BINA NAYAK — graphic designer in the Mumbai advertising world, creative director of Goa based ad-agency Slip Disc, and co-founder of the “Battle of the Bands” live rock band competition, that ran for fifteen years in North Goa —- tells Goa Journal the intriguing backstories and inspirations behind her debut novel Starfish Pickle.
Not for the faint-hearted, the novel follows the fictional, free-spirited, but troubled, commercial diver, Tara Salgaonkar, as she negotiates career, relationships and cross cultural fateful encounters across the hippie and Rave party cultures that germinated in a traditional and conservative Goa of the nineties.
Q. Can you tell us what was the inspiration/motivation for writing Starfish Pickle.
I have always loved reading and writing. But my love for and my prowess in drawing superseded my love for writing. I joined JJ School of Art and then the advertising industry in Bombay in 1991 (it was Bombay then). From my very first job, I dabbled in copy-writing while designing my ads. I was quite aghast to observe that most Copywriters in advertising had a very low regard for Art directors from JJ, with one famous Creative Director of the 90s going on record saying the art directors don’t even know how to read or write ABCD! Maybe too many of them had chopped off his copy to fit into a design, without reading it. So I definitely didn’t want to be typecast as one of ‘those’ Art Directors, and I also did not take too kindly to this sweeping generalisation that people who take to Art do/did so because they weren’t good at anything else. I was aware that Arun Kolhatkar — a much celebrated bilingual (English & Marathi) poet, was also a graphic designer from JJ. This was my motivation.
My inspiration was Arundhati Roy and her book — God of Small Things. I have followed Arundhati’s work since ‘In which Annie gives it those ones’ and her script writing days. She is an architect by training. She made me realise that one does not need to be a literature student or a creative writing/liberal arts student in order to write.
Q. First/debut fiction novels have a strong element of the autobiographical in some cases. Is that true for Starfish Pickle?
Oh, certainly. While the convoluted situations and drama are imaginary, the style of dialogue, the characterisations are from real life. The Goa you see is my experience of Goa. The trials and tribulations at work are my experiences — just in a different work sphere.
Q.One of the most striking themes in the novel is its setting in the Goa Trance music and Rave party scene of the 1990s and 2000s. By writing in two Psytrance musicians as important characters in the book, you’ve put the spotlight on this era, and almost humanized what was a furtive, underground culture. What was your thought process in doing this?
I see a similarity in trance/rave parties (the original ones of early 1990s) and many of the pagan traditions still practised in Goan villages (like the all-night Zagors) the fire walking that happens during zatras. The collective hysteria is similar to a Rave. Getting into a trance state (with or without the aid of psychedelics, alcohol) and channelling ‘God’ or ‘Devi’ is common. It’s just that the majority of us have now accepted an aryanised version of Hinduism, and our gods have become light skinned and genteel. We were Vetal worshippers, lest we forget.
I wanted to show the similarities in a zatra (a religiously sanctioned Rave!) and a Rave party.
When I first attended a rave party with some Mumbai friends, we were all shocked and intrigued at the Shiva and Hindu imagery all around. The hippie trail oscillated between Goa and Himachal, and the fascination for Indian Gods was something that always struck me.
Similarly, tribal and poorer Goans didn’t have a problem with the hippies or the early ravers — they sold tea and snacks at their Raves! It was the upper castes and classes who were judgmental.
Q. The novel has a Goan Hindu girl (albeit big-city-bred and consequently cosmopolitan) drawn to the Rave party scene and details her experience. Maybe not in the pan Indian context, but in the Goan context, that’s groundbreaking. Maybe not so much post-2010, when Electronic Dance Music became mainstream and EDM festivals run packed and have the odd unfortunate substance-related tragedy.
As I had mentioned earlier, the average Hindu girl in Goa is more suppressed and brought up more conservatively than the average Catholic girl. From the parents’ point of view, the main focus in educating her is to get her a good marriage proposal. The education is not for a great career and to earn well and do well in life — she will just be a support to her husband and his family. This is still happening.
