Oindrila Mukherjee, THE DREAM BUILDERS

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[0:58]Ondula Mukherjee is the author of the dream builders a novel

[1:02]Ondula is an associate professor of creative writing at Grand Valley State University

[1:06]She grew up in Colcada, India and resides in Grand Rapids, Michigan

[1:11]Welcome. Oh, and drill. I thank you so much for coming on mom's don't have time to read books to discuss the dream builders a novel

[1:18]Thank you so much for having me. I'm really honored to be on your podcast

[1:21]Ah, it was so much fun to read this book as I was just mentioning

[1:25]I carried it with me all of the December break and could dip in to different characters lives

[1:31]It was really wonderful to be able to sort of ride on the shoulders of one and then like jump over and ride on the shoulders of the next one

[1:38]And just keep going with all these different perspectives

[1:40]So it was really great and I was so captivated by all of it. So anyway, I loved it. It was great. Thank you

[1:48]Maybe you should describe it better than I did though

[1:51]No, you did you did great so the dream builders which comes out a week from today

[1:55]Actually is set in a fictional Indian city called Rishi poor

[2:01]Which is known for its real estate developments and upscale malls and corporate headquarters

[2:09]And it's a very Americanized and rapidly Americanizing city

[2:14]Especially on the surface and

[2:17]The story is told from the point of view of 10 different characters who belong to very different social and economic backgrounds

[2:24]The first character we meet is Monica Roy a college professor in a US college town in the Midwest

[2:30]She goes back to India after an interval of six years following her mother's death

[2:35]And she finds herself in this new city Rishi poor

[2:38]Where she's very startled because it's very different from the gentle laid-back historic city

[2:45]Calcutta where she grew up and it's also very different from Heather's field

[2:49]Which is where she lives now and so enough to she gets there

[2:52]She gets invited to a party by an old high school a Quentin's Ramona

[2:57]And she goes to the party and that's where she meets a lot of the other characters

[3:02]I think the only other thing I would mention is that on the surface

[3:06]It seems like everyone's life is really glamorous and privileged and exciting

[3:11]But there are a lot of invisible people in Rishi poor

[3:14]migrant workers and the chauffeurs and maids and electricians who really keep the city functioning

[3:20]And so we get this mix of characters and ultimately as we keep reading

[3:24]I hope people realize that everybody has a lot in common

[3:29]They've all come to Rishi poor from somewhere else. They all have secrets

[3:33]That they are keeping and they all want something that they cannot have

[3:37]Wow, well that was a much better description. So thank you for that

[3:43]You know, I have to say I often don't read the back copy of a book

[3:48]When I started I'm just like okay here I go and let's see what happens and so I was

[3:54]Surprised when I kept going in all the different directions

[3:56]And I was like oh, I'm sure we're going right back to minika like wait

[3:59]What happened to minika?

[4:00]But then as I realized that that was the intention I found it so interesting and like you said the electrician

[4:06]I mean, I am so horrified by like the sketchiness of the man and like that one day when they lost power and then what happened later with

[4:15]the I mean

[4:17]The characters are so richly drawn and yes

[4:21]You took us all over from like the most posh living rooms to

[4:25]You know, the dirtiest cars to I mean, it's everywhere

[4:29]We it's like you're our tour guide in this fictional city

[4:31]So it was pretty cool

[4:32]And I also particularly loved

[4:35]The chapter from the point of view of the facialist slash

[4:38]facial massage

[4:39]What's her name?

[4:40]Thank you

[4:41]Thank you

[4:42]And her life and her level of pain that she lived with and the piece of fish curry or whatever the dish was that

[4:49]Really like made her whole life

[4:51]Improved her life just the value of that one piece of fish that

[4:54]That minika brought her. I mean, it's really amazing

[4:57]So I don't know

[4:58]Maybe start off by talking about her or where did which character did you start this whole maze this web from?

[5:05]Like where did it come where did it start for you?

