It doesn’t take much to evoke nostalgia in readers. A grandparent, an ancestral home, mention of cousins, and scenes from summer break — they can all but take us down our own memory lanes. The memories, however, may be filled with a multitude of emotions. Author Andaleeb Wajid does just that with her latest work Have You Met Me? (HarperCollins India, `399).
The premise of the book is set in grief — an emotion we all are familiar with and have learnt to deal with in different manners in different settings. The protagonists of the two generations explored in the book do that, while navigating the aftermath of a matriarch’s passing, the responsibilities that come with it, and instances where the children of the house act more like adults than the adults themselves.
Akin to most of her previous works, Muslim women carry the story forward, which she comments was never deliberate. “I was just portraying reality as I know it,” she says. “When I started writing fiction, I only wanted to tell good stories and tell them well. I’ve always considered myself to be a part of the mainstream. So it would be natural for me to write about other Muslims living their lives in the mainstream. And of course, there’s a glaring lack of representation as well.”
Excerpts follow:
You have written over 50 novels in your career, and your stories have spanned across themes and genres. What does this achievement mean to you? What else can the readers expect?
I try not to think of it as an achievement as such because I think if I were to be honest about it, it would just baffle me. It does feel sometimes like a dream that I will be woken up from and I’ll be back to struggling with getting my first book published. I have two novels which are being pitched to publishers right now — a romcom and contemporary fiction.
The women in your novels are independent, yet living within the boundaries set for them, not shaking things up. Does reality reflect in your fiction?
I would like to think that my characters have evolved as have I, with the times. Yet, even living independently within these boundaries was not a possibility a few years ago. So shaking things up might still take time, but I have faith that we will get there. My fiction tries to portray a reality that could be, not necessarily as it is.
Most of your stories have a familiar touch to the reader. For example, in Have You Met Me?, the cousins get together during a period of grief and find that they had drifted apart. Do you tap into your own experiences while portraying familial dynamics?
Familial dynamics is one thing that I am closely acquainted with. This is what I know, from the very beginning because I am deep in the middle of it. I’ve always felt like I’ve lived a very protected and shielded life, so the only thing for me to write about was to turn inwards and look at what I grew up with.
The book also touches upon how different people process grief, how different generations go through it differently. Yet it is toned down…
Having been through a massive moment of grief myself in 2021, it became the lens through which I viewed a lot of things. So this book, featuring the death of a grandparent, not as drastic or traumatic as the death of a parent or a spouse (as in my last novel Until We Meet Again) and it gave me the chance to showcase it from the perspective of the three cousins, as opposed to how their mothers looked at it. I toned it down because I didn’t want this to be a sad book. I wanted it to be one of hope and new beginnings even in the face of grief. I hope that is evident as one reads the book.
The three young characters of the book go through three distinct issues that young adults go through — stalking and the fear of opening up to family, the constant need to be available online, and maturing way before time in their parents’ eyes. Are these the common issues you see among youth today?
Today’s youth have lived several lifetimes in just the span of a few years. From Covid, to lockdowns, to remote learning, to wars, to protests, they’re seeing it all, they’re living through it all, and they are still emerging from it, with a will to move on. It’s but natural that the book would try to portray at least a little bit of what they’re experiencing. As someone who is easily two generations away from the generations of these characters, I’m fascinated by how so much has changed, and yet, underneath it all, things are also the same.
An instance from the book that stayed with me is when Safina asks “Has anyone ever thought about our parents as people?” What message would you want readers to take from that?
As children, we often like to think of our parents as annoying, but well-meaning asexual beings who somehow managed to procreate and bring us into the world. When children reach a certain age, when they are no longer emotionally dependent on their parents, I feel this is when they look at them as more than just parents. A little of this also comes from one of my earlier YA (Young Adult) novels When She Went Away, in which a mother leaves her family and goes away with someone else. She has only ever been a mother to her children. It is in her absence that they learn of who she was apart from that.
Do you leave a piece of yourself in the female characters you write about?
Yes. I also write about girls I could have been in another lifetime. I feel this way about Abir, from The Henna Start-up or Athiya from Three Times Lucky. I feel like the girls are not just a reflection or variation of me and my personality, but are girls I could have been under different circumstances.
Among all the genres you have attempted, which one is your favourite and which one do you find challenging? Is there a genre you wish to try?
Horror is my favourite genre because it’s also the most challenging. I find horror to be quite subjective and not as easy as portraying romance or love. Creating and sustaining a feeling of dread that still makes the reader want to turn the pages is rather difficult. The genre that I would love to write is a police procedural or a crime novel. I devour those myself but I don’t think I have it in me to do the research needed to write one of those.