Making sense of the world through writing ft. Anu Singh Choudhary

00:00:22 Speaker 1: Hello and welcome to yet another episode of chasing creativity. This is Ken Munro, your host. And today I have with me a very dear friend and a wonderful writer. Anu Singh Choudhury. Welcome to chasing creativity, Anu. 00:00:34 Speaker 2: What a pleasure to be here, Kiran. Thank you so much. 00:00:37 Speaker 1: So we did a bit of chasing creativity on the way here. It was a long trek, made longer by every single road that was dug up 00:00:47 Speaker 1: in the city. We 00:00:47 Speaker 2: must thank the city and the city gods for making us take all the possible twists and turns. Because as we are navigating through the dug up city, we're also creatively thinking about the plots and every other twist and turn that will bring to our story. So, yes, the city adds to our creativity, doesn't it? 00:01:09 Speaker 1: Absolutely. They say boredom adds to creativity. But I think, uh, 00:01:14 Speaker 1: traffic does not give you boredom. It gives you anxiety. What is your process like? How do you get into creativity? Such a 00:01:21 Speaker 2: profound question. Uh, so let's begin from how to deal with anxiety, creativity and anxiety, I think are best buddies. They're probably bed mates. Um, along with imposter. So the three go hand in hand. So you just have to, 00:01:38 Speaker 2: um, at some point acknowledge that as long as you want to be creative, you will also have to deal with your anxiety. And you will also have to let the impostor be, and probably, you know, deal with her. With love and affection 00:01:51 Speaker 2: and anxiety, it will be. And now I started to see anxiety as a good friend. As in, if you're a little anxious, then it keeps you on your toes and it keeps you invested in what you're doing. If you're not anxious, then it means that you're indifferent, which is not a very good space to be in for a creative person. So, yes, traffic gives us anxiety and, uh, also boredom. So but we are creative. People will find ways, and we do find ways of, you know, 00:02:20 Speaker 2: also having some very interesting conversations. Also, listen to some great podcast, including this one, that hopefully you're listening and hope. Hopefully, you're not stuck in traffic, but, uh, they're so so It just I think it's just, uh, letting anxiety trigger your CRE creativity in a way that is productive and therefore then dealing with the imposter so that it does not make you anxious, is how one just deals with it. 00:02:51 Speaker 1: You had a very interesting journey. I know you've gone from journalism. You were at ND TV. You were at the K connection. Then you went to a writing scripts and you're also an author. You've written a a lovely book. 00:03:05 Speaker 1: How did your journey start in? Into writing into words. What was little Anu like as a child? Was she a bookworm? Were her parents feeding her with books? Or was she going sneaking around finding books? What was that journey like? 00:03:19 Speaker 2: Uh, it was quite a lonely journey. I have to now admit, um, I come from a very, very conventional bihari family, Extremely conventional. There was no concept of reading or writing. 00:03:29 Speaker 2: I was, in fact, the first woman ever to have stepped out of the small city and to have come to a college lady Shira at that and, uh, to have had dreams and ambitions. And 00:03:41 Speaker 2: therefore, in that sense, I was a little bit of a little bit of an outlier, not somebody who was fitting because everybody around me, I mean, I lived in a neighbourhood, which was, you know, in that sense, a very upper caste, A little bit of a privileged but yet full of immigrants who had mostly moved from Bihar to Jharkhand. I grew up in Jharkhand, Jharkhand, Jharkhand became Jharkhand in 2001 much after I actually grew up. I had my childhood, but there was a clear 00:04:09 Speaker 2: distinction between where I was growing up, which was, uh, in the safe neighbourhood. Um who with people around who spoke the same kind of language. I mean, they spoke the bihari languages either bji or mahi or ranka or maithili or Hindi. Uh, there was very little engagement with English in that sense. Uh, boys were going to English medium schools. Girls were not. Girls were mostly going to sari schools or Hindi medium schools. So I was growing up in that kind of a setup. 00:04:37 Speaker 2: And, uh, there was this very, uh, very close by. There was this busty of Adivasis who 00:04:46 Speaker 2: also added to a lot to how I was perceiving the world in the sense that it was also the busti from where our helps were coming. But it was also the busti, which was 00:04:57 Speaker 2: really, really in that sense progressive, because this was free. And they were also, you know, they they lived the life that they wanted to, and they were fighting for a separate state in that sense, so they were fighting for their identity. So all of those experiences sort of informed. Um uh, also the kind of literature that I was picking up because, uh, 00:05:19 Speaker 2: when I started to read, um, like I said I, I was in a semi Sarka school, which was a missionary school. It was a convent, but had 50% reservation for the tribal girls, Which was which meant that there was a lot of engagement with girls who were coming from various. You