Aatish Taseer on 'TheTemplegoers'

As some readers of this blog might recall, a few months ago I had blogged about Aatish Taseer's debut novel The Templegoers as being one of the most anticipated books of 2010. I'm quite pleased to inform you that the wait for the book was absolutely worth it; Templegoers  is one of the most stunning books I've read in recent months. And although the story is set in contemporary Delhi, it really echoes the contradictions that urban India and its residents are afflicted with. I won't divulge much about the novel for I don't intend to ruin your reading experience; instead here's an email interview I did with it's talented author Aatish Taseer.

 1) Apart from Delhi, you've lived in London, America and in a boarding school in southern India. Did your stay and experiences in these different places ever obliterate your Delhi years? Or did they make you think of the city from a different perspective?

No, they intensified my memories of Delhi. And I suppose living in those other places, feeling in some ways cold to the things that in India would have been my inspiration, made me realize where my real material and subjects lay. But it would be churlish of me to ignore the fact that I had lived with a kind of blindness in Delhi—on a basic level, to dirt, poverty, to human relations, in which there was often an element of casual violence; on other levels, to culture, language, and aspects of high civilization that had been all around me in India as I grew up, but that I had not had any means to assess or regard. Living in the West did not give me those means, but watching them regard not only their own civilization but that of other places as well, forced me to look at my own place in new ways; Delhi, and India too.

2) What would you attribute the political undercurrents in The Templegoers too? Your education, your brief career as a journalist, your parentage or your mother's own career as a political journalist?

A question like this from someone living in India surprises me. India is full of politics. You can’t take a pee in India, without the wall your peeing against being festooned in political slogans. Every lunching lady, taxi driver, gym trainer and heiress has a political opinion, especially in Delhi. As for The Temple-goers, it is less concerned with politics than with the question of what an Indian regeneration is to mean? Is it going to be some bland dystopia growing from a third-rate borrowed culture? Amazing Thailand so Incredible India? Or is it going to be a thing of substance? Is it going to produce an architect in Orissa who might one day build a modern legislative assembly in Bhubaneshwar, taking, for instance, as his model the marvelous shape of the notched amalka that towers over all its temples? Might we have modern apartment buildings that have a shade of our medieval river-fronts? Could it mean that India might lead the world in Indic scholarship? Might it produce institutes of Classical studies equal to our IITs? Will it lead to new ideas about our history? Will we start to create an environment that is more welcoming of the man coming up? Or will he continually be forced to shed his attachments to his language, dress, religion and customs in order to be acceptable to our shabby modern culture? These are not frills; they are the life-blood of any rising power that is to be more than tyranny. And for India to have a new and deeper sense of her past is essential, especially the Sanskritic past, which extends our cultural reach deep into Asia. So far it is not clear what the new energy that has entered India will amount to. But what is clear is that if we go quietly, the way of malls and blue glass, with all the shoddiness and imitation implicit in taking such a road, this ‘Indian renaissance’ would be a very disappointing thing.

3) The standard question one usually asks fiction writers is 'how much of the protagonist is the writer' but, in this case, I'd like to ask how much of the protagonist-narrator is NOT Aatish Taseer considering you've given him your name and set parts of the story near your residence? Also, did you lend him your name so that it enables the reader to put a face to it?

The narrator of The Temple-goers, for all his superficial resemblance to me, is a fictional character with little basis in reality. That he carries the name of ‘Aatish Taseer’ is part of a theme of blurred authorship that runs right through the book. But I don’t wish to give too much away.

4) It seems that one of your characters, Aakash, is a slight contradiction to today's world where some people, after gaining material wealth, have distanced themselves from being religious. Did you deliberately keep Aakash religious and was it attempt on your part to make a statement?

This is plain nonsense. Do a little experiment and find out where the majority of funding for religious organizations and our richer temples comes from and you will know that gaining material wealth in India has nothing to do with losing one’s religious feeling. What you’re talking about is a breed of deracinated Indian of English education, who has lost more than his religion; he has usually lost his language and culture too. That person, though certainly powerful, still constitutes a tiny minority. In any event, none of this concerns Aakash as he is neither rich nor yet rootless.

