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Ram Prasad: First of all, thanks for agreeing for this interview.
Ram Prasad: Oh, sure. The honor is mine.
RP: I have to ask this at the very outset. Isn’t it highly narcissistic for someone to interview themselves?
RP: An intriguing question. One whose answer I hope will emerge as we proceed. In this endeavor, it becomes a self-answering question.
RP: A quick time check, if I may, before we get started in earnest. How much time do we have?
RP: I think about 15 minutes. I’d love to stay longer and chat but I have an appointment I cannot miss.
RP: Yes, in fact, so do I. I will keep that in mind, thanks. So, what is your opinion of people who waste their time in meaningless intellectual exercises when they could be doing productive work, helping social problems?
RP: No comments. But I think you should be able to answer it as well as, if not better than I can.
RP: An interview with oneself? Surely, that is bizzare?
RP: I completely agree. I couldn’t agree more. In fact, if you recall, when you asked me for this interview I declined right away. But it was your persistence that made me relent. Plus, I have always maintained that rather than celebrities being interviewed, where they give their dull prefabricated answers, interviewers like you should go after the ordinary common folk.
RP: To be honest, that was the main reason I wanted to interview you.
RP: Ouch. Guess I deserved that.
RP: But even you must agree that many will find the idea of an interview with oneself rather annoying?
RP: Yes, undeniably so. This gimmick smacks of the blend of monomania that I particularly detest. In fact, I suggest that you not share this interview with others. Unarguably, this is going to irritate (to varying degrees) all readers who come across it. My sincere advice is that unless one is a Victor Hugo or a Flaubert, canny enough to shoulder the heavy mantle of God-like omniscience, one should not even attempt this sort of craziness.
RP: So when did the idea for this interview occur to you?
RP: I am not sure if I can accurately answer a question about the genesis of this, or any other idea. First of all, I have to admit that most are lifted from a similar effort by someone else. Then, as I mull it over one idea it interacts with others that resonated with me, and out of these collisions, something usable emerges. If I am lucky.
RP: But do mediocre intellectual exercises such as this one have a place in the world?
RP: No, not really. Not in a world beset with problems of the magnitude we are seeing. Age old problems like poverty and hunger, and newer ones like terrorism.
RP: And yet, I sense that you are going to continue with an “And yet”…
RP: (smiles) And yet, this is just a harmless exercise. A different way for me to spend an evening, unwinding in your company.
RP: You always display a big affection for self-reference. How did that come about?
RP: Doug Hofstadter’s book Godel, Escher, Bach
 had a huge influence on me. I particularly enjoyed the author’s self-referential in-jokes. In one episode, the Tortoise in GEB is talking on the phone, and we the readers get to hear just one side of the conversation but we can follow everything. I thought it was a very successful experiment. You should try something like that. May be, instead of interviewing me, you should interview yourself – ask and answer the questions both. I tried it once, with mixed results. I strongly suggest that you do too.
RP: But this…this whole notion of addressing yourself in the second person, as if you were addressing someone else, doesn’t that seem odd to you?
RP: Odd, may be, but it is by no means new. One instance is that of Susanna Keysen, who spent two years in a psychiatric hospital. In her memoir Girl, Interrupted (a very successful movie) she uses the device of a dialog between two parts of the brain to achieve her desired effect. Paul Theroux, a writer I respect enormously has also done this not just once but twice. First, he wrote a fictionalized book about himself, titled “My Secret History.” But the reaction was very different from what he had expected. Instead of enjoying his irreverence, people started to insist that his outrageous stories were indeed true. Theroux kept trying to deny it, but the people just wouldn’t have it. So he wrote another book titled “My Other Life,” where outrageous things happen to the other Paul.
RP: Granted, yes, there are precedents. But what would your response be if someone criticized this exercise of yours? What if they paraphrased Richard Selzer and said that you were having a “love affair with your technique”, and that you are too vain to even recognize that you are playing Narcissus, raining kisses on a mirror…
RP: Well, I would point out that this “love affair” is nothing new. There are numerous examples of this exact same thing happening in the recent past. One great example is in 32 Short Films About Glen Gould. One of those short films is titled Gould on Gould, wherein he interviews himself. Or, take the case of the Argentine writer Jorge Luis Borges. He published a small essay titled “Borges and I,” in which one Borges portrays himself as somewhat of a simpler soul and refers to the “other” Borges, the writer. And that essay ends with the line…
RP: “I do not know which of us has written this page.”
RP: Ah, so you remember also.
RP: What questions would you ask of yourself, if you were the interviewer and not me?
RP: Another intriguing hypothetical. Your question serves to remind me that we have not fully embraced the concept of split personalities in our society. An argument could be made that this virtual dichotomy, like the one that exists between me and you, does have its uses.
RP: You mean that it could help us see the other side, the other point of view? That one could play the Devil’s advocate with oneself, ask questions and answer them too?
RP: Exactly. And moreover, these sorts of exercises afford me an opportunity to get asked the kinds of questions that I otherwise wouldn’t face. I can practice my answers and appear a lot cleverer than I really am.
RP: With the beneficial side effect of making me the Ideal Interviewer?
RP: Exactly! As evidenced by your perceptive questions.
RP: Is there a history of medical problems in your family?
RP: As it so happens, yes. Schizophrenia. My grandfathers were both spared, though my father probably has it. Thankfully, the doctors who have tested me assure me that in my case, it is dormant. I am glad that it skips generations.
RP: Of course, we have all heard of chess grandmasters playing chess with themselves.
RP: Fiction. Pure fiction. In actuality, the modern masters all have computers as their sparring partners. But this sort of sparring with oneself happens all the time. Every time we anticipate a countermove to the move we have thought up. Whether it be in an interview or in chess.
RP: Do you?
RP: Do I what?
RP: Do you play with yourself?
RP: I assume you are asking about chess. No, I don’t. I am not a very good player. Plus I hate to lose. I like playing with others though.
RP: If I may be so bold as to make a suggestion. It would please me immensely to play a game of chess with you sometime.
RP: Why, of course. The pleasure would be mine.
RP: On a related note, have you watched the movie Multiplicity? Did you like it?
RP: The movie?
RP: Yes, the one starring Michael Keaton.
RP: No, I haven’t, but I am well aware of the underlying high concept. The idea of having multiple selves, clones of ourselves does hold undeniable appeal. For example, a clone of myself could be answering your questions while I am off someplace else.
RP: And a clone of me could be asking the questions!
RP: There you go! While the two of us could be off, doing something else.
RP: Like playing chess against each other!
RP: I apologize for not having asked you before, but would you like something to drink? Water, orange juice, coffee?
RP: I’ll have whatever you are having, thank you.
RP gets up and fetches a glass of water, and sits down.
RP: What if this whole auto-interview idea of your falls flat? What if it turns out that one can never, in fact, answer one’s own questions?
RP: Hmm, I hadn’t really thought of that. At least not in that way. But aren’t these questions moot at this juncture, now that we are winding down our discussion. I think I am going to let the readers infer the answer to these pesky questions of yours.
RP: But, but what of those who call your bluff. Claim that this is no more than verbal gymnastics, silly gimmicks. Construe this as nothing more than a crass stunt.
RP: That is not really a question. At any rate, we can’t really blame them for construing, can we?
Ram Prasad
December 2002
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