know, this was this was all girls school. So all kinds of, uh, girls from all walks of life they 00:05:42 Speaker 2: they had, in that sense, some sort of, like, sort of motivation to, uh, make it be independent. So But also, there were girls who wanted to get married and, you know, settle down. So then there were so many kinds of peers that one was growing up with, So 00:06:00 Speaker 2: I was confused. I was very, very confused with the kind of exposure that I was getting the kind of upbringing that I had, the kind of world that I was living in, the kind of women that I was engaging with, the kind of role models, especially women role models that I had. So while Indira Gandhi was a role model, somewhere out there in the newspapers that we were reading 00:06:20 Speaker 2: at home I was surrounded by homemakers. My mother, my chai, were making at a stretch probably 100 rote at one given time because we were living in a joint family, so it was very confusing. So in order to make sense of the world 00:06:35 Speaker 2: that I wanted to exist in, I wanted I started writing. So it was first. Mostly like, you know, you know how we all start write poetry. That's the easiest form. Or so we think when we are writing, even though it's the toughest medium of expression. But that's how it started, and I would write these catch up a couple of poems, and then I started to sort of debate because I was very passionate about some of these things that we were seeing 00:07:00 Speaker 2: around us. So then I would start to write essays and then that's how the creative journey really started. And that led me to also, purely out of curiosity, that who were the other people who were writing. So I grew up largely on the very, very stable diet of Hindi literature, and that led me, obviously to, you know, translations. That was also the time this was eighties that we're talking about. Also, a lot of Russian literature 00:07:25 Speaker 2: was being translated into Indian languages, so the libraries had that. So a lot of translations, and then gradually it was only in fact, I remember I started to actually get exposed to English literature because both my brothers were in a public school. They were in an English medium school and purely out of curiosity, curiosity as to what they were reading. So me and the floss is something that I read because it was my brother's textbook. Similarly, 00:07:51 Speaker 2: I got exposed to Julius Caesar because it was again a part of their textbook, and then slowly. Then, you know, one picked up and started to read. So various things I would say 00:08:00 Speaker 1: so I know this entire journey as a child and about, uh, you know, all the influences that happened that's so interesting to know. And then the decision to go to Delhi 00:08:11 Speaker 1: that was a brave decision. So 00:08:14 Speaker 1: was there any resistance you face from the family to send the girl out of the city of the town of the home to another big, bad city? And what were your experiences there? 00:08:27 Speaker 2: Uh, where there is a will, 00:08:30 Speaker 2: there is always resistance on the way. 00:08:34 Speaker 2: You will not have it smooth. Nobody has ever had it smooth. And especially so for girls who are out there. Women who are out there just wanting to just like challenge the status quo more than anything else. If they want equal opportunities or equal rights in terms of education or something as simple as you know, our right to sit on the board, they have to you, we we all are facing that we that we are that generation 00:09:02 Speaker 2: which has sort of, you know, had the benefits of our earlier generations. But we have intensified it. So it was tough. Obviously, this is 1996 that I'm talking about. 00:09:13 Speaker 2: But Delhi was dreamland. It was just so liberating to come to a place where you won't have to look at a watch and look at it. You know, worry that five o'clock. I have to be home because, um, back in Bihar, then Pa Pa you love and you and or AJ the bar. You're not supposed to be out once it gets dark. Pa. Pa. I thought the parents would start to worry, 00:09:38 Speaker 2: and you would always have to move out with. I mean, I've had friends telling me and friends as in like, you know, boys who would tell me that, um, Hawari guard a bad. So you can't, like, go alone or hum the ma over there there because they also come with that sense of responsibility that girls have to be chota by le But so it was It was very liberating. When you take the bus on your own, you go from one place to the other and then to be in a college which is very, very, very obviously for 00:10:06 Speaker 2: so it was it was an eye opening experience. And this was also the time when Delhi was sort of like expanding. All the flyovers were coming up, which also was, in a way, my first introduction to a big city life. Everyone would get into a traffic jam, and it would take like 90 minutes from one point to the other. Having said that, how much of a girl's life changes now? 00:10:32 Speaker 2: But 7. 30 is your cut off? Because 730 is the time when you're by. If you're in the hostel, you're in the hostel. So by 730 you would have to come back. These sat and these beta I thought you would be gated in, so there would be a consequence to that. And again, this is I'm talking about this very, you know, progressive college. 