SP: The story, “An Unrestored Woman,” touches on the theme of 'restoration' and whether true restoration is possible after trauma in the context of Partition. Can you tell us why this remains relevant even after 77 years of the Partition in South Asia, and why you chose to explore this idea as a main focus?

SR: I am fascinated by the idea of Restoration. What is it exactly? I grapple with that question, not only in my writing but in my life. Is there an original, untouched, untraumatized state to which we must all return? To which we all should return? Or is the beauty of life, its meaning entire, held in the fact that there is no return?
Is 77 years long enough to answer these questions?

SP: The novel is fascinating in its arc of juxtaposing personal relationships with broader socio-political events like Partition. How hard was it to balance these intimate human stories with the larger historical narrative?

No intimacy, regardless of how small or delicate or divine, can occur outside of its socio-political context. As a writer, to accept this truth is to accept that all stories, along with the characters that inhabit them, are anchored in a historical moment. That moment can be acknowledged simply, serenely; it need not be difficult to balance. One flag waving in the wind rather than another; a temple bell ringing where there had once been a call to prayer; a man bowing his head as he passes another man, once his equal, now his conqueror.

SP: Your short stories delve deeply into themes of displacement, gender, power discourses, and survival, in the context of Partition. Historically we realize how gendered violence had a massive impact on all sides of the border. While your work is framed around women, their bodies and voices, can there be a “restored nation” through the restoration of women?

SR:Restoration might be a dream, a delusion, a melancholy hope, but if it is indeed possible for a nation, it would only be possible through the restoration of its women.

SP: Several of your stories, such as “The Merchant’s Mistress” and “An Unrestored Woman,” explore women characters grappling with their sexuality during these times. How did you approach writing about sexuality, especially considering that it remains a taboo topic in all dominant South Asian cultures?

SR: One of the greatest wonders and imperatives of being a writer is that no topic should be taboo. And if that is true, then one is free to write, one must write characters with the qualities we ourselves deserve: dignity, compassion, honesty, and most of all, bravery.

SP: Adding to the previous question-- Did you face any personal or creative challenges in addressing this aspect of your character’s lives, and how did you ensure their experiences felt authentic and sensitive to the cultural context?

SR:The authenticity of love, the pursuit of love, the need to be loved, the sorrow at love’s end, all of these transcend time. In fact, perhaps there is nothing else in the immaculateness of time that touches it or mars it as love does. The challenge, then, was to make love the deity and all else – time, culture, country – its worshippers.

SP: Writing in 2024 about this traumatic and violent historical period of Partition, how hard was it for you to navigate writing this time? Did you find it personally challenging to immerse yourself in these stories?

SR:Start with the four basic elements – earth, water, fire, air – and then build the story from there. That has been my approach. If we focus on the unchanging, and add the particulars of the changing, then we have the brew that is the human condition. Violence is changing – its object, its means, its wars, its weapons – but the smell of blood is unchanging.

SP: You immigrated to the U.S. at a young age, which must have presented challenges in belonging and identity as a woman in between two cultures. How did your journey as an immigrant woman shape the way you portray the struggles of your female characters? In addition, as a woman who has moved between two different cultures, how has your understanding of gender roles evolved, and how did this evolution influence your writing?

SR: If I were to name the moment in which I became a writer, I would say it was on the plane from India to the United States. Losing language, in particular, made me keenly aware of the world around me. Everything became painfully magnified. The struggle, in the context of the two cultures that I have bridged, has been to maintain this magnification, to not allow myself to look away, nor to allow my characters the mercy of looking away.

SP: In a way, the book is a glimpse in how national religious patriarchy oppresses and silences women voices through history. At the same time, the women characters in your stories also carve spaces of agency and autonomy in their specific contexts. How do you envision the shifts in feminist histories from Partition till the present time when it comes to Indian women?

SR: Oppression, I have found in my life, is not a monolithic wound. Whatever the shifts in the wound, in the modes of oppression since Partition, what I want to gift my characters, especially my female characters, is illumination. Even if this illumination is nothing more than a tiny mouse, a pebble, or a scrap of cloth, I want them to have a sweetness, a glimmer, a spark to carry into the night. That way, even if the night consumes them, its darkness will never be complete.

SP: Partition is such a complex and emotional period in the history of South Asia. As we know Partition literature continues to emerge from India—the recent award-winning Tomb of Sand by Geetanjali Shree presents a cross-border story of human bond across boundaries created by Partition, and novels like Independence by Chitra Bannerjee Divakaruni also trace women’s stories from the Partition era. Your work is another that represents the Partition in our contemporary times. Why is it important to write about the Partition still? What is your aim in writing about this traumatic history?

SR: Partition holds an actual and a metaphorical power. It is the cleaving of one into two. And that cleaving, until the end of time, will mean something to the human heart. To the heart of a region. The aim then is to explore them – land, lives – knowing how fragile each of them is, how easily each can be lost.

SP: What do you hope readers take away from An Unrestored Woman, especially in understanding gendered trauma, identity, and resilience?

SR: That of the three, resilience is the greatest.
For though gendered trauma is a horrific and stubborn part of life, past and present, and though identity is fluid and fallible, resilience is a thing that we own, a treaty that only we negotiate, and a power that no outside force can alter.

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