‘I always felt I had no choice but to write’

Anita Nair is a Bangalore based author Satyr of the Subway and The Better Man. Her novel, Mistress is on the long list for the Orange Prize for fiction for 2008.

What does spirituality mean to you?
I equate it to a deep sense of peace and serenity, to my ability to find that spot inside where everything is calm and in perfect order.

Do you believe you are guided and protected by a superior force?
Oh yes, absolutely. I very firmly believe there is a God walking with me, though I do not give It any name or specific manifestation. It has no face or particular religion, but I can feel it in any creative activity, when having a child, or just watching grass growing: where does that will to grow come from? It is obviously the manifestation of God, of a power beyond this, greater than us, that takes life over.
It is also a comforting thought that someone is looking after me. I can lean back and someone will hold me. At times of dilemma and difficulties, I sleep over it and in the morning I generally am quite clear about what I should do. I managed to commune with God in the sleep on a level I am not really conscious of. But of course it would be perverse or childish to think that God only makes good things happen. If help is not there, I have to understand it is simply meant that way, and decipher the how and why of it, instead of laying the blame on God.

Do you believe you have a special mission or purpose in this life?
I believe every single individual is born with a certain purpose. I could not fathom that the God I believe in created a segment of society without a purpose in life. Some people though are more aware about it, or focus more their energies in order to further that purpose.
In my case, I have always felt a compulsion to hold a mirror to society — showing who we are and what we can do about it. It mainly manifests through my writing, though not only. Since I was very young, I knew I would write. I wrote some poetry when I was six or seven and felt such joy from it that I decided to do the same thing for the rest of my life. In fact, I always felt I had no choice but write. It is like when thirsty, then you must drink. You cannot stop yourself. It is a very primitive and very basic urge. There is simply no way I could live without writing.
And then the impact of my writing is at times a very humbling experience. I may write what is a simple story to me and then people share how it changed their lives, how they made crucial decisions inspired by it. I could never fathom having the wisdom to advise people to such an extent. But that is what writing can do.

What is spirituality for you in your day to day life?
Of course it is about writing, which feels like my spiritual best, and when I am in nature, though that may sound so cliché. I can sit for hours and look at the sea, at a tree or at some shade of grass. I could not function if I was to live in a place without access to nature — not on a weekly or daily basis, but hourly. I must be able to constantly feel the ground, touch the leaves, smell the herb. It is very physical and sensual for me. When I spot some avocado blossom on my avocado tree it is such joy. It is the sign of some new life and all that is exaltation.

What is the role of spirituality as a writer?
I write long hand, and in the morning when I look at what I wrote the day before, I have no idea where it came from. I also have no idea how and what I will write that day, where I will need to reach inside in order to resume writing. In fact, writing requires a lot of inward looking and once there, it is as if God was speaking to me from a point far beyond any human reach. Words feel fed by a greater power. I call it being the hand of God. And that is why the more I write, the more I am convinced and aware of the existence of God. Those ideas and words come from a source somewhere else. Then when the book is meant to be over, that source simply dries up and I know it ought to come to an end.

Can you tell us about a unique experience that changed or shaped your spiritual beliefs?
At the beginning I would not believe. I wanted nothing to do with the family rituals or with an abstract notion of god. I did not want to believe just as a habit. Faith has to be acquired. And in that context, pregnancy marked a turning point. As I was facing so many fears for the being growing in me, I gradually had a more concrete sense of the divine, the feeling that someone is watching over me, whom I could call God. From then on I began recognizing Its presence in every detail of nature or animals, in the force that pushes beings of all kinds to be alive.

What have been your main spiritual inspirations?
I come from a very traditional household, with a ritualistic form of worship, whereas I have never believed in rituals. So I have gradually found inspiration on my own, getting away from my religious conditioning and living spirituality as a genuine act of faith.

If you were to be reincarnated, what would you like to be reincarnated as?
As a cat perhaps, I like cats very much.

If there was one question you could ask God, what would it be?
I would like to ask what makes some people more cruel than others, less tolerant of the rest of the world. I think of murderers, of rapists — what makes them less humanlike. No scientist has ever been able to explain it by some genetic or chemical disorder.

What is your idea of happiness?
To be at home with my family and write without too many interruptions — writing well, the way I should be writing, to the best of my abilities.