The Cosmopolitans may be one of the most anticipated literary fiction titles, but author Anjum Hasan is certain she wants to stay on in her Nilgiris hideaway till at least mid-September, a month after the launch date. So, in keeping with the spirit of this series, we drive 250-odd kilometres into rainy, misty Kodagu (Coorg) one weekend.
Hasan, 43, and her husband, crime novelist and travel writer Zac O’Yeah, zeroed in on Coorg as the closest replacement for Shillong, where Hasan grew up, after considering Coonoor and Yercaud. Their home is bright and cosy, dominated by their separate workspaces and libraries. One of the reasons they moved here, O’Yeah tells me with a completely straight face, is because they just couldn’t fit all their books into their Bengaluru residence.
Over mugs of local coffee (for me) and green tea (for Hasan), we discuss art as a literary theme, the culture of criticism, and why Indian non-fiction is on a high. Edited excerpts from an interview:
You began dividing time between Bengaluru and Coorg three years ago. Was it primarily for your writing?
Yes, we began coming up here to write, and also to get away from the city. Actually, I was stuck with The Cosmopolitans. I began writing it in 2008, after Neti, Neti (published in 2009) was done, though the idea of writing about a 50-something woman and the arts was older. I made some progress but life suddenly got busier: I was travelling more, then I left the India Foundation for the Arts (IFA; where I was communications editor) to join the news magazine Caravan as books editor. The novel required much more time (than I could devote). Simultaneously, there were all these requests for short stories—Mint Lounge published one (Revolutions, 9 August 2008)—and I realized I enjoy those as well, and I could write them in between other things. That’s how my collection, Difficult Pleasures (2012), came about. That same year, we moved to Coorg and it really helped me get on with this book.
Is a book still as urgent when you come back to it after four years?
It took me a while to get back into it but I realized that all the ideas I had for the book were still valid. Of all my books, The Cosmopolitans has gone through the most (process)—not just time-wise but also by way of characters who were not used and plot lines that went nowhere. Till last year, I didn’t show it to a soul because I wasn’t happy with it. I think I’ve grown with this book, which is strangely appropriate, because it is a book about the passage of time.
Qayenaat, the protagonist of ‘The Cosmopolitans’, is 53.
Yes, and she’s had various kinds of life experiences.... I think I was able to give her more depth because of the time that elapsed between starting and finishing her story. In all my books, I have been concerned with the individual—and I wondered if one could create an engaging character out of a woman at that stage of her life. Qayenaat is steeped in the arts and she draws sustenance from it, but that doesn’t mean she is sorted emotionally.
Some of the things I’m talking about are also current in a very general sense. Like money, and how it has changed contemporary India. Then there’s the whole urban construct, as alienating as it is fascinating. My concern is: Is this really the norm or is there another way of living? Sophie, the young urban drifter, explores that question in Neti, Neti, and Qayenaat takes it up here. There’s also the nuclear family: In Indian society, the family takes over so much, so what is the place of the individual?
Qayenaat is also the first of your protagonists to be in a place, chronologically, that you haven’t experienced.
That’s true. I think I’m moving more into a fictional space. Qayenaat’s life is not my life at all. That is not to say Sophie’s life is my life, but at least I made the same journey from Shillong to Bengaluru. But one of the important ideas Qayenaat embodies for me is as a child of the Nehruvian generation. She is caught between her father, who represents the idealism of that era, and younger people like Baban Reddy, who have a different kind of confidence and a different relationship to India. That is a very interesting space for fiction—and while she is not a representative of that generation, some of her anxieties are generational.
When did you know you wanted to write?
(For the first time in our conversation, she’s nonplussed.) Um...I know some writers who have this eureka moment, like Haruki Murakami or Margaret Atwood. I don’t think that ever happened to me. My father was a professor of English, so that focus on language was always very strong...I got the sense early on that writers could be revered. Growing up, my siblings and I all amused ourselves with the written word, with poems and plays. I also associated writing with adventure, I thought I’d be a journalist and travel.
And when you started writing, it was with poetry.