At the same time, the average girl’s brothers have (and have always had) more freedom and are allowed to attend Raves, Rock shows and what have you! Or they do it on the sly, but the girls are even scared to do something behind their parent’s back. And because Goa is a small place, everybody does know everybody and the fear that “somebody will see you” and “what will people say” unfortunately kills creativity and ingenuity in youngsters. Nothing of any value was achieved by kids who listened to everything their parents and teachers said. Trust me, when I would organise The Battle of The Bands — very often, I would be the only Hindu girl around. And I’m talking about the mid 2000s here. I would give free passes to some of my Hindu friends, cousins……none of them would come.
Q. It would be interesting to know who was your inspiration for the character of charismatic PsyTrance DJ Bholenath Guruji in the novel.
My first inspiration is a mendicant from my childhood — also called Bholenaath Baba. He had white ashes smeared all over his body (like a nanga baba) and wore a real or fake tiger skin. I would be mighty scared of him as a three or four year old. We were living in a ground floor flat in Goregaon, Bombay then, where he begged for alms every morning sharp at 10 am. My fear turned into fascination and I would call out his name and hide. The second personality is Osho. In college and young adulthood, I’ve heard his lectures on cassettes, then CDs and now on YouTube. Goa Gill of course — for the DJ and Goa Trance imagery, and finally Steven Tyler of Aerosmith, because he is Craaazy!
Q. Why are the themes of death, water and starfish so important in the novel?
I have been obsessed with death since I was a child. Also ghosts! Probably because my home in Bombay was surrounded by three crematoria -–- a Hindu Smashaan, a Catholic graveyard and a Muslim cemetery for little babies (who die before the age of one). My pastime as a kid was seeing the various processions of death pass by outside my building compound. The best one I have seen to date, had the dead person propped up and tied to a throne-like chair. The mourners were drinking openly, bursting crackers, flinging coins in the air, and also flowers. My mother told me it was a ‘lower class’ procession. According to me it was a First Class celebration of a life lived well. I have also seen quite a few drowned bodies.
I have been fond of water too, love swimming and particularly love sea swimming. There were two swimming pools within walking distance of where I lived. Most of my teens and adulthood, why even now, I swim daily. It is as important to me as breathing. Though there have been days that I’ve held my breath. But I always find a pool where I can breathe again.
Starfish are beautiful creatures and marvels of nature. In fact, there was one chapter in the book where I went on and on about starfish and their internal plumbing, their feet and various other aspects — as if it were an article for National Geographic! I’m so glad I deleted it myself.
There was (maybe still is) an aquarium shop in Bandra/ Khar that kept marine fish — Starfish, live corals, lionfish, clown fish and discus fish. I have spent hours on a daily basis hanging out at this shop after work, admiring the fish, asking silly questions, and not buying anything. At various points in my life I have kept fish aquariums — but the fish ended up dying. In summer during certain low tides, spiny starfish get washed ashore at Calangute and Baga beaches — they make good, if smelly, manure for rose bushes.
Q. There are underlying philosophical strains running through the novel, about religion, feminism, nihilism, absurdism and existentialism. Does it organically spring from the plot, as questions that automatically come to the fore as thinking people negotiate life and compromise or was that a deliberate discourse you wanted to have in the novel, about the meaning of life, freedom and conformity?
I think this is mostly my own thought process coming forth through the characters.
Q. It must have been painful editing a 90,000 word novel to 50,000 words.
Yes and no. Yes because as I re-read it now, I feel it lost a small amount of flavour. No, because a lot of the rambling and meandering got cut down. One character and two chapters dedicated to it were deleted — and that was a good thing. Would have preferred the illustrations to all be in full page size or half page (for the horizontal ones). There were quite a few mix-media illustrations which I made using my own clicked photographs — but the editors felt it looked like a different style.
Q. Given that the Goan ethos is recurrently stereotyped, caricatured, misunderstood, misconstrued and misrepresented in pan Indian picturisations, is that a concern with the future film based on your novel?
It’s not in my control. It would be a dream come true if I am allowed on set — or to be a part of the script adaptation process — but that’s not how these things work. I have let go of that long back. Que Sera Sera.