00:10:51 Speaker 2: So it didn't change much in that sense we were still living with. And the more I started to live in Delhi, I started to realise that if teasing was the same, how you were being looked at in the public transport was the same. How you still had to fight to own the public spaces as a woman was still the same. A lot of those battles had not changed, and unfortunately, 00:11:19 Speaker 2: 20 years later, when I started to work on a novel which also became a Web series with a Web series called The Good Girls Show, which was my first really, the first Web series that I wrote and directed, 00:11:31 Speaker 2: which was on the lives of these four young girls. This is 20 years later, but we're still fighting the same battles. This is really we're still fighting for pinda to, and there's a campaign going on. We're still stepping out from our homes at 8 p.m. wanting to walk towards the Metro station for a safe, you know, walk to make the public spaces, including your metro stations, including your parks, your road safe 00:11:58 Speaker 2: for women. So things hadn't changed, really, in that sense. So it's while Lili has been very empowering for me as a city that that's where, um, I've grown up. That's where I found my education. That's also where I found my passion. Probably in the sense that the the the most most of my mentors come from there. Um, a lot of my first exposure to, um public. 00:12:24 Speaker 2: Um, what shall I say? Like, you know, mass media came from Delhi. I worked with D TV, which was again a very, very strong organisation led by very strong women. A lot of these experience have been very, very positive and have had a very positive impact on my, uh, on who I am and how I create and how I perceive the world and how that gets reflected into my stories. But I have to still say that we still have a long way to go. 00:12:46 Speaker 1: Heaven knows our daughters generations will. They see it. 00:12:51 Speaker 1: What I find very interesting, I know is you write in both languages. Do you think in both languages as well Or do you have to translate in your head 00:12:59 Speaker 2: now? I don't I mean, it's very seamless now, I, I don't even think like, you know, if I have to switch in Hindi, it'll just very, very organically happen. In fact, I, 00:13:09 Speaker 2: uh, think in three languages. BJP is my mother tongue. So, uh, it's it's just very organic now. But I think when I started to write, uh, in during my early days, Hindi came more naturally to me. It was also the language, just in terms of a lot of expressions that one had to say, like dialogues. For example, I still think 00:13:29 Speaker 2: I I can write better dialogues in Hindi than in English. Therefore, I've never attempted like long format in English. Um, I have. I have very comfortably just stuck to short stories or scripts because screenplays you have to mostly write in English all your proposals and everything else. But 00:13:47 Speaker 2: other than that, if there is something that you have to express in terms of emotions which, uh is representative of what a character is, where she or he comes from, then it very naturally is in Hindi that we naturally think in Hindi. 00:14:03 Speaker 1: Then you're a translator as well. You've translated some of our best authors. You're a writer as well. 00:14:10 Speaker 1: How do you switch between these two heads? How does a writer impact the translator? And how does the translator impact the writer? That's 00:14:17 Speaker 2: such a healthy question. Long time ago when I was still a very nervous writer. I mean, I didn't even know if I could. I didn't even know if I could write. Um, a very dear friend of ours called mutual friend. In fact, Natasha B, uh, she was also my colleague from ND TV. So, 00:14:32 Speaker 2: uh, I told her that and this was also I was a young mother. I had quit my job. I was looking for gigs. So writing also actually for me, became a source of livelihood, and so did translation eventually and editing. And some stint that I had at publishing because this was also a way to sort of keep oneself going and keep the career, if not career, at least some form of job alive. So, um, 00:14:56 Speaker 2: when I got my first translation assignment, I came back and told Natasha, and she said that Now you're a bona fide. You're going to be like a writer because the best way to start writing. A few days ago, I was reading Murakami's novelist as a vocation, and he extensively talks about how he first was a translator. And then he started to write, and he has not, in fact, translated his own works. He's translated other other writers a lot American authors especially, 00:15:24 Speaker 2: and that informed his writing. And it really resonated with me because when you work in two languages while you are getting inspired by and the duty of the responsibility of keeping the sense, the soul of the writer's work alive is on you. You also have the creative liberty to play with the other language that you're translating into, which means you can 00:15:54 Speaker 2: understand the source language really well. But the translating language empowers you to be creative. And that taught me, You know, you're learning from the Masters because they were such wonderful authors. So you were translating their