5) Aakash is a character which has many shades and layers and I get the impression that it must've taken you a long time to create him. Is that so? And if it is, do describe what the process was like?

This is hard to describe as most of it happens during the writing. But yes, Aakash had a sweeter, more vulnerable twin in an unpublished story I wrote, now three years ago. When I developed that character for the novel, darker elements crept in. They had perhaps always been there.

6) Sanyogita, the writer's girlfriend, seems to be a slightly passive element in his life; in the sense that she doesn't express very strong feelings at crucial points. Was it easy for you to keep Sanyogita at a periphery given that you have also been in a relationship in the past?

She is not a passive character. She looms over the story. And her silences, her withdrawal, are always there in background. She is the natural recipient of our sympathies. But yes, the narrator’s rejection of her is like the rejection of his world in Delhi. And once again, my having had a relationship (or two) has nothing to do with the novel’s narrator!

7) How easy or difficult did you find the task of incorporating real-life incidents such as bomb blasts and murder cases into a work of fiction? 

Yes, but in the novel, they are not really the bomb blasts or the murders themselves; they are their reproduction in the media. From the outset, it is that that the book is concerned with. So the murder in a sense is of absolutely no importance. It is why Megha seems not so much to die as to disappear.

8) A recent trend that has been noticed in contemporary fiction writing - at least in India - is the caricaturisation (for want of a better word) of real-life characters. Why is this so? As a writer, does caricaturisation make it easier/difficult for you to construct your characters?

I don’t really understand this question. Do you mean the emergence of a kind of novel, usually a set of short stories, that feels like it has been commissioned in London or New York by a woman with bleached blonde hair and an upper-west side accent, who says, ‘Yes, let’s have those gay NRI short stories from Mum-BAI.’ Or: ‘We could use a Vietnamese immigrant on our list. Let’s send it through the creative writing school machine and publish next spring’? I think I know what you mean. I despise that kind of fiction. It is the elevator music of literature. And we, in India, who need real writing, cannot afford that voiceless drivel.

9) Just like in your last book, Stranger To History, your debut novel has a very strong element of religion in it. What is it about religion that you make it such an integral part of your work? And will this feature in your future books as well?

I’m interested in religion only when it enters areas beyond faith. In the case of Hindusim, I’m drawn to it for the ways in which it makes sacred the topography of India. I think it gives many Indians their deepest idea of India, the land. And if not misused, it is a very gentle, beautiful idea, neither sectarian nor nationalistic, but actually built into a love for the natural world, for the contours of this country. It is a very easy idea to possess, and I think many Indians carry it in their heads effortlessly. One has only to turn to the epics to see what an incredible celebration they are of the landscape and seasons of India. Just the number of trees named and identified is enough to make one’s heart jump up. And so, you see, when one strays so far out of the sphere of faith, it becomes very difficult to answer your question in terms of ‘religion.’ I think it is important in India to make an intellectual shift, by which we are able to see our works of scripture as also works of literature; Sanskrit, as not merely a liturgical language, but also a literary one; and our temples, as not just places of worship, but as objects of beauty. That is real secularism, not the bogus government variety.

10) Will there always be an element of autobiography in your books? Will you ever be able to detach the Aatish Taseer from a work of fiction or will you always be present in some form?

No autobiography here, Aayush. That narrator is not me. And there have been many like him in the past, ‘Marcel’ of In Search of Lost Time and ‘Manto saab’ to name only a few. 

11) Lastly, The Templegoers comes nearly a year after your first book Stranger To History  was released. How would you describe your journey from Stranger to Templegoers over the past year? 

Quiet. The only life-altering addition has been Sanskrit, with its exquisite grammar and razor-thin views into the classical world of India.

(A shortened version of this appears in the Business Standard. Also, an earlier interview with Aatish is here)