When Abraham Verghese’s mother was in her seventies, his niece asked her what things were like when she was a young girl. So, she began writing an illustrated manuscript in longhand around 120 pages long, filled with stories of what her life was like back then. “It was for her grandchild, but it obviously became an heirloom for all of us,” recalls the writer and physician at his session titled Arc of the Covenant at the Bangalore Literature Festival on Sunday.
This manuscript became the starting point of his epic new novel, The Covenant of Water, a 724-page-long intergenerational saga set in Kerala. “When I picked up this precious thing again and looked at it, I realised that it was such a rich, vibrant setting for a novel,” says Verghese to Bengaluru-based independent journalist and writer Ammu Joseph, who he was in conversation with at the session.
Over a 40-odd-minute-long conversation, peppered with plenty of laughter and applause, Verghese and Joseph regaled their audience with anecdotes, memories, observations and banter, serenaded by the gentle pitter-patter of rain and the sudden mewling of a stray cat that had snuck into the tent.
“I was nervous about setting the novel in India, especially in Kerala” admitted Verghese, pointing out that while he spent all summers in Kerala, he was born and lived abroad for most of his life and was not particularly fluent with the local rituals and idioms of the land. “I was prepared for the novel to be treated with some scepticism and condescending criticism,“ he says. “It was a wonderful, wonderful thing to have the book so well received.”
The session then veered into a conversation about the novel itself, discussing how relatable it is, about the strong women who inhabit it, and how he writes these female characters as a man. “I have anatomical barriers. There is only so far that I can do,” laughs Verghese, recalling how he consulted a classmate to offer eloquent details about the labour process: research and good friends were great resources for this novel, as was his mother.
Responding to a question about how he manages to balance his demanding day job with his writing and research, Verghese says it helps that Stanford University’s School of Medicine, where he teaches, has been very supportive of his writing. He even has a secret office on campus where he can disappear a couple of times a week to write if he wishes to, he says. And yes, he also writes late nights and weekends, whenever he can really. “Many times, it feels like drudgery, but in the journey of this book, the part that I will treasure are those moments in sitting down, being there, pushing this rock further ahead,” says Verghese. “So much of my writing was about discovery. I am a big believer that writing is mysterious.”
