“I didn’t know anything about writing. But since you can’t cross the sea merely by standing and staring at the water, I dove in.”- Priya Hajela (Indian Author)

Team Kitaab is in conversation with Indian author Priya Hajela as a part of the South Asian Women Writers Feature.

For the whole of March, we will be featuring South Asian Women Writers on Kitaab for the whole of March. You can read the editor’s note to know more about this.

Today, we are featuring Indian author Priya Hajela. Priya is a fiction writer living in Pune with her husband and two dogs. Her two children are 19 and 24 and are studying in the US. Writing is a second career for her. She graduated with an MFA in Creative Writing from Goddard College in Vermont in 2017. Prior to taking to writing, she worked in a variety of telecom and IT organizations in senior marketing and business development roles.

One of her short stories, An Affair, has been published in an online journal called Indian Ruminations. A second short story, The Tattoo Artist, was recently published in Live Encounters. A third short story, ‘Daughters’ Revenge’ recently appeared in Kitaab. Her first novel, Ladies Tailor, was published by Harper Collins India in 2022.

Team Kitaab: How did writing happen to you?

Priya Hajela: I was not an artist. I was not a scientist. I was not a teacher. I wasn’t even an accountant. I was just a logical, somewhat organized person who had become quite good at managing things. I created boxes and packed everything neatly within them. Work stuff, family stuff, life stuff. I had dreams, but they were orchestrated dreams, planned dreams, logical dreams.

About eight years ago, I realized that some of my boxes were fraying around the edges. Some of my orchestration and planning had begun to fall apart, forcing me to search for myself in all that order.

“A mind all logic is like a knife all blade, it makes the hand bleed that uses it,” so wrote Rabindranath Tagore.

I was that knife. My dreams were shallow. My life was utterly orderly. I always knew what I was going to do tomorrow and the day after and the day after that – I knew what I was going to do two years out. 

The awakening came to me when I realized that my mother was in one of the boxes, I had so neatly packed away for so many years. I had to let her out, write her story – my ode to her in exchange for everything I had not done for her. I had to sort through my feelings towards her. I had to assuage my guilt. 

I didn’t know anything about writing. But since you can’t cross the sea merely by standing and staring at the water, I dove in. I sank straight down at first but slowly I began to float, then kick and then move my arms a bit. I’m still splashy and choppy but moving forward. 

Team Kitaab: If you had to introduce someone to your work/s, which books of yours would you ask them to start with?

Priya Hajela: My first novel, Ladies’ Tailor, a story or resilience and fortitude, set in post-partition Delhi, published by Harper Collins is available in bookstores and online.

Two of my short stories that have appeared in literary magazines are:

Daughters’ Revenge, a story about three young women who stand up to their father in a period drama appeared in Kitaab.

The Tattoo Artist, a story about gun control, appeared in Live Encounters.

Team Kitaab: Share five reads you would recommend from your region/ country.

Priya Hajela: My region is the world ☺

Anuradha Roy – All the Lives We Never Lived

Elif Shafak – The Island of Missing Trees 

Elizabeth Strout – Oh William and all her other books

Elena Ferrante – The Neapolitan Novels

Bharati Mukherjee – Jasmine

I’m sure my publishing journey is not very different from that of anyone who’s not an insider in the publishing world. I got more rejections than I can count, for my short stories and for my novel.

priya hajela

Team Kitaab: Your thoughts on Women Writing as a genre. 

Priya Hajela: Whether it is women writing for other women, or it’s writing about the lives of women, I don’t believe in Women Writing as a genre. While women writers deserve a leg up, a platform, a voice that they’ve never had, I believe that genre writing for women makes for an incomplete story.

I don’t believe good writing should be gender based or gender specific. Women writers should get the support they need, no matter what they choose to write. Writing with strong female characters, a focus on women’s lives, their trials and tribulations, can be written about by any gender. 

Team Kitaab: Please talk a bit about your publishing journey. The challenges you faced and the hurdles.

Priya Hajela: I’m sure my publishing journey is not very different from that of anyone who’s not an insider in the publishing world. I got more rejections than I can count, for my short stories and for my novel. I got a breakthrough a reference from my writing mentor, Randhir Khare, a poet and novelist who mentors writers in Pune. Randhir had worked with David Davidar in very long-ago times. He asked me to use his reference as a possible door opener.

A door opened and then closed. I was told by an Aleph editor that my writing was good, but I should have an agent championing me. She very graciously provided a list of agents. I wrote to each of them and got an immediate response from Mita Kapur. The rest as they say is…on to the next book. 

In this age of reels and Netflix, it is so easy to not write and so hard to overcome that stuck feeling.

priya hajela

Team Kitaab: How do you deal with Writer’s Block?

Priya Hajela: Oh, Writer’s Block is a terrible thing. In this age of reels and Netflix, it is so easy to not write and so hard to overcome that stuck feeling. As many veteran writers advise, write every day, no matter the missing muse. What I write on blocked days is awful but from it come ideas and inspiration – sometimes. Other times, nothing.

I also read writers I admire to push myself out of my rut. But sometimes, I let myself be. Then, I remind myself that writing is my choice, my work. It is what makes me feel whole – and then I get down to it. 

Disclaimer: All pictures are copyright of the author/s unless otherwise.