Delhi’s Proust Questionnaire – Mayank Austen Soofi, Fresc Co

Delhi’s Proust Questionnaire – Mayank Austen Soofi, Fresc Co

Delhi’s Proust Questionnaire – Mayank Austen Soofi, Fresc Co

The Proustian self-introspection.

[By The Delhi Proustians]

The Proust Questionnaire represents a form of interview that owes its structure to answers given by French novelist Marcel Proust, the author of In Search of Lost Time, at two birthday parties that he attended at ages 13 and 20 in the late 19th century.

In 2013, The Delhi Proustians takes Les confidences de salon (Drawing room confessions) around the city to explore people’s lives, thoughts, values and experiences. This series would involve interviews across Delhi and will be conducted by Manika Dhama and Mayank Austen Soofi.

Dhama is an investment consultant with a real estate firm. She lives in NOIDA, works in Gurgaon and reads/writes in between. Her poem featured in ‘Delhi’s Bandaged Moments’ and she runs the blog Framed by Wanderlust.

Soofi is a writer on Delhi. He runs the website The Delhi Walla and has published four guidebooks on the city. His fifth book is Nobody Can Love You More: Life in Delhi’s Red Light District. He lives in Hazrat Nizamuddin Basti.

For the first instalment in the series Delhi’s Proust Questionnaire, Mayank Austen Soofi made confessions to Manika Dhama while having dinner in Fresc Co, a Mediterranean restaurant in Janpath.

Your favorite virtue or the principal aspect of your personality
Ability to absorb books that demand immersed attention

Your favorite qualities in a man
His frailty

Your favorite qualities in a woman
Her aggressiveness

Your chief characteristic
Complicated relationship with truth

What do you appreciate the most in your friends?
Sophisticated taste in books

Your main fault
Incapable of raising my voice

Your favourite occupation
Walking with my camera

Your idea of happiness
‘Boating’ in Nainital lake

Your idea of misery or what would be your greatest misfortune?
A married life with a traditional Indian woman

If not yourself, who would you be?
A war-time edition of Sense and Sensibility

Where would you like to live?
Paris

Your favourite colour and flower
Yellow and Amaltas

Your favourite bird
I don’t know about birds

Your favourite prose authors
Arundhati Roy, Marcel Proust, Jane Austen, Alex Ross

Your favorite poets
Cavafy, Akhmatova, Rilke, Homer

Your favorite heroes in fiction
Biswambhar Roy in the movie Jalsaghar, Price Andrei Bolkonsky, George Wickham

Your favorite heroines in fiction
Proust’s Mme Verdurin and Françoise, Arundhati Roy’s Ammu, the Lucknow courtesan Umrao Jan Ada, Violet Stoneham in the movie 36 Chowringhee Lane. Also, Shakespeare’s Cleopatra

Your favorite composers
Chopin, Vinteuil and Bach

Your favorite painters
Van Gogh, Vermeer, Monet

Your heroes/heroines in real life
Golda Meir, Gustave Flaubert, Ahmad Shah Massoud

What characters in history do you most dislike?
Titus

Your heroines in World history
None

Your favorite food and drink
Cucumber Sandwich and Darjeeling Tea

Your favorite names
Durga, David (when pronounced as Daveed), Andre

What do you hate the most?
Last names of upper caste Hindus

The military event you admire the most
The Long March in China

The reform you admire the most
[No response]

The natural talent you’d like to be gifted with
Ability to whistle

How do you wish to die?
Like Virginia Woolf

What is your present state of mind?
Slight nervousness that the interviewer is getting bored

Faults for which you have the most tolerance
Lies

Your motto in life
To look for poetry in a seemingly ordinary world

Next: Manika Dhama responds to Delhi’s Proust Questionnaire, conducted by Mayank Austen Soofi.

Diving deep within, like Marcel

1.

Delhi’s Proust Questionnaire – Mayank Austen Soofi, Fresc Co

2.

Delhi’s Proust Questionnaire – Mayank Austen Soofi, Fresc Co

3.

Delhi’s Proust Questionnaire – Mayank Austen Soofi, Fresc Co