work. So you're also learning how to use the syntax, how they were using sort of the wordplay, imagery, everything else. That language does words do to us. And when I was translating that into the into Hindi, 00:16:21 Speaker 2: I was informing my I mean, I was becoming rich as a Hindi potential Hindi writer. And I have learned a great deal and 00:16:30 Speaker 2: and I still think after having worked across so many formats, and I do not get enough time to translate now, I still feel translations. One part of my creative experience that puts me into a state of meditation. Really, I have no words. I mean, I can't express. It's just inexplicable. It's just, 00:16:52 Speaker 2: but it just is meditative because you're working with two languages that you're comfortable with. You love your you know, sort of being the bridge. It's such a high. 00:17:02 Speaker 1: How wonderful, how wonderful You've written scripts for some of our most acclaimed shows. You did Aria, and you did, uh, quite a few others, I think, Yeah, now for a scriptwriter, it's not just about the creative process. There are so many other factors involved. 00:17:19 Speaker 1: I know you've spoken about it in another podcast as well, but could you take our listeners through what script writing actually entails? 00:17:28 Speaker 2: Uh, script writing 1st, 1st and foremost is our collaboration 00:17:32 Speaker 2: as a screenwriter, whether the story is coming from you or it is coming from somewhere else, which means you are a work for hire writer. In that sense, um, it's always you're always collaborating because you're not writing for yourself. Unlike prose writing, unlike other creative mediums, where you first try to entertain yourself, What a joy to be in, right? You're entertaining yourself and then you're waiting for it to go out in the world to entertain or, uh, sort of connect with other readers. But here you're writing to a vision, 00:18:02 Speaker 2: and unless you submit yourself fully to that vision and align yourself creatively, probably even ideologically and process wise, it won't work. So 00:18:16 Speaker 2: the one thing that I have learned from script writing from the process of script writing is the surrendering of ego. I know I'm sounding a little, Not at all, but whatever. 00:18:27 Speaker 1: It's such an important thing. You know, I think a lot of us take too much of ego into our writing, and I'm glad you're talking about it, which 00:18:34 Speaker 2: is what we do. I mean, even I do when I'm doing my own stuff, and I know that Oh, I don't care what the publisher thinks. I don't care what the editor thinks. I don't care whether the readers like it or not, 00:18:43 Speaker 2: because, like I said, it's for myself and but actually is real. Is it really? We are expressing not because we want to keep it to ourselves. We we are expressing because we want to engage with the outside world. It's just that the audience changes the so That understanding came from script script writing, 00:19:04 Speaker 2: and it also requires you to be in constant communication or engagement with other writers who come with different sets of skills, uh, different sensibilities, also sometimes very different ways of working. So it also in a way teaches you to be a part of the team, and it's quite a learning because then you are constantly like, you know, giving and taking, and initially when I was 00:19:30 Speaker 2: started to write. I mean, I was like, You write right? You have to a a page KK. Then, unless you write, how do you come up with ideas? Um, and I would really be in awe of all these senior writers who would keep throwing ideas at you one after the other. Like they would be seen ideas that would be character ideas. There would be arc ideas. They would throw ideas and they would, like, discard it with as much ease. And I used to find it very fascinating. But now, 00:19:56 Speaker 2: after having done it for a few years, almost five years now, I've also realised one more thing. Creativity is a muscle memory. As much as you trigger it, you use it. 00:20:10 Speaker 2: The more you use it, the better it gets, the stronger it gets, and it begins to sort of help you in your journey. You can't sit and wait for madam genius to strike or madam creativity to, you know, shower her blessings on you. That doesn't happen, 00:20:27 Speaker 2: and I therefore I'm very grateful for for this experience as a scriptwriter because it has genuinely informed how I also write in other mediums. One basic question, which is often asked, is. Is it very difficult for a novelist or a short story writer or a writer of prose to 00:20:47 Speaker 2: into a scriptwriter? Absolutely not. One thing that you already have as a writer is or as a creative person is that you already. If you have continued to write, and if you have sort of submitted yourself to your own process and have in a disciplined manner churned out our stories, you have it in you you can write, which means you have the diligence and discipline to deliver. However, can every writer become a screenwriter? 