Sami Ahmad Khan (SAK): We live in a time of monsters, as JJ Cohen points out. Cohen approaches the monster as an embodiment of difference, a breaker of category and a resistant other known only through process and movement, and never through dissection table analysis. India's cultural production manifest monsters as disruptions in and of the popular imagination, a double-edged sword that both challenges and reinforce normativity. Very often monsters are closer than they appear, and sometimes we even fall in love with them.
Tonje Andersen (TA): There are monsters under the bed. There are monsters in outer space. And there are monsters at the gate. Welcome to the neoMONSTERS podcast on zombies in India. "The neoMONSTERS within: the others in India's science fiction" is a project at the University of Oslo, Norway. The neoMONSTERS project delves into how India's popular narratives negotiate epistemes of monstrousness and manifest contesting ideologies within the nation's popular imagination. In this episode, Sami Ahmad Khan speaks to Rashmi Ruth Devadasan, a writer and publisher from India.
SAK: Rashmi Ruth Devadasan is a translator, writer, editor and co-founder of Blaft Publications. Hi Rashmi, thank you so much for joining us. You have written a short story titled “The Occurrence” which is about zombies. Can you tell us a bit about your works with zombies in them? Also, what interests you about zombies and what inspired you to engage with them in the first place?
Rashmi Ruth Devadasan (RRD): Hi Sami! So the story is about imagining a zombie apocalypse in Chennai and it's mainly from a very woman-centric point of view. It's basically vignettes of different women and how this incident, this occurrence, has affected their lives. Because I think the thing that interested me was that most of the zombie literature I've read, almost of the shows that I've seen, the world is quite bleak. There's very little hope except for something like Ash vs. Evil Dead which is one of my favorite shows because it's just so over-the-top. Evil Dead was cult in Chennai back in the day and I think in most parts of India which had big movie theaters. I don't think language was a barrier and I think that it was bigger even more than Romero's films. Everyone in India, everyone who's my age or even older, have seen that film. What if things were not so bleak but there was this ever-present danger just around the corner? You have to go down the road to get your Idli batter ground but at the same time an everyday task like that is a life and death situation. You know that the scourge is there and it's not going to go away anytime soon because there's no cure in sight. So then the people who have survived and learn to live with this, what is life look like for them.
SAK: I see what you mean. Perhaps you can tell us more about a pitch you wrote for a TV commercial that had a bride fighting zombies at her wedding.
RRD: I worked in the Tamil film industry for like a decade and then I took a break from it. I worked as an associate director so I do love films and hope to write screenplays eventually. I watch a lot of movies. During the intermission it's always sari ads and jewellery ads, the same boring format, you know, it's a girl she's feeling sad because she's leaving her home and the father is feeling sad and the mother is feeling sad. Or she's not feeling sad then she's just getting ready. You hear this collective groan go around the audience also because the same commercial plays if you're a regular movie-goer and you're seeing the same thing for three months. So I'm sitting there and I'm just watching and I think why can't they do something interesting? Why can't they just push the envelope a little bit? One day I came back and I told my partner, I said you know what would really stand out and make people remember these jewellery ads is if there was this wedding and the bride is just about to go and sit next to her groom for the ceremony when a bunch of zombies come and the husband is like nervous and doesn't know what to do! The crowd scatters, everybody else is hiding and it's the bride who gets up… you don't want to mess with a bride on her wedding day right? She's probably learned about this and she's like okay this is it, I'm going to deal with this. I feel that it's a situation that has so much dark humor people will be talking about this for decades to come: that you're the only person, you're the only maverick, who took something traditional but took it in a direction where most people just could not predict what was happening.
SAK: It is this yearning to do something new that propels a lot of contemporary zombie narratives. Mainak Dhar, for example, writes about zombies in Delhi. Jugal Mody writes about zombies and Mumbai. You specifically write about zombies in Tamil Nadu. May I ask why Chennai?
RRD: Well because I'm from here! I was born here I did most of my schooling here. I know this city, I spent most of my biological life here so I know the physical markers and geographical markers of the city.
SAK: Okay, so now that we have more clarity about why Chennai, why this particular location, I'd like to know more about the semantic elements you play within your narratives. You have consistently engaged with monsters: for example Kumari loves a monster. I want to ask what is a monster for you and why this fascination with sutras of monstrousness?
RRD: I think I didn't grow up reading a lot of monster lit except there was Frankenstein and Dracula. But I think in the 90s, when you could get access to a lot of graphic novels and comic books, I got into reading a lot of Batman. Batman has like this huge gallery of villains right that are insanely bizarre. I like monsters that don't really come from a set mythos but that have been created by various urban situations or created by a mythos that doesn't come from a religious text. I think for me that is very interesting and I think that's why I like some of the villains from both the DC Universe and the Marvel Universe because they are just like either created by science or they're created by accident or they are created from even if they take their roots and mythology it's not it's from something not many people know about. 100 years from now or two hundred years from now, what is that generation going to look back in terms of literature and in terms of horror, what is it going to look like for them? It's going from you know your standard ectoplasmic creatures or your creatures born from chemical disasters to more AI and more tech-based monsters which is also quite interesting because even in that I think people are trying to find different ways. So it's not just something that's a machine but it's also you know code is seen as a kind of monster. This is what is really interesting what is going to be the future evolution. You know from folklore all these things that have come up and what is it going to look like 200 years from now …
SAK: Tell us a bit about Kumari loves a Monster, the illustrator of the book and the journey?
RRD: The illustrator of the book Shyam is a dear friend and also he has been the go-to illustrator for the last 20 plus years. He is the most prolific artist I've seen and he's just amazing with what he does. I told him that I have this idea for this book about women who are in love with monsters. I had briefs for each of the monsters, I knew how I wanted them to look but I did not have the drawing skills. Shyam was like totally, I'm so happy that you have this idea and let's do it because I have also been looking to do something different.
SAK: You were telling me that there is a Telugu ad for a soft drink with zombies in them?
RRD: Yes, somebody did make an ad film with zombies. They put like two of the biggest male action stars in it because Thumbs Up as the brand is you know associated with high octane testosterone-driven energy. So as like whole society is actually thinking about putting zombies.
SAK:I would definitely love to see more zombies and monsters around. Quick question: do the monsters that you create also critique the world in which they are produced and consumed?
RRD: Like I said, it's more about the creature building, world building or seeing how they navigate the world around them. But I don't have a set criteria or social criteria on which I base them.
SAK: Is there a message you would like to give to budding writers who want to create monsters in their mind and outside, or perhaps to those who would want to create monsters in collaboration with visual artists? What should they be doing?
RRD: I don't feel I'm an authority on anything so it's not coming from that place but it's more of a sharing. I would say meticulous detailed briefs. I think if you're someone who thinks visually just put it down on paper. Details really are very important. Describe because no detail is insignificant. I think when you create a creatures like this focus on detailed illustrations or paintings and artists/readers will pour over it and they will notice all your little Easter eggs. You may feel who's going to notice but they will and I think that's the joy of owning a book like that. There has to be give and take so the process has to be collaborative and I think once you develop a rapport with whoever you are working with automatically you'll reach a place where you know you understand what the other person means. So it's not like one person is taking control of one person. It’s about talking to the other person.
SAK: Thank you so much, Rashmi. It has been a learning experience talking to you. May we learn to coexist with the monsters around us.
TA: This podcast is part of the neoMONSTERS project. To learn more about the project log on to www.neomonsters.cofutures.org. In the next podcast, Sami will explore even more monsters from India. Monsters of the World, Unite!