Anjum Hasan on fiction and vicarious experiences: 'I’ve put more into writing than living'

In her latest collection of short stories — A Day In The Life — Anjum Hasan tackles the everyday lives of a range of characters, who are either connected through the inconsequentiality of their actions or overwhelmed by the scope of things. Hasan spoke with Firstpost about her strange relationship with the cities, how the apparent dullness of her characters at times reflects her, finding them in Bhupen Khakkar’s works and writing from a distance. Edited excerpts:

The Strangers begins with 'There were no new ideas to be found in the city'. Yet most of our leading stories, novels and eventually storytellers emerge from the cities. You are, perhaps, different. Have you had to adapt? Write differently, about different people, and places from the ones you have wanted to?

I’m tempted to begin with a quote from a favourite poem, Adam Zagajewski’s ‘Self Portrait’: “I live in strange cities and sometimes talk/ with strangers about matters strange to me.” Zagajewksi has lived away from his native Poland for long periods and that sense of strangeness that he carries with him and expresses in his poems is something I identify with. I find the city strange, in the sense of estranging, but something like inspiration can also come from that very same source. I’ve spent most of my life in two cities — Shillong and Bengaluru. So I am not really working against myself when I write about the city but I can also feel a strong compulsion to get away from it, which I explore through the character of the stranger in this story you quote from.

The inconsequentiality of much that happens to and through us is what reflects clearest in your stories. Do you struggle with cynicism at times? Do you keep away from the newspapers and the news? Or do you search for your voice in the noise?

I am often preoccupied with that German word – and idea – the zeitgeist. How to find it in fiction? One element of the zeitgeist is certainly this sense of inconsequentiality – the feeling that the important things are happening elsewhere, in the news or in other people’s lives, but not to us. There is something poignant to me in this sense of uselessness; I am fascinated by characters who feel wasted or out of sync with the times. Perhaps that’s a way of dealing with the inevitable cynicism, to try and turn this daily dross that our modern lives are made of into gold.

How has your relationship with Shillong changed over the years? Nostalgia aside, is there a longing inside you to go back and maybe make things work somehow? What is that one thing that you wish you could write about the place, but haven’t been able to?

How is it possible not to be nostalgic about what our cities once were and what they have become? Shillong can be a particularly heartbreaking example of this loss even as I recognise that things have become better in some ways there. There is a highway from Shillong to Guwahati now whereas there wasn’t much of one before. So I don’t want the nostalgia to obscure the fact that in a material sense our lives have improved, but not spiritually. Spiritually we’ve degenerated as things have become somuch more comfortable for some of us. I really do want to write a book about Shillong that can capture this conundrum.

Read on Firstpost — Shashi Tharoor on his book Why I am a Hindu, and why he believes Hinduism is inherently liberal

Most characters in A Day In The Life are ordinary people contemplating scope rather than reality. Are you one of them too? Do you actively seek thrill, adventure or risk? What is a ‘crazy’ evening for you? Has the definition changed with time and age?

I am in all likelihood a fairly dull person who has enough going on in her head – by way of vicariousness excitement – to not want to seek out additional thrills. A once-weekly bottle of wine drunk sitting on my own bed at home is enough adventure. And yet I can sometimes feel, perhaps brought on by that wine,an acute sense of mortification at not having lived life enough and even a yearning for it. I’ve put more into writing than living. I could have become a purveyor of crazy evenings instead. When I realise that, I think of OrhanPamuk’s lines: “Wherever had I got this idea that the measure of a good life was happiness? People, papers, everyone acted as if the most important measure of a life was happiness. Did this alone not suggest that it might be worth trying to find out if the exact opposite was true?”

One of the problems writers writing in English face is to write people who are distant from the language itself. Your writing, over the years, has handled it pretty well. How important is that? Is there a method to it all, something younger writers can follow?

It’s valuable to hear the sound of the language a character is speaking even if this language is not English and even if this is a language one may not know well or not know at all. I recognise the sound of many languages I don’t understand – from Tamil to Mizo. That is the key, the distinct quality of people’s voices. Comics, mimics and ventriloquists know this well, and one needs to cultivate a little of that art to write fiction in other voices than one’s own.

How did the cover (of the book) come about? Were you aware of Bhupen Khakhar’s work and find your characters in his works and why?

I have been enchanted with Bhuphen Khakhar’s work and suggested to Penguin that we put one of his paintings on the cover, not sure if that was a random and romantic suggestion or if it could actually be possible. I love how busy his characters are in their lives, that absorption in the ordinary – though the man on the cover seems to be reading his Times of India upside down! So there’s also that, Khakhar’s humour.

Another line I loved in the book: ‘I’m not grumpy, I realise, just unsuited to my era’. Time is of course an important character in these stories. How do you personally tackle questions about age, motivation and the very passage of time as a writer? You live far from the cities, but write about it often. Are you suited for the era?

I like those Hamlet lines – “The time is out of joint. O cursed spite that ever I was born to set it right!” None of my characters are the Prince of Denmark so none feels they have to take it upon themselves to set time right but they know for sure that it’s as out of joint as hell. As for me, if I was suited to the era I wouldn’t be writing fiction but doing something much more useful. I live away from the city part of the time but it’s not actually that easy to get away from the city. Even if you’re in a cave in the Himalayas, our monstrous present intrudes. In fact, I heard a wise man say recently that there are very few caves left in the Himalayas to which the otherworldly might retreat. They have been taken over by the department of roadways or whatever. So it’s better to try and practice otherworldliness right where you are.

More in books on Firstpost — 100 Great Indian Poems brings together Eunice de Souza, Kalidasa to provide kaleidoscopic view of poetry

Published Date: Apr 02, 2018 12:48 PM | Updated Date: Apr 02, 2018 12:48 PM