An Exclusive Interview with Zehra Naqvi; the Noted Author & Independent Journalist

Zehra Naqvi is an author and independent journalist who has spent a decade writing on literature, gender, and socio-political issues. She has written for the Indian Express, Reader’s Digest, The Hindu, The Wire, Outlook, Financial Chronicle, The Quint and others, and has been featured in the RBTC list of 100 Most Inspiring Women from Uttar Pradesh. Zehra is a quadruple gold medalist in journalism from Aligarh Muslim University. This is her first book. 

 In an exclusive interview with Nitish Raj; Editor-in-Chief, The Literary Mirror, the noted author talks about various aspects of womanhood, authorship, motherhood and various paradigms of writing.

Q. At what point do you think someone should call themselves a writer? What makes a writer different than an author?

Ans. I would say that anybody who has a flair and a passion for writing would be called a writer. People usually call themselves ‘authors’ when they have published a book. But then, people use different nomenclatures for themselves; some call themselves storytellers, and others call themselves wordsmiths. In the end, these are all labels and categories that humans love to tag themselves with. The act of writing is, first and foremost, an act of love. And love transcends all labels.

Q. Are there any therapeutic benefits of modeling a character or incident after someone you know?

Ans. There is a story doing the rounds on social media, about a writer who used to name a character in every book of his, after his wife’s ex-boyfriend, and would bump off the character every time. I can imagine it must be quite satisfying for the writer! On a more serious note, writing is indeed cathartic and therapeutic. Very often, fiction serves as a channel for expressing ideas or feelings that we would perhaps not feel comfortable saying out loud. Sometimes it becomes a way of honoring or commemorating a significant person or event, sometimes a safe channel for showing the mirror to society without specifically pointing towards a particular person.

Q. How did the idea of writing a memoir emerge? Did you face any challenges while writing a memoir? 

Ans. My memoir took shape first as a blog. This blog was born in the year 2013, when my son was almost a year old, and it took birth in my mind while watching the film Julie and Julia. As I watched Julie Powell blogging about her life everyday, picking one recipe each day from Julia Child’s famous cookbook, I found myself identifying with Julie and how she felt like she was at the lowest ebb of her life. My life, too, had been flung off-track, post motherhood. A difficult pregnancy had led me to quit my job, and circumstances became such that I had to move back to my hometown, with my partner and I living in different cities, and later in different countries. I felt completely derailed and, on top of it, completely alone, because I was surrounded by relatives and family members who couldn’t fathom that a mother might want anything more than her child.

As a society we are fed on images of women wanting nothing except motherhood, and I could not find a single person who understood my inner turmoil. This led me to blogging about my emotions and experiences, because I needed to put my truth out there. What I had not expected in the least was the stream of messages I began to get, both from Indian women and women across the globe, thanking me, calling me ‘courageous’. These women expressed how they had the exact same emotions, but couldn’t utter a word for fear of judgement and shame being heaped upon them. It was they who suggested, over and over again, that my story should take the form of the book, because it had universal resonance for young women of my generation. And that is how the blog ultimately took the form of a book.

The biggest challenge I faced was the question of how writing this book would affect my son. However, in a society that is constantly hushing up the truth- especially when it relates to women, it is important that we bring up our children to be empathetic adults, who value the truth. It is important for people to understand that parents are not gods but human beings, with their own dreams and desires, and flaws and frailties.

Interestingly, my concern over my son was addressed recently. In the past year, we have had two new babies in the extended family, and just a week after the launch of my book, my son witnessed the little ones crying throughout the night, and their young mothers totally unnerved and harried and exhausted. He listened to them talking about how difficult motherhood was, and to my utter surprise, he came up to me quietly and said with great seriousness, ‘Mummy, how difficult it is to take care of a little baby! I can totally understand why you have written this book.’ That has been the biggest relief to me, and the biggest source of pride to have a little boy who is so empathetic and wise beyond his years!

Q. Your book ‘The Reluctant Mother: A Story No One Wants To Tell’ deals with multiple themes and is a ‘story of one woman, yet the voice of many’. Would you like to share your writing experience? 