Yes, I always felt like I can’t write prose. And at some point, I felt superior about doing poetry because I believed it to be the higher art.... But I don’t think I ever thought of it as a career; that would be something else, and the writing would be also be there.... Maybe one day I will only write, but at this point I need to do something different that gives me an income and also takes me out of my own world. Also, I love working with other people’s creativity, be it at IFA or at Caravan. But more and more, I see myself as a fiction writer. My whole perception is channelled through fiction.
Alongside, the whole culture of criticism is also very important to you.
Very important, which is partly the reason setting up the Caravan job took so much time: We didn’t really have the culture of the essay. We had writers who did terrific 700-word reviews, but who needed guidance on a 3,000-word piece on literary themes. Finding those writers took time but now I’m as passionate about nurturing them as I am about writing fiction.
Reading my peers, knowing what’s gone on before, having some kind of dialogue about it, developing a sense of tradition, is very important to me.... The publishing environment also enables that now, they’re reissuing older writers, producing the collected works of a Dom Moraes or an A.K. Mehrotra.... That’s important because I don’t know how many Indian writers in English feel a sense of allegiance, or of history, though it’s more than 30 years since Midnight’s Children was published. It’s like everyone is distinctive—and that’s interesting too: Hansda Sowvendra Shekhar or Anees Salim, from unlikely Jharkhand and Kerala, respectively, are writing all these wonderful books. The diversity is exciting but that makes a good critical context, the sense of a continuum, more necessary.
Is the story important to you?
It is, but so is the idea, the concept, the structure, the sensibility, the language. And, interestingly, I think some of the best non-fiction writers in India today have great literary sensibilities: a sense of a narrative, but also language, perspective, reportage, points of view, objectivity.... It’s sad but I just don’t see that many good fiction titles coming out. I think the most engaging novels are still being written by the older writers, be it Amit Chaudhuri or Amitav Ghosh or Kiran Nagarkar. Among newer writers, some, like Anees Salim and Siddharth Chowdhury, stand out. I want fiction to be addressing something contemporary but I also want the idea, the observation of life, the drama. A lot of writers today are reinforcing the same middle-class values, not really taking them apart; they aren’t asking the literary questions or seeking out the grey areas.
(At this point, O’Yeah walks in with the first copy of The Cosmopolitans, couriered by Hasan’s publishers. “Very nice blurbs,” he says, and Hasan expresses her embarrassment at the idea of writers such as Chaudhuri and Pankaj Mishra reading uncorrected proofs.)
This is a novel about art and now it’s out there. How do you relate to the life around it?
It’s tough, because it’s hard to say with absolute certainty what you’re trying to express through the novel. I’ve learnt to deal with the questions over time but the urge to go for the oblique answer is still strong. But a part of me also enjoys talking about literature, and I see that as related to my work and the larger conversation.
Literature festivals, now, can be very tricky. They have such an air of celebration about them and I don’t know what there is to be so happy about! Literature can be edgy, controversial, even angular, but not necessarily celebratory. Having an engaged audience and a good conversation can be very rewarding, but it doesn’t always happen.
Do you read while writing?
Of course, all the time. I’d have died if I wasn’t able to read through the six years it took me to write The Cosmopolitans! Earlier, there was this fear of losing my voice but now, no. On the whole, I’ve been reading Indian writers far more than Western writers, especially writers in translation, very recently Hindi authors like Vinod Kumar Shukla, Upendranath Ashk, Nirmal Verma. I’m just discovering Hindi literature, which is bizarre, because my mother has been a teacher of Hindi.
You’ve been around for a while, received great reviews, been on award panels, and even been shortlisted. But you’ve never won an award. Does that bother you?
You know, it’s fine. It would be great to win, and I hope it’s not a pattern, being one of four or five and then losing out. But even on the shortlist, you’re closer to winning than if you weren’t shortlisted at all. I feel there is recognition and then I don’t know what happens—maybe there’s always a better book, or there’s some other consideration. That doesn’t bother me too much, but I hope the book is read—though, of course, an award would boost those chances too.
