over a water-hole. At night we saw elephants, buffalo, giraffes and monkeys come to drink. On one trip into a forest, a herd of elephants with young calves passed across the track. The driver whispered to us to ‘be quiet’; he later explained there were two huge bulls in the group and they were likely to attack when calves were in the herd.

  1. Writing

I started writing two years ago after an accident. Unfortunately, this left me only able to walk a few metres without help. My elder daughter, an established writer, tossed me a booklet with a list of writing competitions with the throwaway comment, ‘You’re never too old!’ I was in a geriatric ward where most of the patients suffered from dementia. I started writing at night as a distraction from the screaming, crying and general disturbance in the ward.  My first short story, was set in the early nineteenth century, the age of stage coaches. I started researching the subject and suddenly the uproar went unnoticed. I then started writing poetry, my favourite literary form. I will always be grateful to an East African magazine, ‘The Flying Dodo’ sadly now defunct, for giving me my first chance! 

I start writing most days at ten am and, apart from short breaks, go on to ten or eleven at night. I now write poetry, fiction, flash fiction, creative non-fiction, essays and expanded articles on historical subjects. These have been published in over twenty different countries and in three hundred magazines and anthologies. I have become interested in genres like horror which I had never previously read. I have been reading earlier writers like Lovecraft and Dennis Wheatley and re-reading ‘Dracula’. As, at the moment, I write for many different magazines, the subjects/themes are not usually chosen by me. I have recently written stories/ articles on beavers, surviving in geriatric wards, zombies, time travel, cats, tea gardens, Bay of Bengal, piers, King’s College Cambridge, murder of Archduke Rudolf, the Sun Temple at Konark, Edgar Allan Poe to name but a few, as they say. 

As you can imagine, inspiration comes in many ways. Poems usually come through a line or single word which suddenly goes round and round in my head, or I think of a particular form like the Villanelle or Triolet. In regard to short stories, often an event or experience sparks ideas. Yesterday we were having dinner when my daughter produced a key and gave it to my grandson. She had accidently dropped it down the lift- shaft and a maintenance man had retrieved it. I immediately said, ‘That’s a good beginning for a short story. Suppose it’s a key to a different flat or a cupboard or ?’ Of course, at my age memory plays a major role. I can’t remember phone numbers or where I left my glasses but I can re-call very small details about places, events and people

For example, I was writing the other day about ‘chicken’ and I could picture the mud and foot prints around the duck pond at home seventy years ago, in precise appearance and colour. In many cases I need to read around the subject. I enjoy researching but the only problem is, I become too involved and finish up reading a whole book.

I still have many unrealised ambitions as far as writing is concerned. I wish I had started earlier. At the moment my main hopes are to have a chapbook of horror poems published and to publish a series of short stories about a cat which speaks fluent French and can fly, no I haven’t been drinking, I’m a teetotaller. 

Favourite poets:  Tennyson   T.S. Eliot    Sylvia Plath

Favourite novels: ‘The Mayor of Casterbridge’   Thomas Hardy

                                  ‘Emma’     Jane Austen

                                   ‘Beloved’    Toni Morrison

Drama:                      Shakespeare ‘The Tempest’

                                   ‘A Street Car Named Desire’ Tennessee Williams

                                    ‘Long Day’s Journey into Night’   Eugene O’Neill

X/twitter @SarahDasGu42181

Thank you, Sarah, for being a dedicated follower of and contributor to both The Chamber Magazine and Rural Fiction Magazine.

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