Ans. As I mentioned earlier, my blog used to get numerous messages from women – across the country and across the globe- who found resonance with what I wrote. Now, ever since the launch of the book, I keep getting messages from women who feel heard, who feel understood, who feel that someone has finally enunciated what they wanted to say. It is extremely humbling and gratifying at the same time, to see the kind of love that this book has received. Women find that it speaks of both their dreams and desires, as well as their struggles and challenges.

As a society, we have placed mothers on a pedestal, glorifying them as goddesses, so that women cannot even speak about their difficulties and travails even in whispers, for fear of being harshly judged, for fear of being called selfish and ungrateful. They are ordered to be thankful for having a child, because there are numerous childless couples in the world. But there can be no competition in pain and suffering; there are no units for measurement of pain. Suffering, no matter how small, is immeasurable and incomparable. And therefore, one person’s struggles cannot be made a reason to belittle the struggles of another.

And that is why this book finds resonance with so many women; this is why it is the ‘story of one woman, yet the voice of many.’ Because it speaks the truth that society does not wish to hear.

Q. Has there been any change in perspective while drafting your work and bringing it in the form of a book?

Ans. I wrote my book over a period of 5 years. From 2013, when I started blogging, to the end of 2018, when I gave it the shape of a book and completed the manuscript. It took 3 more years to finally reach readers in its present form. Naturally, over such a long span of time, I have grown as a person. As people, we are constantly growing, changing, evolving. We do not remain the same person that we were, say, 3 years ago. And that is how it is for the ‘person’ in this book too. It is the story of a young woman in her mid-20s, written by the young woman herself. And now, in my mid-30s, I see the person in the book as a younger version of me, and yet, I am not the same person. This change is visible to some extent in the book as well, because the narrative voice undergoes a change gradually, as we move onward in the book from the beginning towards the end. The younger version of me, in this book, is far angrier, full of rage and angst and also full of dreams and longings. The older version is calmer, wiser, and has seen the world for what it really is. In that sense, this book is a coming-of-age-story as well.

Q. What according to you is ‘literary success’? 

Ans. That is such a good question. What, indeed, does success mean? Generally people imagine literary success to be reflected in either sales numbers or literary awards. While both of these are important and wonderful to have, the most gratifying thing is the acknowledgment of a writer’s labor of love by her/his readers. Having people connect with your words, having them feel a resonance, having them experience a catharsis of their own with your story – what could be more elevating? Literary success to me is that moment when a reader quotes my words back to me, telling me how they touched her/his heart. Touching hearts is the best kind of success in life- literary or otherwise.

Q. Do you have a writing quirk? What keeps you motivated in your working space?

Ans. I am a night owl, and often get my best ideas at night. As a mother particularly, I have done my writing during the wee hours of the night until the first light of dawn, because that was the only time of peace and quiet that I ever got. I carry a notepad app in my phone and jot down all ideas that I get at odd hours of the night, and all through the day, so I don’t end up forgetting them. I can write for hours when inspiration strikes and when I’m writing I might forget about hunger and thirst- and the whole world. I zone out of the world and into my writing.

What motivates me to write is the need to make sense of life. The need to contemplate and reflect upon the nature of this world that we live in, upon the relationships we craft, upon our needs and dreams, upon the way we live and the way we love. I write to know the truth, and I write to speak the truth. I find that my need to write is a need for telling the truth.

I am also motivated by the words of other writers that have touched my life: Maya Angelou, Rabindranath Tagore, Helen Macdonald, Annie Zaidi, Nivedita Menon, Amina Wadud.

Q. What would be your words of advice to writers working on their first book?

Ans. Persistence is the most important ingredient for getting to the finish line. The second most important is to know that you will have to edit and polish your work over and over again in order to make it perfect. It is a process of constant learning and unlearning. The third most important thing, which will stand you in good stead throughout your life, is to believe in yourself and your purpose.

I am quoting a section here from a post I wrote on Facebook, particularly for writers of memoirs: ‘Don’t wonder why you are telling the story of your life. Don’t think- well, who am I, why should people want to know what I went through? Believe me, they do.

We all want to hear each other’s stories, because we want to know that we are not alone. We want to know that this grief and pain and confusion is not ours alone. We want to be comforted.

There are people whose lives your writing will touch, people whom you won’t ever be aware of. People whom you will comfort without even being aware of it.

My life has been touched by writers who will never know of my existence, and their words have healed me in ways that they will never know.

So, write.

Writing comforts. Stories comfort.’