Featured Interview With Saborna Roychowdhury
Tell us a little about yourself. Where were you raised? Where do you live now?
I grew up in Kolkata, India in a middle-class Hindu family. Like the characters in my
novel, I lived in a hundred-year-old house with my extended family—aunts and uncles, and
cousins. Our crumbling mansion had two wings and two floors. Years of neglect had left our
house in poor condition. The cracked tiles on the floor, the yellowing walls, and the broken
windows were in desperate need of repair. During the monsoon season, water dripped from the
roof and collected in plastic buckets. Blue plastic sheets covered our antique furniture, paintings,
old encyclopedias, and faded photographs. Maintaining this crumbling mansion was impossible for our family members. Spiders crawled behind the clothes horse and termites mud piles went up the wall like dried-up river beds. The old grandfather clocks chimed at the wrong hours and pigeons nested in the skylight holes.
Though I left Kolkata and moved to America when I was nineteen years old, this house
full of history remained alive somewhere inside me. And years later, in my novel, “Everything Here Belongs to You,” I used this house as the main backdrop.
I live in the suburbs of Houston now. Here my wooden house is relatively new with
central air conditioning and modern appliances. Soft carpet covers the floors and the walls have a
fresh coat of paint. Modern furniture adorns my spacious living room and the kitchen has
resplendent cherry wood cabinets. Every week, a lawnmower trims our lawn and prunes the
bushes to perfection. The pressure-washed driveway and sidewalk glisten like glass. My
existence here in Houston is neat, tidy, and hygienic.
Still, when I pick up the pen, I rarely write about the suburbs of Houston. I still find
myself circling the same old mansion in Kolkata pining away for what I left behind.
At what age did you realize your fascination with books? When did you start writing?
When I was growing up, I dreamed about becoming a chemistry professor. I did
a bachelor’s and a couple of master’s in chemistry. Although I loved to read, I didn’t know any writers
at that time and the thought that I could become one never crossed my mind.
In 2004, I was looking for a teaching job and decided to take a creative writing class just
for the fun of it. The teacher gave us a writing prompt and I started writing my first short story.
When it came to sharing my story with the rest of the class—I was nervous. I was a chemistry
instructor and this was my first story. The class seemed to like the story and gave me very
positive feedback. My teacher asked me to send the story for publication and it got accepted in
“New York Stories.” That’s how my writing journey started.
Who are your favorite authors to read? What is your favorite genre to read. Who Inspires you in your writings?
I am a big fan of Jhumpa Lahiri. I think she writes linguistically brilliant and innovative
prose. I sometimes find myself drooling over her sentences. But my favorite author is still
Rohinton Mistry. I have rarely seen an author choose such unremarkable people and turn them
into such extraordinary characters in a novel. The author’s honesty and empathy have the power
to melt even the stoniest of hearts. He understands Indian politics and class/caste issues like no
other author I have known.
Tell us a little about your latest book?
My latest book is “Everything Here Belongs to You.” In my book, a lowly Muslim maid working for a middle-class Hindu family struggles between discovering her Muslim roots and conforming to the only family she’s ever known. Her struggle leaves a path of destruction that she could never have foreseen.
Parul is a Muslim maid sold by her father to a middle-class Hindu family. She lives
comfortably among the family but is always treated like a second-class citizen. When she comes
of age, she meets and starts a love affair with a radical Muslim, a jihadi, Rahim. He poisons her
mind against her Hindu family and toward America. When the Hindu father brings an American
boy to live with them while he trains for the Olympics, Rahim brainwashes Parul into sabotaging
the American boy however she can. The American boy, Michael, and the young Hindu daughter
fall in love after a rocky first few months of living together. The story unwinds as the readers learn
more about the background of each of the characters and come to a head when Parul commits
her final betrayal at the end of the novel.
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