could she have won the booker?

few indians will have a problem connecting with little rumika vasi. the child protagonist of nikita lalwani’s debut novel gifted, rumika — or rumi, as everyone calls her — has known since age 8 that mathematics is a world she has special access to. her life is divided evenly, in her mind, into neat fractals. the odds against her spending time with a boy she fancies are measured in precise percentages.

rumi’s father, mahesh, knows about his daughter’s gift. and he wants her to use it well, to get through the hallowed portals of oxford university. this need to excel, to put academia before all else, is why few indians will have a problem connecting with rumi vasi.

it is by naming her prodigy after a thirteenth century persian poet [jalal-ad-din muhammad rumi] that lalwani gives us an insight into the contrary world rumika inhabits — one at odds with her father’s. the world mahesh inhabits is, in turn, at odds with the one his wife shreene prefers to spend time in.

born in rajasthan and raised in cardiff, nikita lalwani’s early life began in much the same manner as rumi’s. she had a penchant for mathematics, went to oxford to study medicine, quit because she found english literature more exciting, and made television documentaries as an adult before setting aside the time to write. making it to the 2007 man booker awards long-list must have been a vindication of sorts for the woman who turned her back on oxford.

‘i think india represented an inherited and very romantic idea of a home-space,’ lalwani recently said in an interview. this space always exists in her novel, as a background against which members of the vasi family sink into eventual alienation from each other. rumi’s gift is, after a point, more of a curse for those she is closest to.

gifted is a funny novel. is it emotional and uncompromising in its portrayal of a quintessential migrant family, and raises questions about parental roles a lot of us would do well to pay heed to. it is a great debut.

in that, it is the author who is gifted.

your biographical note at penguin uk is little more than a line long. the note in the novel doesn’t add much either…
i was born in kota, rajasthan, and went to the united kingdom when i was 18 months old with my parents. i have returned regularly to india since then — every 3 or 4 years in the beginning and then from age 16 it has been every 2 years or every year. i suppose i have a close relationship with india, which is continually in flux.

making the move from medicine to literature can’t have been easy for anyone with roots in india. how did you convince your family of the viability of that decision? it was one of those fortuitous things that just happened to me — a great life decision that actually wasn't my decision at all. i spent most of my time at oxford writing for poetry magazines and trying to appear in dodgy student theatre, so it was no surprise when the discussion came up with my tutor as to whether or not i should continue in medicine. it was a painful break — oxford was the only place i'd known outside of my parents' home at that point — but the most liberating of my life, i suppose. it definitely changed the direction of my ambitions, my dreams. my parents were worried for me, because i was quite confused and vulnerable at that time, but they were very supportive. once i settled into english literature at bristol, they were very happy, probably because they could see i seemed to be immersing myself finally. there was a sense of relief all round.

what i connected with at once, as far as rumi is concerned, was this obsessive interest in academia that all indian children appear to have ingrained in them. did you feel that pressure to excel in school too? i don’t know about pressure, but there was definitely a desire to do well academically. i think for indian children like myself growing up in the uk, there may have been a sense back then that academia could provide you with some armour against the insecurities and wayward nature of the world around us. i'm sure that feeling came from parents wanting to protect us from being totally invisible or forgotten in this new country they had decided to inhabit. so i did want to do well, but more from a sense of competition, a feeling that this was a place where you could be visible — the academic arena of pure ‘nerd-dom’.

photograph: vik sharma