Elegant, enchanting and
possibly a little mysterious are all terms, which can be used to describe the
book, ‘The Mountain of Light’ and with it, the author, Indu Sundaresan. Her understanding
of the subject is truly remarkable. You can catch my review here.
While I have read the ‘Taj Trilogy’,
this book had something a little different. The
other books had to do with people, while this one had to do with nothing but a
stone. Not just any stone, but the Kohinoor that remains enigmatic, and the
author asks us to question the many lives which are involved in this
fascinating piece of history.
From the northern regions of India to Afghanistan,
to the Punjab, and then to the British Raj, the reader is given to understand what
exactly happened to it and why. Read it all here...
The Kohinoor has
always fascinated readers. How did ‘The Mountain of Light’ come about?
I’ve also been fascinated by
the Kohinoor, and for a long while, have thought about writing a novel about
the diamond. When I first started
reading about the Kohinoor, I realized that it has a very long reach into
Indian history, appearing first, in the possession of Lord Krishna in the Mahabharata. And then, it resurfaces once a century from
the 13th Century onward, owned mostly by kings in India, in its
departures, by the kings of Persia and Afghanistan.
Given this
scattered timeline, I decided that the most effective way to tell the story of
the diamond was to focus on its most recent history in India—the years when it
was owned by the rulers of the Punjab Empire, Maharajahs Ranjit Singh and Dalip
Singh, and how it was secreted out of the country by Lord Dalhousie to England
and Queen Victoria.
What is the kind of
research that has gone into this book?
The research was similar to the
kind of reading I did for the novels of my 'Taj Trilogy' - I read widely and
through various narratives. Where it
differed, was that for the novels of the trilogy, I
had access to English translations of original 16th and 17th
Century Persian manuscripts from the courts of the Mughal kings.
For 'The Mountain of Light', most of my reading came from original
The British sources are quite
candid about the role they play in the annexation of the Punjab to British
lands in India, whether liked or disliked by their contemporaries. And in any case,
when I read enough accounts of the same incident, from differing
points-of-view, a whole story eventually emerges.
Any challenges you
had to face while writing this particular book?
I set myself a challenge in the
narrative of the book, more an exercise of the craft than any outside
influence. The
Mountain of Light is structured differently from my other novel-length work,
the characters are numerous and they all have an impact on the Kohinoor
diamond’s history, and so India’s own history.
So the test was in how to bring all these
stories together into one cohesive whole, given the number of people you meet
in the novel, how to give each of them a voice, to make their presence felt—and
all the while, to have the reader remember that it
is the Kohinoor that brought all these stories/characters together.
How would you relate
this book and its characters to the lives today? Any similarities?
It was a different world,
certainly. I spend a lot of time
developing the character of the ousted Punjab ruler, Maharajah Dalip Singh, who
was only eleven years old when he signed the Treaty of Lahore giving away his
kingdom, the vast wealth of his treasury and his Kohinoor diamond.
By the end of the novel, Dalip is sixteen years old,
travelling to England as a…semi-king—he’s aware of his importance in history,
but in the end he’s just a king who’s allowed to keep his title, and there’s
nothing behind it; no lands, no treasury, no people to rule. Here, is
when Dalip Singh realizes all that he lost when he was eleven years old.
Perhaps then, it’s this that is similar to today’s world—no matter what
our personal circumstances or our outside influences, love, and loss and
treachery affect us in the same manner. This is true all through The Mountain of Light,
all through its timeline, and also true today.
It seems to be mix
and match of love stories. Which was your favourite one and why?
As a writer, I read extensively
all the stories that exist in current documentation, then I examine them
carefully, turn them over and over in my head.
From which point-of-view should I tell the
story? Where do I infuse the fictional
aspect? What if the characters behaved
in this way or that?
It’s one of these
what-if questions—as I explain in the Afterword—that led to the love story in
the second chapter, Roses for Emily. In
the third chapter, Love in Lahore, obviously there are two kinds of love—a
romantic one and that for a child, and perhaps this story began with the latter
kind and then transitioned, quite naturally into the former, because I saw
Roshni as the person, eventually, who had at heart the best interests of the
young Maharajah Dalip Singh.
The third love
story comes in the final chapter of the novel, Diary of a Maharajah. And here, I had to fictionalize
very little—for the love story, such as it is, is detailed in Lady Login’s
letters, both that and her denial of it.