[5:08]Yeah, I don't know. That was a lot of questions

[5:09]Yeah, no, that's great

[5:11]Actually, you know

[5:12]I could talk about pinky because that is a chapter that a modified version of it

[5:16]Like as a standalone short story was published in eco tone magazine

[5:21]It's the only chapter that's actually been published as and was published as a story

[5:26]And I think it was definitely at the time when it was published because I was working on it with the editor of the magazine

[5:33]It definitely was the strongest chapter and the most polished chapter and it sort of set the bar for the rest

[5:39]When I went back to edit it

[5:40]But she was not the first person that I came up with initially when I began this book

[5:45]I've been thinking about it and kind of researching it for a while

[5:48]But I really didn't start writing it until 2016 and I only had manica

[5:53]It was a completely different book

[5:54]It was only from her point of view and maybe on mother's point of view who's not even alive now in the book

[6:00]And it was alternating between past and present Calcutta and this city and mother and daughter

[6:06]And I did have Ramona

[6:07]I had that party seen the first chapter was there and I took it to the ceremony writer's conference

[6:14]And that was the only chapter that actually I had for a while and then everything I wrote subsequently

[6:20]I threw away

[6:22]In 2018 I threw everything else away and then I started over

[6:27]Just keeping that first chapter and the people that were there were

[6:32]Manica Ramona

[6:34]Ashok

[6:35]Salil

[6:37]And Jessica

[6:38]But not in the current iterations of them

[6:42]You know, Salil was really obnoxious

[6:45]sketchy

[6:46]Not really fully realized but they were kind of there

[6:49]But I you know, that's how it started

[6:51]But it was a totally different book and then in 2018 I have a writer's group that was reading it and they read the first chapter

[6:58]Everybody seemed to like and they said there's a lot of potential here

[7:02]And then the second chapter they read you know was about manica kind of show and people like nothing's happening in this book

[7:08]You know, what what is the plot and honestly I didn't know I didn't know and I wasn't able to keep going

[7:14]Because I was just writing a lot, but it wasn't going anywhere

[7:18]There was no shape to it because I didn't really know what the story was. You know, I just had a background

[7:24]I had a I had a situation

[7:27]But I didn't have any destination

[7:29]Whatever and I've been working on it for a couple of years

[7:32]So when they said that I really had a moment where I was like maybe I can't write fiction

[7:37]Forget it. Maybe this is it. I can't do it

[7:39]I can't do a novel and then I just thought of somebody asked me one of the people in the group asked me

[7:45]Can you summarize in one sentence?

[7:47]What what the book is going to be about and then when I summarized it

[7:51]I realized I wanted it to be about the city and

[7:55]More than even about one person and I honestly at the time

[8:00]I didn't know what to do with just manica for 300 pages. I didn't have enough

[8:05]You know, but I knew what to do with all the individual characters

[8:09]For a little bit and so it began from that

[8:13]Limitation that I had at the time

[8:15]But then it became a kind of strength of the novel where I just got more and more excited about each of the characters

[8:21]And how they interconnected and intersected. So I don't know if that's of it. That's probably a very long winter way of answering your question

[8:29]I like long winded. That's the whole point. It's to like cure for others

[8:33]Well, I do feel like it was about the city and I I I feel like the looming Trump tower the build of that was

[8:42]You know such a symbol for so much of the changing times in India the changing culture the changing

[8:49]You know the world power relationships and and things that are out of their control

[8:55]One interesting part was the setup of the story how

[8:58]Monica's parents bought this dream apartment and then got to the city and it never got built

[9:05]And it was a whole swindle and and it sort of set a bad tone on the city and the dash dreams of so many people

[9:13]In that city in the cities in general. I don't know. I feel like I I feel like you did a really nice job

[9:19]With that element of it and having the city become its own character

[9:24]Thank you. Yeah. I mean dash dreams is really important because I mean the title of course came much later

[9:31]But I just wanted to deal with aspirations, you know

[9:34]It's a very aspirational city and an aspirational

[9:37]Society in in this book not all of India, but just in this book and everybody has different aspirations

[9:44]But they're kind of they all go back to material aspirations at the end and what happens when

[9:51]When your expectations are not met and it's I guess it's not just material because it's even

[9:56]Expectations that you have of places the expectations

[10:00]Monica had as an immigrant when she came to America and then she finds herself somewhere different, you know, the expectations that she has a richy poor, you know, when she gets there.

