U S-based Indian author Amitava Kumar returns with The Green Book: An Observer’s Notebook, the third in his series following The Blue Book and The Yellow Book. This work combines Kumar’s writing, painting, and sketching into a personal yet universally resonant exploration of art and storytelling.
At the book launch at the India International Centre (IIC) in Delhi, Kumar read excerpts, sharing tales and notes from his travels. The book was launched by Udayan Mitra, executive publisher, HarperCollins India and Hemali Sodhi, founder of A Suitable Agency.
His observations, ranging from the oddity of Hindi writer Premchand’s missing mouth and sharp moustache in a portrait in Varanasi to his admiration for authors’ journals, highlight how the simplest moments can become captivating stories. Through The Green Book, Kumar paints with words on observing the world, accompanied by his hand-drawn oil art.
Udayan Mitra, who heads the literary and non-fiction publishing divisions at HarperCollins, describes Kumar’s books as an amalgamation of text and images. “Some of the greatest works of fiction or non-fiction began as jottings in writers’ notebooks,” he says. “Kumar’s work, like The Yellow Book and The Blue Book, blends writing, paintings, and text that sometimes converse and sometimes stand independently.”
Keeping a diary
For Kumar, keeping a diary is of great significance. His passion for diaries is rooted in his love for reading the journals of other writers. He says journals are a “key to their thoughts, ambitions and anxieties.”
In The Green Book, Kumar quotes Oscar Wilde from his play The Importance of Being Earnest, “I never travel without my diary. One should always have something sensational to read on the train.”
“You are made to do interesting things. And then you write it down,” he explains. Taking the idea of keeping a diary means seeking to lead a sensational life—one filled with experiences that are both interesting and worth documenting.
In his book, he shares an experience from a lecture he gave at a college in Bihar, where he emphasised the importance of maintaining a diary. Kumar also references the diary of a relative, noting how one can hide or embellish details in their own diary. Diaries, he suggests, are not always keepers of secrets but can also convey silence, leaving space for things we cannot comprehend or have failed to reflect upon.
Writing when nothing happens
Kumar aims for a raw, immediate effect in his works, aiming for a tone that feels like a first draft—unpolished, yet present in the moment, even if it’s recalled later. He compares this to the immediacy of “blood on a bandage—where the wound is still there, and you can see the blood seeping through, though the bandage remains.”
Writing a book that reflects daily events can sometimes pose the challenge of having nothing interesting to write about. Kumar suggests, “If people have nothing to write, they should draw the curtains and write what they see outside. If not, write down that you are not writing.”
Even moments of ‘nothing happening’ hold value for him and are worth documenting. Kumar carries various notebooks for different purposes and encourages his students to write just 150 words a day, a practice that can eventually lead to writing a book.
An amateur artist
Kumar, an artist, incorporates his drawings into The Green Book, offering readers visuals of his observations. He admires the simplicity in David Hockney’s works and emphasised on creating paintings that closely mimic reality. His artistic journey began with children’s watercolors bought for his son. Initially sharing his work on Facebook, he experimented with gouache and created more pieces at the suggestion of his agent, Hemali Sodhi, who saw the potential for a book. Motivated by this idea, Kumar explored various techniques, including digital methods.
By the time he worked on The Green Book, oil painting had become a significant part of his style. “To bring my artwork and reduce it to a book level has been a liberating experience for me,” says Kumar.
Amitava Kumar does not consider himself an artist but says, “Everyone should feel that everyone is an amateur artist or an amateur writer.”
For him, writing is a gift that liberates and offers a way to describe one’s experiences. He reflects on how he wasted his youth, not capturing those moments, but now, writing has allowed him to make sense of his life and experiences. Writing has become a way to stay connected to the real thing, to the present, and, for Kumar, that has made all the difference.