A novel that won the prestigious Windham-Campbell Prize, a book chronicling the life of an Hindi film actor, collections of poems, four translations, a compilation of stories on mental health, several kids’ books and now a murder mystery; there seems to be very little author Jerry Pinto can’t do. The prolific Mumbai-based writer’s latest novel, Murder in Mahim follows a retired journalist Peter D’Souza as he solves a crime case with his friend, Inspector Jende, in a world he barely knew existed. The Sahitya Akademi Award-winning writer is currently working on his next novel as a Newhouse Resident Fellow at Wellesley College, Boston. He spoke to The Hindu over email; excerpts from the interview. The novel juxtaposes two worlds of the gay community; one of the educated class and the other of the lower income group. What was your process of getting insights into them? “Research is only formalised curiosity; it’s poking and prying with a purpose,” Zora Neale Hurston said. That’s what I think it is. You have to unplug yourself, you have to start listening to others. I think that’s the key, listening to others. At the Social Communications Media course at the Sophia Polytechnic where I have taught journalism for 25 years now, I tell my students that it is more important to be able to listen well than to write well. Someone can always help you with getting the words in the right place and the paragraphs in the right order but they must have what your sources said. And your sources will say only as much as you allow them to. I hope I have taken my own advice and listened to all the people who talked to me. The book also mirrors the LGBTQ scenario in the city back in the day against the present. Do you think homosexuality is still a ‘subculture’ in the city that the heterosexual population know very little about? I think we all know very little about each other. We should get used to that. I believe a good definition of a city like Bombay would be: the unknowable set in the unliveable. But this is not a value judgement. How are we supposed to make time and mind space available to others when simply getting by seems to take up so much of both? How are we supposed to reach out across the barriers of class and caste, language and sexuality? How can we survive if we do not? These are the conundrums of the city. Did you set out with an intention to make article 377 almost a villainous character in your book? Quite simply, yes. It is a villainous law with a blood-stained history and it is time that it should be wiped out of the books. Sunil’s parents, Peter and Millie, take their son’s orientation without as much drama as one would expect. Did you consciously give an alternative reaction to the conventional and expected one? They weep in each other’s arms. Okay, no one shouts, “Main mar kyon nahin gaya yeh din dekhne se pehle!” Perhaps I did not do a good job with showing their struggle. But Millie dashes to church to find solace with God, perhaps to talk to him. And Peter’s mind never seems to stray very far from his terrible difficulty with accepting his son’s exclusion of both parents from his world. It is not easy for them, this Via Dolorosa, but they walk it bravely because they love their son. Sunil has not confided in them. But which Indian child can bring his or her sexual life to his or her parents’ notice? Even if the child is a heterosexual, can s/he come home and say, ‘Mom, I had wonderful sex with this person but I don’t want marriage. What should I do?’ So although I wanted to present Peter and Millie and Sunil as an ordinary loving family, I also wanted to represent the silences of real ordinary loving Indian families. How does Peter get such generous access to Jende's case? They are old friends but Peter is totally in with the investigation. Wouldn't that be frowned upon in real life? Jende is a lonely man in the police. He is honest, and honest men are always lonely. Peter has no agenda and that’s why they’re friends. The rest of it is fiction. Of course, you don’t get access to crime scenes as a member of the general public. You don’t even want access, unless you’re a ghoul. Why would you want to stand about in a public toilet where a man has been slashed open and his kidney taken from him? Why does Arthur Hastings want to get involved with crime? Ariadne Oliver, sure, she has a reason; perhaps she’s going to pinch the cases for Sven Hjerson. But that’s tradition. Is there a method to writing a mystery novel? Where you perhaps build it up to a climactic ending? Or kill a character to increase the pace of the story? I wish I knew these ways. Christie wrote her last chapter first but I knew that my novel wasn’t about playing tricks with readers and making them guess who did it and then pointing triumphantly at Mrs Humphreys, knitting away in the corner, and suddenly glittering with manic savagery as she is uncovered as the woman with an old bottle of arsenic tucked into her lace fichu. You can’t write orderly crime fiction in India because there is no order. Peter and Jende can’t be sure that the criminals they uncover will ever pay for their crimes. What of the judge who says: why don’t you marry your rapist, dear? What of the judge who says: he didn’t mean to kill her, he just meant to burn her alive but then she died? What of the bullets that go missing in high-profile cases? What of the witnesses who vanish when film stars are involved? What of the MPs who get back triumphantly on planes? How do you write Western crime fiction—which is based on the notion that crime is anarchic and detection is the restoration of order — in an order that is anarchic? How do you judge if the motivation to kill is strong enough in a crime fiction novel? Life doesn’t give a two-paisa toss about motivation. John Hinckley tried to shoot Ronald Reagan to impress Jodie Foster. A young couple was shot for unfriending Jennelle Potter on Facebook; to give her credit, she didn’t do it, she just told her dad and her brother, who were so offended they went over and shot and slashed the couple to death. David Makoeya wanted to watch a soccer match; his family wanted to watch another programme. When he changed the channel, they stabbed him to death. Someone pushed his girlfriend off a building over chopsticks. Then he jumped after her. She died. He lived. And a 71-year-old man killed a young father who was texting his three-year-old daughter noisily in a theatre. (Noisy texting?) But yes, in a novel, you must give someone enough reason to kill. I tried to use the old Hammurabi code: I kill because you kill. Who are the murder mystery authors you enjoy reading? I’m pretty omnivorous. I read everyone from the classics (Doyle, Poe, Collins) to Les Grandes Dames (Sayers, Christie, Marsh) to the Dangerous Dons (Crispin, Symons) to the Hard-boiled Eggs (Chandler, Hammett, MacDonald) to les roman policier (Simenon, Vargas) to the Scandinavian noir all the way through. If the murder took place in Matunga station why is the book called Murder in Mahim? Matunga Road Station is in Mahim. Ask the Western Railway authorities. Can the city of Mumbai be called your muse? I wish I could say that. I wish I could claim a special relationship with the city. I wish there was a way to know that the city has acknowledged you. But the city is an impartial fiery furnace into which you throw yourself willingly. Nothing will remain eventually but you will have fuelled one spark of that huge roaring maw. This is all of us, me, you, the ministers and the madmen, the chowkidars and the memsahibs, all of us will be fuel for the city and we will end up ash. Muse? A muse is a goddess who comes and blesses you with inspiration and presides over your art form and seems generally benevolent. My experience of Mumbai is much more Medea than Melpomene, much more Procne than Polyhymnia.

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