[10:11]So it's it's all kinds of expectations and I'm really interested in exploring the emotion of disappointment.

[10:18]I think that's my favorite emotion to write about because disappointment means you really build things up.

[10:25]You really hope and anticipate so there's a lot of drama there, right, but then when things don't go the way that you want them to there is that moment.

[10:37]You know, if it's a child who really wants something, even if it's a little thing like a car and then you're like, you can't have another one, you know, it's just that moment of crushing disappointment versus someone who's disappointed that their marriage didn't work out or that, you know,

[10:54]their chemo isn't working like something huge and massive versus something little, but in that moment disappointment can be so powerful.

[11:03]You know, and it's just it's just an emotion that I realized I really love to write about and if I'm struggling, I'll just think of something that somebody could be disappointed by and I think that's what it happens a lot.

[11:19]But there's also hope, right, I hope that it's not all doom and gloom because it wasn't supposed to be.

[11:25]I feel like there are moments of redemption and hope.

[11:28]I love the idea of writing all about the effects of a particular emotion.

[11:34]Like that's such a good writing exercise in general.

[11:37]I write six stories with everybody experiencing blah, you know, embarrassment, like that would also, right.

[11:45]I interviewed the author, Chris Bajillion a long time ago and he said all of his books have the main theme is a combination of something that I can't remember right now and dread.

[11:56]And I, that really stuck with me because I'm like dread. How often do I feel dread, what do I feel dread about and he's like built all of his books around it and now you're saying disappointment.

[12:06]It's really, it's just, I thought it's really interesting, even just an essay or a story or a scene.

[12:11]Yeah, dread is great too, because it's again so dramatic, right. Yes, building up suspense.

[12:18]Yes.

[12:20]It's really humiliation instead of embarrassment. That sounds better. Oh, yeah. Right. That would be good. Yeah. Oh, yeah.

[12:27]It's so powerful, right. And then how do you cope with it? How do different people cope with it?

[12:31]People put up a brave front, you know, some people pretend it didn't happen.

[12:37]Some people totally own it and tweet about it.

[12:42]I feel like we had that experiment in the pandemic.

[12:46]Maybe we had a situation that caused dread and caused fear and panic.

[12:52]And then we got to watch in real time as everybody in on the planet dealt with it differently.

[12:58]Like the people who did all the research, you know, like the people who just like became scientists and learned everything

[13:05]they could. And then the people who like threw themselves into their cooking or their work is a say it on mom or the teaching people who couldn't read people who read so much.

[13:16]Yes, I find I also find that fascinating.

[13:18]Different people's responses to basically the same situation or the same feeling.

[13:23]Yeah. I think I wanted to do that with Trump towers.

[13:26]Just in terms of the construction, you know, it doesn't matter whose name is attached to it.

[13:31]It matters to some of the characters, but what matters to me is it was an American name, you know, more than anything else.

[13:37]And of course, it's the summer of 2018.

[13:39]So that has some implications.

[13:42]I did actually see her sign one day when I was driving when I was being driven from this city where my parents used to live, which is sort of the real life inspiration for Rishi Paul.

[13:55]And I was going to Delhi and I saw the sign. It said Trump has arrived have you.

[14:01]And it was an ad for one of the Trump towers, not in that city, but somewhere else.

[14:06]And that was a defining moment for me. I was like, now I know what to do with my novel.

[14:12]Now I know how it could move forward because just the name, the branding, the tantalizing question at the end sort of challenging and teasing people.

[14:24]The word arrived, which is also so loaded.

[14:27]You know, it was just that sort of just really yeah, so everyone's reaction to that advertisement to that construction is different.

[14:37]And how could it how could it not be right.

[14:40]So it's interesting. So basically, the takeaway there is when you're driving and you keep your eyes peeled for billboards because you never know where your inspiration will next set.