How much of the story is based on facts and how much is fiction?
I
explain this in the Afterword to the novel, just how much of the book is fact, and
where it’s fictionalized. As with the novels of my ‘Taj Trilogy’, most of the
characters are historical, and for the most part, play the roles in 'The
Mountain of Light', that they actually played in life.
There is a feeling that there is no particular character that the
story revolves around. What are your thoughts on that?
Maybe
true. Although the young Maharajah Dalip
Singh takes up quite a bit of real estate in the novel—he’s a baby in his
mother, Maharani Jindan Kaur’s, arms; he’s an eight year old child when Henry
Lawrence comes to Lahore to be his guardian; he’s sixteen years old during his
first trip to England; and he’s much older, reflecting back on the trajectory
his life has taken in the last chapter.
Still, since there are many characters who step on and off stage
during the narrative—it’s eventually the way I chose to tell the story of the
Kohinoor diamond.
This is not your first
historical fiction. How do you come up with the concepts and develop them?
‘The Mountain of Light’ is my
fifth historical novel! There are the
three novels of the Taj Trilogy, ‘The Twentieth Wife’; ‘The Feast of Roses’;
and ‘Shadow Princess’, and a stand-alone novel titled ‘The Splendour of Silence’,
which is set in India during four days in May of 1942.
The ‘Taj Trilogy’
novels span, roughly, from 1577 until 1666; Splendour is set in 1942; The
Mountain of Light is set between 1817 and 1854.
So, I’ve been dabbling around on Indian history’s timeline.
The ideas come from everywhere
really, mostly from what I read and research for a book. I knew I would write 'Shadow Princess' (Taj Trilogy #3) while reading for the first two novels. I’d always wanted
to set a book during the time period just before India’s independence from
British rule, and I read to put together the pieces of the story—the American
soldier in India (why would he be there?); the princely state of Rudrakot where
the main action of the novel takes place (where would it be situated? Flora?
Fauna? People?); and then the Indian Independence Movement (how do I bring that
into the book?) etc.
For ‘The Mountain
of Light’, this was relatively simple—it begins and ends with the Kohinoor
diamond. The only thing I had to investigate/ponder on
was just what time period in which to set the book. The diamond surfaces on Indian history’s
timeline from the 13th Century onwards, about once every century,
until it comes to rest with Maharajah Ranjit Singh of the Punjab Empire in
1817. And, I decided that that is where
the novel must begin, and it would end…well, you’ll have to read the book to
see how and where it ends!
What is the main
difference you see while writing historical fiction when compared to contemporary
fiction?
I do have a collection of short
stories, titled 'In the Convent of Little Flowers’, which is set in
contemporary India. All of my novels are
historical.
With
historical fiction, you create a new world.
It’s not exactly new, but of course, you have to pay attention to
the world around the characters—transportation, clothing, food, culture,
everything. In contemporary fiction, you don’t have
to detail any of the above really; your reader knows as much as you do.
What is the most fulfilling part of writing a book?
For me, even after six books (and two previous,
unpublished novels) beginnings are always difficult. As much as I know
about the book before I begin writing, it takes a while, maybe a hundred pages
or so, to pin down a voice for the book.
Once, that happens, the writing is easier, the
story comes together better—that is when a true sense of creation comes in, and
it’s a joy that’s really, inexplicable.
What book is coming
from you, next? When do you see it released?
I’m working on a new novel,
quite seriously right now, and I usually don’t talk about work in progress
until it’s done. Sometimes, only just
before it’s published!
Who was it that told
you that you could become the author, you are today?
Hmmm… nobody did,
actually. When I’d finished graduate
school, I decided I wanted to write a novel.
I wrote two, before I wrote
Any advice to writers
that would like to be published today? How tough is it to be published in
India?
Just that, the answer for the
question above. Write
for yourself, be your toughest critic; if you don’t like what you’ve written,
throw it away. If you don’t like it, you
can be sure no one else will either.
I don’t know much about (first)
being published in India, because I was published first in the US (and other
countries), so I came to the Indian publishing scene with a published book—that
might have helped.
Who are your
favourite authors and why?
There are just too many! I read a lot of
writing, across genres, history, mystery, literary, non-fiction.
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