‘The story tells me to stop. Its shape is within it’: Writer Jayant Kaikini

Jayant Kaikini chuckles when I tell him I would like to be a character in his story.

We are driving around in south Bangalore, looking for a cafe where we can sit and talk about Mithun Number Two, the Kannada writer-poet’s latest collection of stories translated into English by the academic and cultural theorist, Tejaswini Niranjana.

Some writers excel in putting their characters under a clinical gaze, in piercing the bubble of their self-delusions, in remorselessly showing them to be the limited creatures of their time. Kaikini is not one of them.

In Kaikini’s world, however flawed and ordinary, characters are touched by their creator’s kindness and understanding, if not elevated by his sense of wonder about their lives.

Kaikini admits that he does not really dislike any of his characters. “When I finally understand why they do what they do, I feel bad for them,” he says. “I don’t judge because I feel connected.”

In many ways, Mumbai is a metaphor for that connection.

In 1976, Kaikini travelled from Gokarna to Bombay to work in pharmaceutical companies, treading a path several generations from the coasts of Karnataka have taken. He ended up spending 24 years there, writing away from the gaze of a Kannada critical establishment that was influenced by the Navya (modernist)...

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