[14:50]This is true. This is true. I actually got a lot from movies and you know, social media posts and because I haven't lived in India for 20 in 20 years.

[15:00]You know, I go back a lot. I've spent, you know, before the pandemic, I used to spend months at a time, summers, my entire sabbatical.

[15:08]And I talked to people a lot, my parents to live there. So I talked to them a lot. But I also have to keep a finger on the pulse of what's happening.

[15:16]You have to know what everyone is kind of thinking as many people as possible and not just in an echo chamber, not just in your bubble.

[15:25]And so just listening to what people are seeing, even people you don't agree with or who may not have that much in common with you is really fascinating, you know, to capture the pluralism of a place.

[15:38]And a community. I like to tell you also made Ramona who theoretically should have been the happiest if we equate wealth and happiness is like a, you know, like a, a graph.

[15:51]Like I'm drawing a graph because I guess of course. But anyway, but in fact, she is the loneliest and is sitting inside this beautiful apartment, which still isn't enough for her.

[16:02]And still are aspiring something even better and her trappings of her life and her husband just sending her gifts to make up for his deficiencies and all of that.

[16:12]And yet that doesn't make her happy either. So, and then people who are far happier, although nobody's particularly happy.

[16:20]Yeah, and it's not even just wealth, right. She's very attractive. Yes, of course, pedigree and she has the friends, you know, Queen B special status.

[16:32]Yeah. Yeah. And also, I mean, I don't even know if she if that is not enough for her, if it's a substitute for some other things, right.

[16:40]Like I don't even know if she, she doesn't really want the bigger home. Like she does, but why. I mean, it's, I don't even know. I don't think she's actually as shallow as she might appear.

[16:53]It's a way of compensating, you know, like retail therapy is it's really supposed to be some sort of therapy for her.

[17:02]Which, yeah, my editor actually told me that she felt the sariest for Ramona, which is very interesting. Interesting.

[17:10]Well, she is the most, is this true before I say this is a theory, the most sort of lonely.

[17:18]You know, she's alone. I mean, although the dad, Monica's dad is very sad and lonely at the loss of his wife. I mean, that was.

[17:27]It's really heartbreaking.

[17:29]Even the complicated feelings of losing someone who is a difficult personality that which we don't often read about either.

[17:36]Yeah. They're all very complicated. They're all pretty messed up and flawed at times at times and then other times.

[17:43]I think most of us are. I certainly am. You know, it's, it's interesting. You mentioned loneliness because that's another.

[17:50]I don't know if that's an emotion. I think it is a situation too, but that's also something that I'm very, very drawn to just creatively, you know, and as someone who's moved a lot and you know, I was, I think it was quite lonely as a child.

[18:07]I read one of your pieces about being really shy. Oh, thank you.

[18:11]I was thinking, yeah, you know, that's, I was an only child and my parents moved a lot. And every time I made some friends, I had to move.

[18:21]And I've lived in 10 cities in my life and you know, just being an immigrant and then the pandemic. I live alone.

[18:29]It's loneliness is a really powerful thing. It can be very beautiful too. It can be very, it can make you reflect and think deeply and you know, right.

[18:42]But just the idea, the image of someone very lonely in a crowd. You go to a party and everybody's having a good time and that's one person.

[18:50]You know, you don't even know for sure if they're lonely or they're stuck up or you know, yeah, but they're in a corner and it's just so poignant. I think it's just a very poignant emotion and situation.

[19:03]So I think they're all kind of lonely in their own way. You know, most of the characters certainly the electrician. I don't want to say too much to spoil it.

[19:13]But he's he's pretty lonely too.

[19:17]Yeah.

[19:18]Well, yeah.

[19:21]Loneliness is like, I feel like it's the hardest to fix. Also that it's so linked to this sort of fundamental human condition, right. They say that it can like shorten your lifespan.

[19:34]Essentially, if you don't have enough of a network or whatever. And it's not by I would think most people's choosing to not have a network and then you're like, well, in addition to that, I'm going to die earlier.

