The Indian-American author Manil Suri made a splashy entry into the world of writing in 2001 with “The Death of Vishnu,” which became a best seller and was a finalist for the prestigious PEN/Faulkner award. “The Age of Shiva” followed seven years later. This month, the 53-year-old mathematics professor, who teaches at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County, released “The City of Devi,” the final part of a trilogy linked to Hindu gods.
The story is set in a fictional present-day Mumbai, which is in complete disarray because of the threat of a nuclear attack from Pakistan. Residents are leaving the city in droves and police officers are beating people suspected of being Muslims. In the middle of this chaos is Sarita, a recent statistics graduate on a hunt to find her husband, Karun, who disappeared from their apartment.
During her journey, she meets an enigmatic man named Jaz who, unbeknownst to her, is her husband’s former lover. The fast-paced novel cuts between Karun and Sarita’s past lives and the present.
Mr. Suri, who was raised in Mumbai, was in New York City recently to promote the book. He spoke with India Ink about his Kemps Corner upbringing, his slow writing process and his latest work.
What was the inspiration for “The City of Devi”?
It came from the idea of thinking about people who are desperate and willing to take risks to recover a love of theirs as the world might come to an end.
The novel has rich descriptions of the city. How much time did you spend there researching it?
Since I left Bombay, I go back once or twice a year for a few weeks. This book has been in the making for 12 years so I have researched a little bit on each trip.
Tell us about your Mumbai upbringing.
I grew up Kemps Corner and lived in an old crumbling building. I am an only child, and since we were a middle-class family, my parents and I rented one room in a four-bedroom flat which wasn’t so nice. The other three bedrooms were rented by Muslims, and we all shared a toilet and kitchen. I went to Campion school and was around a lot of rich kids so I used to spend a lot of time on my own studying, painting and writing.
You have significant gaps between your books – seven years from the first to the second, and five years for this one. Why did you wait so long between books?
Well, for starters, I am a slow writer. The first book took me five years to write, and the second book took seven years. It was difficult the second time because there was this expectation of following up from the first book, and the pressure was intense. This third book was most difficult in terms of getting the plot strands to behave. I literally drew diagrams plotting the characters and their paths, and I nearly gave up on it twice.
Being a math professor and writer seem like opposite fields. Did both always interest you?
I was always interested in both, but when I was growing up, I was pushed more toward sciences and math. I ended up going into math but used to write as a hobby.
Have you ever contemplated giving up your math career to be a full-time novelist?
I tussled with the idea after the first book and even took time off from teaching just to write but found it wasn’t a good choice for me. I didn’t like being alone all the time, and I missed the math — there was a muscle in the brain that wasn’t exercised enough just by writing.
Like the character Jaz in the book, you’re openly gay. Has that always been the case?
My coming out was around the early 1980s. I came to this country and wasn’t sure if I was or wasn’t but started exploring that side of me.
How did your family take it when you told them?
I came out to my mother first, and she took it fairly well. She has a master’s in psychology so she might have had inklings of it. She has since come and stayed with me and my partner and treats him like a son. She even calls him beta.
What’s your feeling on how the acceptance of homosexuality has evolved in India?
I can’t speak for the villages, but I think the environment has changed when it comes to English-speaking middle-class and upper middle-class people living in cities. I don’t think Mumbai was homophobic when I was growing up. I just think that homosexuality wasn’t talked about, which isn’t the case today.
I was just in India promoting this book, and when I went to Kolkata, I was told not to read out loud the homosexual scenes because it is such a conservative city, and, of course, that’s exactly what I did. No one fainted or walked out, so it turned out okay. I read the same scenes in every city I visited, and the audience was fine with it.
This book is part of a trilogy named after Hindu gods. Now that it’s done, what’s next for you?
My next challenge is to combine math and writing by writing a novel about math. I also have some guilt that I cheated Brahma out of his book by naming this one after the mother goddess so I might write a book named after him.
(The interview has been lightly edited and condensed.)
This post has been revised to reflect the following correction:
Correction: February 25, 2013
An earlier version of the post misstated that Malin Suri is a professor at the University of Maryland. He teaches at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County.
