‘All of us have been commodified’: Anuradha Sarma Pujari, who wrote a novel about capitalism in 1997

Sahitya Akademi Awardee, Anuradha Sarma Pujari’s Assamese novel Hriday Ek Bigyapan was recently translated into English by Aruni Kashyap and published as My Poems Are Not For Your Ad Campaign. The novel, originally published at a time when globalisation first made inroads into India in the 1990s, is a scathing critique of capitalism and the culture of exploitation it perpetuates, reducing human beings into commodities. The novel is also prescient in the manner it envisages the challenges that globalisation would pose to the culture, ethos and dominant value system of India. Pujari discussed her novel and related themes with Scroll. Excerpts from the conversation:

The title My Poems Are Not For Your Ad Campaign is an intriguing one. Tell us a little more about it.
The title is a very apt one. There is a character in the novel named Mohua, and she works for an advertising agency. She is also a poet and one day, her boss asks her to use a line from her poem for an ad for a detergent. Mohua flatly refuses, because the poem is her heart. She feels that she has given her all to her profession, but she wants to retain something as personal as a poem for herself. This stance becomes a metaphor, that a human being’s thoughts, and private life, should be their own, everything should not, cannot, be for sale.

The novel was published in 1997…
It was published even before that in an Assamese magazine but yes, it was published as a book in 1997.

Those were the years when globalisation made its way into India, so is the novel a critique of globalisation and its impact on our socio-cultural world?
The 1990s began as a time of economic repression, but with globalisation the markets opened up. India was a lucrative market because of its huge population and cheap labour, but then these companies needed to advertise to reach out to the public and ad agencies became integral to the process. I worked for an ad agency in those days, and I realised then that everything and everybody would eventually become a commodity.

Those who worked for these agencies worked for the money. They realised that they were being exploited, but it was a trap they couldn’t get out of easily. From the outside it looked like women were being empowered, that they were becoming economically independent, but from the inside one could see that they were also being exploited under the guise of empowerment.

So does the novel seek to expose the lies of capitalism and how beneath the veneer of “comfortable friendliness” an exploitative and manipulative system is at work?
Well, now when one sees a female model in various stages of exposure, one doesn’t even bat an eyelid. Even when children use adjectives like “hot” and “sexy,” we aren’t shocked. The process of normalising such a gaze on women began in the 1990s. I’ve been to shoots where women were asked to take off their shirts or show their skin provocatively, and I realised that every part of a woman’s body was up for sale for a price. The cameraman or the director would ask a model to unbutton a shirt very casually and slowly one was witness to how exploitation became normalised. We stopped averting our eyes when we saw such things unfolding before us.

So do you see a nexus between capitalism and patriarchy, and globalisation as furthering the commodification of women?
Absolutely. And now we see the same happening with children too. Everybody has been commodified, there is no escape. What we see around us is modern slavery, we are all slaves of capitalism. Of course it has made our lives more comfortable in many ways, but the price we are paying is huge.

Your novel anticipates the #MeToo movement in startling ways. How did you foresee the possibility of such a movement so early on?
I came across many daring women in those times, women who were the inspiration for the characters of Mohua and Ranga Mashi. These were women who did not believe in marriage, loved for love’s sake, defied the system, lived life, drank and smoked, not to compete with men but simply because they led uninhibited lives, spoke without hesitation. They were just incredibly brave women. I saw in these women the power to speak up for what is right and when they were wronged. I saw in them the ability to stand up to exploitation, to stand up to patriarchy, because these were women who prided themselves on their honesty and derived their power to speak out from that very honesty.

In many ways, it is Mohua Roy who is the protagonist of the novel, who challenges the system, not Bhashwati so much.
Yes, she is. Mohua fearlessly follows her heart. She does so because it comes naturally to her. There is no pretence about her. Her heart rules over her brain.

Towards the end, we see Mohua withdrawing from this world. Would you see this as retreat or resistance?
We see Mohua in search of an honest and pure world, and unconditional, nourishing love. She finds that love in this world is adulterated, it is transactional. Therefore, when she finds what she is looking for amongst orphans, she finds her destination. I don’t see her as retreating from life. In fact, when Bhashwati decides to adopt a child, her inspiration comes from Mohua.

Do you see your novel as critical of a new-age modernity?
The novel is about the modern world or what is called the modern world. Nowadays, a lot of books are being written about finding happiness in the modern world. My question is that if modernity has given us all these amenities, if globalisation has given us all that we need, spoiling us for choices, why are we still searching for happiness?

Your novel also touches upon ideas of branding and image makeovers that are buzzwords today. Do you see people as losing themselves in their attempt to sell or market themselves?
Yes, at the end of the day, I think they realise that. People work towards creating a personal brand, an image, for themselves, but soon they realise that the market starts dictating how this brand should behave. People then begin compromising about who they are, and they realise that their whole life has been a compromise.

The novel also expresses anxiety about the effects of rampant capitalism on the environment. What importance do you think present-day writers should give to environmental issues?
Nature is strongly present in all my writings. Trees, hills, rivers, and birds do not have a voice of their own, and so I give a voice to their silenced voices. In fact, the last novel I wrote, Yat Ekhon Aranya Asil (There Was A Forest Here), was based on my personal experience. My home is adjacent to a wildlife sanctuary, Aamchang. Aamchang Sanctuary runs from Khanapara to Narengi in Guwahati. In the last ten years, I have seen how the forest and the wildlife have disappeared, and so I wrote about it. Now those wild elephants enter the city, in fact, last year one came right into the heart of the city. So, it is our duty to see the crisis in nature, this man-nature conflict.

But we are selfish, we now write about nature because we have realised that we are dependent on nature for our survival. We need to rise above our selfishness and love nature truly. In our culture, we worship rivers, but to do “puja” is not just to practice rituals, “puja” means paying the highest respect, and therefore should translate into keeping rivers clean, our environment clean. But in this madness of modernity, we try to command and rule over nature, we forget that we are a part of nature, and we foolishly destroy nature.

Who are the new and up-and-coming Assamese women writers whose works you find promising?
There are many promising, young women writers. Gitali Bora has written this very interesting novel on women and frigidity, there is Monalisa Saikia who has written on drug addiction, then there is Indrani Sharma who writes on modern life. They are doing amazing work because they are writing in Assamese, working towards strengthening the language and its literature. At a time when many languages are becoming extinct or endangered, it is heartening to see youngsters write in their mother tongue. It is a very promising trend.