Letter from Karnataka

NOTE: This is the first of a series of posts by Colie Hoffman about her experience while a writer-in-residence at Sangam House, India.

It’s only been two weeks since I arrived in India, but already I feel totally at home here. The tiny village where I’m living—beautiful unto itself, with its stone paths and red mud houses—is surrounded by expansive grasslands, palm trees, and wooded dirt roads. I eat delicious, fresh vegetarian meals twice a day, someone takes care of the cooking and laundry, and I get to enjoy the company of six other writers. And while all this is magical, it’s really just a sideshow to the main attraction: For 10 straight weeks, I have all the free time in the world to write, write, write.

This paradise is Sangam House, a relatively new international writers’ residency program (in its third year) based in South India. The first two sessions took place near Pondicherry, on India’s southeast coast, but this year the location switched to a “dance village” called Nrityagram, about 20 (rough-riding!) miles outside Bangalore in the Indian state of Karnataka.

Nrityagram is very small—10 buildings plus a few in progress. We’re five miles from the nearest post office, bar, convenience store, etc. (basically, anywhere you could buy anything). The jogs I take along local roads are punctuated by stray dogs and passing herds of cows or goats. Nrityagram was created as the home of a small ensemble of classical Indian dancers, the handful of students who study with them, the administrative staff who run the place, and most recently, us—the writers at Sangam House. We’re here for only three months, but the dance community (which has been more than welcoming) lives here year-round.

During my stay I’m trying to complete the manuscript for my first book of poems. I had secretly wondered if all the time and freedom from my usual responsibilities would block me, but so far I’ve been reading, writing, and revising up a storm (knock on wood). There is the occasional off day, when the ideas don’t come or nothing I’ve done quite works—but by and large, my days here have been successful, productive, and inspiring.

About half the writers at Sangam House at any one time are from various states in India, and half are from abroad. When I arrived, my fellow residents were from Kolkata, Lucknow (both in northern India), and Copenhagen. Rajat writes in English and Bengali, Pratibha writes in Hindi, and Louise translates from English to Danish (I am the sad soul who speaks and writes only in English). Since then we have been joined by four other writers. Most people are working on fiction projects while here, but in India the identity chasm between fiction and poetry is not so stark—many writers do both and publish both.

So what’s a day like? my family keeps asking. There’s no exact schedule, but regular things (meals, people waking up and sharing coffee and the paper, people going for walks) happen at regular-ish times. Generally we make our own breakfasts, work, join the dancers for Indian lunch, work, and then have Indian food together in Sangam’s common space for dinner. After dinner we share booze and conversation, sometimes heading back to our rooms early to continue working, other times talking in small groups late into the night.

To give myself some structure, I try to divide time between reading—the work of other writers here (those who write in English), the books I brought with me, or essays or poems I find online—and writing. I always try first to start a new poem, but on the days that doesn’t work, I revise poems in progress or reengineer old ones that never got off the ground. While I’m accustomed to creating in multiple bursts rather than sustained periods, the longer I’m here, the more I’m able to work for long stretches at a time. As a result, my creative process—namely, how deeply I’m able to think about something and how much I’m able to linger in an idea and get to know it—is changing. I suspect I won’t know the real effects of this till much later, but it’s refreshing to feel things moving around in my head in unfamiliar ways.