It seems that lately, more audiences are drawn to the realm of short stories, be it in film or prose. Sarvat Hasin, a Creative Writing graduate from Oxford, delves into this subculture thanks to her knack for encapsulating diverse characters in riveting plotlines.
Origins and all
In You Can’t Go Home Again, short stories are intertwined through the eyes of young people based in Karachi who are faced with countless dilemmas as one of them goes missing.
It’s a story, riddled with tension and emotional turmoil, that reflects the Pakistan Sarvat remembers growing up in, showcasing her adulation for the bustling city of Karachi. “I think Karachi is the strongest environment in which the story is set,” reflects Sarvat, “While the characters travel a lot to London, they don’t interact with that setting as actively as they do with the former – which is why the book is called You Can’t Go Home Again. There’s an idea of the setting changing while you’re away and while you’re in it, and in a place like Karachi this is very true, it’s constantly in flux.”
The Pakistani national adds that in regards to an ‘East versus West’ discussion, there are a lot of salvation stories in the publishing world pertaining to South Asian people, who are largely of the generation above us, moving abroad. While these stories are important to discourses today, she finds there are a trope and narrative to them which are recognisable. So Sarvat moved away from that stream and observed characters who only go abroad for work or education and come back to Karachi.
On her creative process
The 26 year-old writer, who’s been longlisted for the DSC Prize for South Asian Literature for her earlier book This Wide Night, stays humble despite remarkable success.
Sarvat, through creating these characters and giving readers brief glimpses of them in the first short story, grew attached to these personas. Watching them drift apart to live their own lives became as natural as everyday people do in their day-to-day lives. Having kept in touch with her creative writing mates from university, Sarvat often shares her work with them; she found herself fascinated by their curiosity around storylines and how they fit together.
“I really wanted to write something my friends would read and that other people would find interesting,” Sarvat explains, “and the short stories in this book, unlike the novel that I know developed quite organically, aren’t so much about choosing to write about teenagers – it was a natural happening.”
Just like in This Wide Night, Sarvat writes through male perspectives. She explains people will however relate to the female characters, adding that though they come from similar backgrounds and settings, they are diversely different. “It’s incredibly important to me,” she comments, “there’s a small amount of literature written by South Asian women where female characters are one way or the other; and the characters in this book are real people with motivations and personalities that are defined by things other than the fact that they’re South Asian and female.”
You Can’t Go Home Again (Penguin India) is available in leading bookstores across the country.