[19:45]Yeah. You know, I have to say those sometimes when I'm like, when I have lots of appointments or lots of things going on, I kind of miss being lonely.

[19:54]Interesting. I miss loneliness. I don't it's hard to explain. I don't know why.

[20:00]that would have to be unpacked. Yes, my some therapy with some therapy, but yeah, I just wish I could

[20:06]I like being wallowing in it, I think. Well, being alone is not necessarily lonely. Yeah, but I just

[20:14]mean even feeling lonely. I like even miss feeling lonely. It's really strange, right? It's

[20:20]the same. Yeah, it's maybe that's like your natural set point. It makes you feel at home. If

[20:27]that's like, I don't know, maybe there's something familiar. Yeah, I mean, I don't know

[20:32]how lonely I was. I certainly didn't have a lot of friends all the time, but it did make me want

[20:38]to read a lot. And there's something very, I don't know, bittersweet or just sweet about it too. I feel

[20:47]like lonely people or people who say they're lonely are also quite interesting. You know, so maybe

[20:55]it is just solitude. Maybe it's just a certain kind of complicated love for solitude that I am

[21:02]confusing with the negative voices of loneliness, but it's just something fun to explore in

[21:08]in writing. Yeah, thank you're going to have to you put some appointments around that one.

[21:16]But it's very interesting. Are you working on anything now? Oh, you know, there's so little time

[21:22]to be honest, like my books coming out next week. It's also coming out in Australia in March and

[21:27]the UK in July and India later this year. And I also teach full time, you know, I'm at university,

[21:36]my semester is beginning on Monday, the day before the book launch as well. Well, so it's very

[21:42]difficult usually to write during the semesters anyway. And with the book and the book tour that's

[21:49]coming up and all the interviews I'm doing this week and all the promotions, it's very difficult

[21:56]to do actual writing right now. But I do have two two manuscripts that I am working on. Probably

[22:02]shouldn't say too much about it because I'll probably end up changing my mind. But one is a story

[22:07]collection. It has something to do with very tales. And the other one is a novel and it's quite

[22:14]different from this one. It definitely doesn't have so many points of view. Definitely centers

[22:19]around one or two characters. Well, I mean, that's a lot on your plate. That's a lot. I'm thinking

[22:27]about all the publicity stuff and full time teaching. And yeah, that might be why I'm missing

[22:34]the solitude. I bet. Yeah, solitude sounds nice if you compare it to like complete overwhelm.

[22:39]I mean, yeah, it's a lot of texts. A lot of messages. A lot of emails right now.

[22:46]Yeah. I always feel like I'm like at the net with my racket, like waiting for the emails,

[22:52]like, but if I back up and I, you know, I'm back at the baseline, it's like, forget it, you know,

[22:59]I don't know how you do everything you do. No, I mean, everybody's so busy in all these different

[23:04]ways. All of us take on so much when writing is just one piece of it that just adds this other

[23:08]little layer. You know, thank you so much for coming on. As I said, you know, I really found the

[23:13]book so immersive and like I had gone on this whole trip and learned about new places and people

[23:19]and that's like the power of a great book, right? Just takes you there. Thank you so much. I

[23:23]hope people who, you know, I hope people who aren't Indian are able to connect with the emotions

[23:31]and characters. That's my basic hope here. It doesn't matter where you're from. The feelings

[23:38]are the same. I think that's why you feel like you can somehow like live for a little bit in a

[23:46]different place and feel at home because you see parts of yourself. It would be hard for someone

[23:52]not to see any piece of themselves in all of your characters. Yeah. Yeah. That's why we talked about

[23:57]the universal emotions. Yeah, exactly. See, looping it all back. I'm a full circle here in this

[24:01]interview. Anyway, good luck. Very excited for you. Thank you so much for having me. That's

[24:08]my pleasure. Okay. All right. Take care. Bye bye. Thanks for listening to this episode of

[24:14]Moms Don't Have Time to Read Books. Don't forget to follow me on Instagram at Zibi Owens

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