"Was important to document these jobs before they face extinction"

Why did you decide to write a book about the dying professions in India?

These are essentially the stories I have grown up with. My parents and grandparents used to narrate these when I was a child. When I moved to Calcutta, I realised that the coexistence of chaotic mess with the modern life hadn’t really died away. So it was important to document before they are completely relegated to obscurity. That’s when I started travelling for the book. I moved to Rajasthan. I travelled to thickets in Jharkhand; I went all the way down to Vikarabad, which is a Naxalite movement hit area near Hyderabad. So, I have travelled through all these areas and looked for the professions and documented them.

 Were you ever scared of travelling to these places?

I was not scared, not at all.

How much time did it take for you to complete the book?

It took me about a year and a half’s time to document them and another year to write about them. But, it took a lifelong study of humanity and observing people around us and of people who exist in the fringes of our society, given less time by both the media and society.

As a child, were you drawn to these kinds of individuals?

Perhaps yes. I was very sensitive to human conditions around me. I did observe them, if not do anything much about them. The kind of literature which surrounds us, in fact when you look at Anita Desai’s Village of Seas, when you look at a lot of Arundhati Roy’s works, they speak of the people who live in the fringes of the society. So that attracted me a lot. For me it was important to bring to light, to highlight the darkness which is engulfing us with time.

Post your interaction with these people, could you suggest a factor which hindered their growth?

Not only is their growth hindered, but their very existence is challenged here. Apart from modernisation and globalisation, which are the obvious answers to this question, there is also the society that is getting more complex. The urban-rural divide is getting lesser if not less profound. A lot of them also did not want to share their knowledge. They wanted to keep it within their caste and community. The advent of new entertainment like Television and radio is also the reason for their decline.

Don’t you think the younger generation is partly to be blamed for this?

Yes. More than anything else, they want to break away from this stereotype that they have been relegated to by the upper castes. They really want to be away from all of that. Often they regret the glorious past they have had.  Some of them are not even proud of the work they do, but at the same time, it’s everyday bread for them.

In hindsight, who do you think have the best survival chance in the next two decades?

I would ideally want it to be the storytellers of Andhra. It is the story closest to my heart. It takes an immense amount of talent to be a storyteller. The only reason for their decline is that they come from lower class background. So instead of progressing, they have actually gone back. Their children are now garbage pickers. This is perhaps the only profession where there’s no growth. In most of the other professions, the younger generations have taken up either banking or IT jobs.

Are you planning a sequel?

Hopefully, not anytime soon. These things require a lot of research work and I believe in thorough research before delving into anything. Before embarking onto another project, I have a whole lot of learning to do.

Were there other professions which you couldn’t fit into this book?

Yeah, there were a lot more. The midwives, the wig makers, the human alarms, the lamp lighters and so on. A lot of time of time, I could not get more data about them. I could not find family history of these people. There were no secondary research available that was done on them. Sometimes I could not find these professionals at all.