White Dancing Elephants is a radical, painful, and poetic short story collections that challenges our personal ideas of survival, power, and love in a postcolonial world where these stories would normally be erased. We picked up this collection for November 2019 and Chaya was kind enough to do a quick chat with us, in between working on her new essay collection.
We talk about her being a psychiatrist and writer, her favourite stories, tv shows she’s binging, and women she wishes were single.
Chaya Bhuvaneswar next to the cover page of her debut short story collection “White Dancing Elephants”
A woman in her forties drifts through London in denial about her miscarriage, a woman has an affair with her dying best-friend’s husband, a young boy escapes into folktales to avoid his grief over a lost sister and an abusive father…
these stories are all so complex and beautiful!
Thank you so much for writing and sharing this collection with us. What inspired you to write it?
Thank you!! more than words can say dear sisters for selecting my book. Hope so much you enjoy it? All the stories are completely honest, yet reflect my emerging craft, and writing that surprises me sometimes.
As much as I have loved the hundreds of short stories I've read in my life, I've never seen any facet of my experience - as South Indian origin, born in the US, queer, and selectively out, religious though not dogmatic or exclusionary - none of this complexity reflected in stories that purported to be about "Indian women" (as written by authors who were not Indian) or in stories by groundbreaking writers, like Bharati Mukherjee for example, who captured the rebellions but not the religious faith I also held.
A lot of our readers are working on their writing and are looking for advice in that process. Many don’t know that you’re not only an amazing writer, you’re also a psychiatrist! How has your career in medicine influenced your writing, both in content and in habits?
I think it does make you more forgiving of yourself, more willing to 'see where something goes' and just start putting words down on the page, if you have a really demanding day job and/or a family to raise, or some other set of tasks and work that you really have to do, likely because of what someone else needs from you very much. Once you are blessed with that sense of being needed, a lot of neurosis about writing and revising really does go away and you just figure out how to do it, even if you go slower at times than maybe you would if you were home all day. But the reality for me is that if I were home all day I would also likely waste a lot of time! So I am very grateful to be grounded in a day job that demands my full attention for many hours of the day.
There are small elephant icons that appear throughout the anthology, what does it and the title “White Dancing Elephants” symbolize?
Elephants symbolize Ganesha, the god of auspicious beginnings, as well as fertility, peace, strength more generally.
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I think my favourite story is probably Talinda, it is such an interesting story about friendships between women, tell us more about what inspired this story of love, betrayal, bullying, and the complex tensions that inspired this.
An early friendship with a Talinda-like girl in 2nd grade definitely inspired this but then the characters really did lead the story far from anything I've experienced.
Another intense story is A Shaker Chair that dealt with sexual harassment, racism, and boundaries. What inspired such perplexing story?
I will confess I was angry and disappointed with someone similar in some respects to the Sylvia character and I 'wrote myself into' Maya's perspective - basically similar to my perspective on many things when I was a teenager - and imagined what it would be like if these two women tried to connect but basically were adults acting out teenage impulses and trauma.
Do you have a favourite story from the collection? As a writer do you get to pick favs?
I don't have a favorite story, actually, but the title, WHITE DANCING ELEPHANTS, that story, is dedicated in my heart to the child I lost when I had a miscarriage. For its closeness to that lost child I hold that story very close.
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If White Dancing Elephants had a playlist, what would be on it?
White Dancing Elephants
"Ever So Lonely," by Sheila Chandra
The Story of the Woman Who Fell in Love with Death
"Learning to Fly" by Tom Petty
Talinda
"She’s Got Bette Davis Eyes" by Kim Carnes
We did come up with a playlist! and I was thrilled that it was published here: http://www.largeheartedboy.com/blog/archive/2018/10/chaya_bhuvanesw.html
Also parenthetically I am grateful to have connected with Largehearted Boy since they included WHITE DANCING ELEPHANTS on their "best story collections of 2018" list!
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Quick Picks
Which woman or queer person is inspiring you right now?
Megan Rapinoe. I know she's not single but…
What are you currently reading?
Abandon Me, by Native American memoirist and essayist Melissa Febos. She's not single either *sigh *
What are you currently watching?
Unfortunately I'm going back to Billions, my standby, but before that I really liked The Affair. Go Showtime!
Physical, eBook or audiobook?
Physical book and audiobook for sure!
Who’s your favourite literary character?
Fleur from Tracks, by Louise Erdrich. Her guts and ability for magic. Her mother-love for her baby she tried everything to save.
What’s the last amazing book you read?
So many. I really enjoyed reading a book in manuscript by Marie Myung-Ok Lee. I also read (in galley) the most beautiful collection of stories and one you should pick for your club coming up If I Had Two Wings, by Randall Kenan Just gorgeous!
Follow Chaya Bhuvaneswar on Twitter and if you still haven’t read White Dancing Elephants, what are you waiting for? Go check it out!