CONTRIBUTOR SPOTLIGHT:
Interview with Mrityunjay Mohan

Rappahannock Review Fiction Editors: “The Flower Seller” takes an intriguing approach to its dialogue—we have our theories as to why you omitted quotations, but we’d love to hear about your personal rationale.

Mrityunjay Mohan: I wanted to remove the space between the narration and dialogue. The character often loses himself in his thoughts, and the way he interacts with the other characters is often like a more guarded continuation of those thoughts. I wanted to omit the distance between his dialogue and the narration as much as I could. I wanted to emphasize the interiority of the prose. 

RR: Would you consider the unique construction of this piece’s structure an experiment in craft or the result of a culminated personal writing style?

MM: I generally like to try something new in each of my stories or poems. I experiment with form a lot in poetry, and that inevitably bleeds into my stories. When I began writing the story, I only wanted to explore the relationship between two completely different people, and the way seemingly mundane conversations with strangers help us understand ourselves and see our identity in a new light. 

The flower seller is, at first glance, dissimilar to the narrator in every way, but she is the first person to allow him to really be himself, whether she understood his identity or not, and I think that is remarkably human. She wasn’t obligated to comfort a stranger, but the unexpected act of kindness provides an opportunity for him to understand himself. 

The structure of the story was an experiment. I was trying different things at the time, and was primarily focused on poetry when I started working on this idea, and I think a lot of my ideas for poetry kind of bled into this story when creating the internal world of this character. 

RR: Is there a backlog of drafts that didn’t make it to the final cut? If so, what’s one addendum you had the most difficulty cutting?

MM: There were a few short conversations between the flower seller and the narrator that I ended up cutting. The part I had the most trouble cutting out was the one where the narrator’s brother speaks to him about his own identity, and it included a lot of information about the brother’s life that felt important, but ultimately had to be removed since the story was already too long.

RR: Would you consider “The Flower Seller” to be a tragedy?

MM: Not entirely. I think the grief and guilt he carries, and the death of the only person he considered family, are ultimately heartbreaking. The ending does provide hope for the character’s future, and I don’t think it’s all doomed for him. I think the flower seller entirely changed the trajectory of his life in a positive way, and not many people get to make that kind of impact on someone, especially a stranger. 

The ending is not entirely about his suffering, but about the way he has changed. He begins to mend himself, despite being haunted by despair and regret, and wants to have a better life, which the character had never dared to hope for in the past. Overall, I think the story ends on a hopeful note for the character’s future despite what happened. 

RR: How long did you work on this piece, and how hard was it to formulate a final version?

MM: I was deciding between three different potential endings. I had written all three down before I chose the current version. I think I wrote it in a couple of days, but it took me a few weeks to finish editing it. I usually take a break to work on something new before I edit my stories, and I’ve always felt like the distance helps me look at things with more clarity.