00:21:16 Speaker 2: Not necessarily because a lot of us do not work or don't want to work as collaborators. We don't We're not comfortable. We want to write in our own isolation, and that's fine. So 00:21:28 Speaker 2: if you have that realisation that this will require me to put my work out there, where the credits will be shared, where the ideas will be free flowing where everybody will be contributing and there'll be constant nit picking and this process of feedback to which you will have to work and it's like, really work, then a writer. Nobody. I don't think the the some of the finest writers are there for the script script writers. 00:21:55 Speaker 2: And we have a full like, you know, legacy of that starting from Ismat to Manto to to Guara to, uh to a lot of the tow to Rahim Masum Raza to, um even AnAnd the nin in the near, you know, recent times a lot of writers who, if we were to only look at the legacy 00:22:19 Speaker 2: Sharad Joshi, who was a satirist and wrote some of the most wonderful dialogues for a film like So. Even so, it has been proven time and again that writers can really become great scriptwriters, but also with the understanding that it's not just for yourself that you're writing. You're writing with a team you're writing for the director you're writing for the producer you're writing for the actors who will completely own the material that you're creating and will make their their own. 00:22:49 Speaker 2: So you will probably forget Salim Javed, uh, wrote that famous line of Meria Mirab Chor or Meria Mahe. You will probably remember only Shashi Kapoor and Naab B. So despite that, 00:23:04 Speaker 1: so that's where the ego has to be kept at this side as a writer, and you have to know that what you create is not going to be your own anyway. That's such a lovely thought. And that's such an important thought because we come with so much of baggage of ego as writers 00:23:17 Speaker 1: and to, you know, surrender. That is something most writers would grapple with. I know when you're writing a book now, because the process is very different. How internal is writing a book? Because you're writing for yourself? Now you're writing 00:23:31 Speaker 1: as you said, not necessarily for the readers of the publishers. You're just writing to amuse yourself. So how different is the process? I know you write short stories. Are you also exploring 00:23:39 Speaker 2: long form? Yes, I have, in fact, published a novel. I just finished another novel. OK, so but yeah, short story is my favourite medium. 00:23:48 Speaker 2: Uh, so I just completely disconnect myself like that. Writing is, in that sense, far more quiet. Um, probably. I'm writing only 506 101,500 words in at a stretch, but it's completely it's It's a very quiet process of not reading anything, not watching any, 00:24:08 Speaker 2: just staying with the story just playing with the words and playing with the characters and, you know, sort of charting out their journeys or wanting to first arriving at, you know, wanting to arrive at what I want to say through this story. So theme therefore, becomes important. How one wants to see and in 00:24:27 Speaker 2: as less words as possible becomes important. There are times when I completely disconnect from my screenwriting job and just do that. It happens rarely, but when it happens, it's very very. It rejuvenates it completely, I think fills my well up. I have no other way to explain this 00:24:45 Speaker 1: screenwriting script. Writing, script, writing, writing, novels, writing plays. What else? Testing hopefully one day, 00:24:53 Speaker 1: directing hopefully one day and producing definitely lovely. Do you have the script ready? You are 00:24:59 Speaker 2: working on a script? Yes, which is incidentally, I mean, I can't reveal much, but it's also an adaptation of a short story written by a very 11 of the best authors of our times and a female author at that one woman. So yeah, it's something that is very, very close to my heart because it's a story of sisterhood, and it's a story of two very strong women. 00:25:20 Speaker 2: So hopefully one day whether I'll reject or not, I don't know. But I'll definitely produce this because the older I'm getting, the more I'm writing, the more I'm engaging in stories, the more I'm just doing this to just live. Breathe, just be. I'm realising that more and more stories of women have to be told and the responsibilities 00:25:44 Speaker 2: this responsibility lies on us. 00:25:46 Speaker 1: How wonderful. Thank you so much, Anu for all these wonderful insights. And, uh, I'm looking forward to seeing that movie, and I'm sure you'll direct it. 00:25:56 Speaker 2: Thank you so much, Karen. I hope so, too. And it's been such a wonderful, wonderful conversation, 00:26:02 Speaker 2: because sometimes we do need to look at our own creative process as an outsider. I mean some. Unless you're nudged, you don't think about a lot of things. And when you begin to talk about it come there are so many other realisations that we that come to us, which actually become critical to our own growth, and therefore what you're doing is very important. I hope you continue to bring more creative people, 00:26:28 Speaker 2: you know, sort of decode their process and continue to inspire other people to also live a very creative life. 00:26:34 Speaker 1: Fingers crossed. Thank you so much for that Anu. And with that, it's a wrap on this episode of chasing creativity. This was Kiran Mal to listen to us on Amazon music on Spotify on bench spots wherever you get your audio content. Bye.