Peacocks of Instagram

Paul Dhillon talks to Toronto writer Deepa Rajagopalan about her debut story collection Peacocks of Instagram (House of Anansi Press, 2024)

Paul Dhillon: Congratulations on your debut book! The title is catching, can you explain the genesis of it? Why peacocks?

Deepa Rajagopalan:  I thought it would be interesting to explore the absurdity of placing peacocks in a setting where they wouldn’t otherwise appear as a means to center a character who presents as ordinary but as you get to know her, is anything but ordinary. I think the peacock is such an over-the-top bird, it insists on its presence and commands attention. I wanted the characters in this book to insist on being seen. And once I thought about the title, “Peacocks of Instagram,” for the title story, I knew it had to be the title of the book!

Paul Dhillon: Character’s relationship to work features across many stories in the collection: tech workers, hotel attendants, coffee shop creatives, and ceramic creatives. What draws you to writing about characters’ relationship to work and the formulation of work on their selfhood and agency? 

Deepa Rajagopalan: This is the first time I’ve been asked that. It’s a great question. The way work appears in my stories is probably influenced by the way I experienced adults working as a child. I grew up in Saudi Arabia where my parents worked, and everyone we encountered was there for work. Work was at the center of our lives. Folks had left their homes and families to live in a desert to work to make ends meet. It’s been a preoccupation to explore the relationship people have with work: this thing they spend a large portion of their lives doing. How does their work define them? Or how do they resist being defined by their work? What does one sacrifice to do the work they want to do?

Paul Dhillon: “Live-In” showcases the levels of intimacy across generations and cultures. There is a line that acts as a through line in the collection: “We need to have these uncomfortable conversations if we want things to change. Or else we’ll continue these cycles. Just look at me, living my best life. Why do you think that’s the case?” Though many characters in the collection have gone on to great achievements through work, relationships, and physical journeys, why do you think it is so hard for people to be their truest selves to those closest to them?

Deepa Rajagopalan: I think we’re hyper-aware of the expectations our loved ones have on us. It is not necessarily that we don’t meet their expectations, but there is a space between who we are and who the people closest to us think we are, and sometimes that space is so large because we are afraid of being loved less. There’s a line in Arundhati Roy’s The God of Small Things that the character Ammu tells her young child, “If you hurt people, they begin to love you less.” Imagine what a terrifying thing it would be to hear that as a child. Most parents and caretakers might not say that to their kids in as many words and even if they do, they do it because they feel in some way they are protecting them from the world, but children can sense these things and they carry it with them all their lives. In the story “Live-In,” the narrator has a hard time connecting with his father and is hurt when their young neighbour connects with his father easily. But in the neighbour’s case, the stakes are low. The expectations are almost nonexistent, so it’s easier for him to be his true self.

Paul Dhillon: “Peacocks of Instagram”, “Cake”, “Rahel,” & “The Many Homes of Kanmani,” are a few stories that navigate complex power dynamics in terms of characters obtaining agency and living truthfully for themselves, and even using revenge in forms of karmic justice or personal retributive justice as a means to acquire agency. How did you go about balancing the empathy for the characters impacted and the ones inflicting the harm in the collection?

Deepa Rajagopalan: I’ve tried to not turn any of my characters into villains or angels. All the main characters in these stories are flawed. And the ones who inflict harm are also not portrayed as bad human beings, or at least, they have some goodness in them. In many ways, I wanted to blur the lines between what’s supposed to be right and what’s not. I’m curious who each reader sees themselves in. In “The Many Homes of Kanmani,” there is a foster father who is an oil lobbyist and the CEO of a Think Tank. I can think of people who would not find anything wrong in his views or actions, but of course, the main character of that story is a young foster child who brings him down because she is driven by the tragedy in her life inflicted by climate change. I’ve tried to present all characters as full, three-dimensional human beings with goodness and flaws, and hopefully, it helps in balancing the empathy for all characters.

Paul Dhillon: What constraints did you use in crafting the collection?

Deepa Rajagopalan: I find constraints quite useful. They make the story specific, interesting, and different from all the other possibilities the story could have been. Sometimes the constraint is focused, like for the story, “Rahel,” I wanted it to be in conversation with an Alice Munro story that I love called “Corrie.” The constraint was for “Rahel” to be about an affair, like “Corrie.” And I wanted the story to move between the point-of-views of the two main characters seamlessly. Using these constraints, I was able to create this character Rahel, and a worldview that is unique to her.

