CONTRIBUTOR SPOTLIGHT:
Interview with Ardjun Razdan

Rappahannock Review Fiction Editors: What went into the atypical grammatical structure of your piece (for example, why replace all of your r’s with l’s)? 

Arjun Razdan: The r’s were replaced with the l’s to mimic the patterns of Thai and Lao speech. It is impossible for them, especially for the young girls who have not been to school (never mind the pretensions of the girl in question). Which girl is not pretentious? After all, if a girl is not pretentious (most of all things, about her beauty) she is not a girl at all, to speak correct Victorian English. It was grammatically piquant, for me.

RR: You seem to have quite a few accepted submissions under your belt—twenty-three and counting! C.R. seems to be a favorite assortment of letters throughout your work, and our curiosity got the better of us. What does it mean to you/stand for?

AR: You’ve hit the nail on the spot. (C.R.) comes from Chattabal-Rainawari, the spot in Srinagar, Kashmir, I trace my ancestry to, or at least Farzdan would like to have us believe. 

RR: Your submission upends standard procedure in its prose, content, and delivery. If we could catch a glimpse into your mind while you are in the process of writing, what would we see?

AR: I don’t know. It is impossible for me to see myself in the process of writing, just as it is impossible to observe the mirror in which you are being observed. 

RR: We at The Rappahannock Review receive a lot of fledgling writers—people early in their writing experience. Do you remember your first submissions, rejections, and how you dealt with that frustration to continue submitting?

AR: Rejection, it’s lovely. What a beautiful word? Now, I say it without a sigh, in fact there was a problem with my Yahoo mail, and I was not seeing rejections regularly. I felt sick; I could not go to bed. I star all rejections in my Yahoo Mail. If I do not have the Yellow Stars (at night), I have very bad sleep. Thank God, I got it corrected. 

RR: Describe your ideal writing environment. Is it an office? A park? A cafe? Do you have keepsakes, such as a special coffee cup, that writing wouldn’t be the same without? 

AR: It does not matter. I have become old now. I am like an old man who is having his last erection; as long as the girl is beautiful, nothing matters.