‘I’m a terrible eavesdropper’ | Twinkle Khanna on her new book ‘Welcome to Paradise’, and on taking notes from conversations around her

Twinkle Khanna's new collection of short stories, "Welcome to Paradise", is a mix of her signature humour and experimental writing. She explores her Ismaili Khoja ancestry, delves into the absurdities of life, and refuses to stay in line. Khanna talks about her writing process, her two distinct voices, and how the pandemic helped her realise she is a writer. She also explains how her multicultural upbringing and eavesdropping skills help her create dialogues. Khanna encourages readers to look up unfamiliar terms and cultures, and to be open to stories that don't feature white people.

There’s a lot about Welcome to Paradise, Twinkle Khanna’s new collection of short stories, that reminds you of her previous books — a kind of dark, wicked humour that scratches at the absurdity of life, and distinctive dialogues that paint rich, complete characters. But there’s also a lot that is new — this is Khanna at her most experimental yet. There’s a refusal to stay in line, to stick to the norm. 

The subjects explored in each story, the non-linear narrative that will not be confined, and her exploration of her Ismaili Khoja ancestry — all of it comes together to signal Khanna’s own deep and involved examination of her writing process, and a willingness to see where it will take her, even if it is uncharted territory. Edited excerpts from an interview:

I don’t think you can change your style very dramatically, though I do believe that I have two distinct voices. One is in the columns, so Funnybones has a distinct voice. I think what I was struggling with earlier was the fact that I was under constant pressure to replicate that voice in my books, and I think at times my own internal pressure to do that, to give the reader that, made me add things that may not have served the story as much. So in this book, what I decided to do was to shrug off that pressure. But my natural style is to find the absurd in everyday life, in the mundane. It’s the way I look at life. I don’t think I can survive anything without that. So this book has humour in it. The humour serves the story, but I deliberately decided not to give in to the pressure of being funny on every page, and that was a conscious decision. 

I need to know a lot more before I actually start writing. So I do a lot of research in the beginning. With the story, ‘Nearly Departed’, for instance, I did a character sketch of the protagonist Madhura Desai, which explored her inner workings, the lexicon she would use. And then I had to do a lot of research into Parkinson’s and its symptoms. I spoke to a physiotherapist who works with Parkinson’s patients — so the part where Madhura’s legs scissor is something that came from my conversation with the therapist.

I’m a terrible eavesdropper. I’m always listening to other people talking. I will take notes. So I have all these dialogues. I sometimes lose those, I need a filing system for it. But if you ask me technically how I do dialogues, I don’t have an answer. It just happens. Yeah, I do also sometimes make a sketch where one character is arguing with another about something that deeply bothers them. None of that will make it to the story. That’s just an exercise for me to see how they use language so that it fits them. It’s a bit nerdy, but it helps me. 

The pandemic changed a lot of things for a lot of people. We had time to sit down, reflect, and deal with what was happening. In fact, I’ve been writing now for 10 years, but I always hesitated about calling myself a writer. And ironically, it was during the pandemic, when I was unable to write, that I realised I’m actually a writer, because I am unable to process the world around me unless I write about it. So I had a block for the first time, because my nature is to go out there, look at things, hear things, and then come back to my quiet corner and play with it in my head. But back then, there was no going out anywhere. I realised I’m a writer because I was unable to really deal with the world any other way. So, first I decided to do a course at Oxford — two courses, three months each. When I finished those six months, I realised I had learned so much about things that I was doing instinctively. I only knew how to write because of what I had read in my life. I also felt so immersed in the world of writing and talking about writing and meeting people like me, even though it was online. So I thought, if I’ve done this for six months, I might as well go and try for a year and do my Master’s.

But there’s always an origin story. When my son was young, I used to take him to this college counsellor, and every time I would meet him, I would say, ‘You know what, I want to go back to university.’ And one day, he got fed up and said, ‘This is not the time for you to go to university. Just concentrate on your child.’ So I said, ‘That’s such a misogynistic thing, I’m going to write about you in my column,’ and he said, ‘No, no, no, I’m kidding.’ And strangely enough, when I was applying to universities, it was he who helped me. So again, it’s like in the stories. Where does this one begin? Does it begin with the pandemic? Does it go back to when I would go with my son to the counsellor?