Sometimes the constraint is more generic. There’s a book on writing by George Saunders called “A Swim in a Pond in the Rain,” where he breaks down the stories of some of the Russian short story writers to help study them. In the first section, he presents a story by Chekov, “In the Cart,” one page at a time. After the first page, he says, with the first page, Chekov has already set expectations for the character and what the story can or cannot be. I think starting to write the first page is a constraint in itself. Saunders says, “In the first pulse of the story, the writer is like a juggler, throwing bowling pins into the air. The rest of the story is the catching of the pins.” You make choices upfront that this story is going to be about this character, and they are in this specific situation or predicament, and that’s your constraint. You have to be truthful to that character and situation. If I don’t do that, I am generally all over the place, and the story never gets done!

Paul Dhillon: How did you realize the interconnectedness of the stories through setting, character and family? Was that always the plan or did this come across by accident?

Deepa Rajagopalan: A lot of it was organic. I did notice similar or the same characters showing up in other stories. For instance, the character Rahel showed up first in the story, “Bestsellers,” but then I wanted to keep writing about Rahel so I gave her my own story. In the end, I did work intentionally on making those links more prominent. I think it helps the readers connect more with the stories and characters and see them from different perspectives. I think that is also how we experience life, we make those connections, either real or perceived, to help us make sense of the world.

Paul Dhillon: What story was the most challenging to craft/meet your vision? What were the challenges, and can you explain your process in being able to excavate the story and its truths?

Deepa Rajagopalan: The story, “Surya, Listen!” was probably the most challenging to write. I wanted to talk about motherhood, and how a mother copes with a traumatic event in her child’s life that leaves him disabled, but without diminishing the child, or showing his disability in a negative light. It was a tricky story, and I worked on it a lot with my editor, Shirarose Wilensky. And I tried to make it work by bringing the joy of the child out, while still centering the mother.

Paul Dhillon: Many of the characters are split between locations of their ancestry and where they now live. Additionally, you have lived in many locations. What do you see as or how do you define home? 

Deepa Rajagopalan: I have a fluid relationship with home and belonging. Like you said, I’ve moved around a lot, and SO I am comfortable being the observer, looking at the community from the outside. But I think, like Devi in “Maths Club,” I am always desperate to belong. To a place, a community, a people. I can be quite aloof about it like it doesn’t matter to me, but I think that’s a defence mechanism.

I see home as where I am, where I choose to be. And my community may be scattered all over the world, but it’s there. The gulf between the locations of our ancestry and where we now live has defined my life and the lives of many of my friends and family, and it naturally shows up in my stories.

Paul Dhillon: What makes the short story a special form? What can it reveal or showcase that other writing can’t?

Deepa Rajagopalan: I think the short story’s brilliance comes from what is not revealed. What is left for the reader to imagine, and in that way insert themselves into the story. There’s a lot of work that needs to be done to make the story seem effortless and to trust the reader. Trust that they will know what to feel, and what they feel will be the right feeling.

Paul Dhillon: What is the best piece of writing advice you received? What advice would you give an emerging writer?

Deepa Rajagopalan: I learnt from Souvankham Thammavongsa to never judge our characters. I think that is brilliant advice. As writers, it is our job to present the character truly, without polluting them with our judgment.

The one piece of advice I would give an emerging writer would be to not think too much about who might read your work. That might cause us to limit ourselves or filter ourselves. Write as if only the three people in your writing group will read your work, and let the work be as real, as eccentric, and as unhinged as it needs it to be. You can always edit later. But once you have that unfiltered version of your story, you build confidence in your own abilities as a writer.

Paul Dhillon: What pieces of art (film, novels, music, visual art,) helped inspire and support the crafting of the collection? Who do you see your work in conversation with?

Deepa Rajagopalan: I think my work is in conversation with my literary inspirations. Alice Munro, Arundhati Roy, Murakami, Jhumpa Lahiri. And also films portraying unlikely friendships or relationships like As Good as It Gets, The Lunchbox.

Paul Dhillon: What specific piece of art (any medium) could you not imagine having in your life?

Deepa Rajagopalan: Maya Angelou’s performance of her poem, “Still I Rise.” Pink Floyd’s “Wish You Were Here.” Farida Khanum singing, “Aaj Jaane Ki Zid Na Karo.” Murakami’s “Norwegian Wood.”

Paul Dhillon: What is your favourite word?

Deepa Rajagopalan: This is the hardest question in this interview. I don’t think I can commit to one word for eternity! What we feel for a word depends on who we are on any given day. And more than individual words, what moves me is how words are arranged next to each other. And when mundane words are arranged very specifically, it can jolt you. Toni Morrison starts one of the early chapters in her book, “The Bluest Eye,” with the words: “Nuns go by as quiet as lust….” Each word in that opening is so ordinary, but arranged in that way, it is splendid. If I were to pick a word today, I’d pick, “lucid,” especially when it means luminous and dazzling.

Paul Dhillon: What is your go-to writing snack?

Deepa Rajagopalan: Piping hot chai, or a cappuccino.

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