INTERVIEW | ‘We have to be fake to be normal in society’: Saharu Nusaiba Kannanari

TNIE sits down for an engaging chat with Saharu Nusaiba Kannanari, the author of Chronicle of An Hour and a Half, which recently won the Crossword Book Award.
Saharu Nusaiba Kannanari
Saharu Nusaiba Kannanari(Photo | E Gokul, EPS)
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KOCHI: Saharu Nusaiba Kannanari, with his debut published work, has been garnering accolades across India and beyond. His novel, Chronicle of an Hour and a Half, made it to the final shortlist for the JCB Prize for Literature and subsequently won the coveted Crossword Book Award for Fiction in December.

The story is set in a small village in northern Kerala at the height of the monsoon. Narrated through multiple voices, it recounts events that unfold in 90 minutes. An affair, a multitude of characters caught in its web, and bystanders all converge on a tragic conclusion — a mob lynching, triggered by WhatsApp messages.

At the heart of the narrative, amid the rising tide of violence in misogynistic men, stand two women. Saharu’s poetic, graphic, and melancholic prose refrains from casting a judgemental eye on any of his characters.

While praise continues to pour in, Saharu (short for Saharuddin), born and raised in the small town of Areekode in Malappuram, remains steadfast in his focus. His passion lies in writing and weaving tales that have remained untold. His next book, The Menon Investigation, is set for release mid-year, with another work nearing completion.

A keen observer of politics, religion, and human emotions, Saharu declares that “in fiction, we have to speak the truth”. Excerpts:

Moral policing, misogyny, and the fragility of masculinity are some of the main themes in ‘Chronicle of an Hour and a Half’. You’ve given almost all of these characters a voice. Can you tell me about your approach to writing these themes?

I am not someone profound. In fact, I consider writing my job, not a dream or passion. What I try to do is tell a story as realistically as possible. And realism is this: all of us are imperfect. In that novel (Chronicle…), the person who was murdered provoked the incident by beating up his friend. His moral policing on an individual level becomes, in another case, a cause for mass instigation.

One thing I tell myself, and preach, is that a novelist should be the most common specimen of the species, not exceptional. Writing is just an extension of that understanding of society. Eventually, as you write, the story has to speak. By treating writing as a message-giving activity, we strip it of its essential requirement: giving words to human complexity.

I would say a novel is a modern form of heresy, except instead of abusing God, we abuse human beings.

You have been writing for years without being published. I read that you worked as a contract lecturer without a salary for years. And you consider writing your job…

I never treated teaching as my job. Which is why, when my hours were over, I would always return home to my room and my computer to write. If I had taken teaching as a job, I would have been much more engrossed in it.

I love literature. I may speak about the lack of conversionary power in novels, but I am also deeply, deeply in love with literature. If you read great literature, you become charged by it. Eventually, you begin to leak, like a battery.

You say literature doesn’t have conversionary power. But doesn’t it have the power to influence, to inspire change? For example, it made you a writer...

Oh, I wanted to be a writer even before I read a book! Here’s why. I am very proud of my mother. She spent her life bringing us up. She was an anganwadi teacher for 19 years, then a peon in a school for 7 years.

One day, in the library, I saw names on the spines of books. One name struck me — the author’s middle name was his mother’s name. I decided that, one day, I would create an occasion where my mother’s name (Nusaiba) would appear beside mine on the spine of a book. In a sense, I am accomplishing a childish dream.

To answer your question, let me put it like this: consider football, it’s an activity people enjoy. Isn’t it the same with reading? Eventually, human endeavours are a search for pleasure.

When I read, I am drawn to the inventive power of language, the stylistic elements, the meaning, the metaphorical power…. I am pretty much always in my room. I hardly have any worldly experiences. My attachment to literature is quite serious.

Which was the first book you read? Was it the one you noted in the library?

No, I didn’t read that one. The first book I read, other than a textbook, was by Jiddu Krishnamurthy. I was in college. His writing had rebellious qualities, especially for someone like me who came from a different background — a Dravidian, born and brought up in Islamic culture, and educated in a madrasa.

Who are the authors who have impressed you?

Shakespeare, James Joyce, Virginia Woolf, Bronte, Saadat Hassan Manto, Sartre, to name a few.

You speak about how religion lacks true conversionary power. How did you become a non-religious person?

I think abusing God helps (laughs). I don’t think leaving religion necessarily makes a person better. But calling out religion and recognising it as a farce are stepping stones to intelligence. Religion is just a herd mentality at the end of the day.

How do stories come to you — as scenarios, things around you, or as characters?

When a story comes, as in Chronicle…, I usually know the main incident. I didn’t know all my characters, but I knew Nabeesumma and Reyhana, and I wanted them to speak in the first person. That made me write the other characters in the first person too.

India is an extremely repressive society. What such a society needs is a release. These women spoke with once-in-a-lifetime outrage. Some may find Nabeesumma’s words too sentimental, but that’s because she’s a typical mother whose life revolves around her children.

Is she a reflection of your mother?

No, my mother is a different person. She’s soft-spoken and has different sensibilities. I think it’s amoral to use real-life people as instruments in a story. As a writer, one should develop the competence to imagine characters.

Coming back to your job as a teacher. You worked without pay for years…

Contract employment is a modern form of bonded labour. That’s why, looking back, I remained poor. At the time of receiving the Crossword Award, I had just Rs 3,000 in my bank account. I have taught for 12-13 years, but I still don’t own a car. My laptop is about 10 years old — a gift from friends. The evidence suggests I am poor.

There’s no reason to be so poor after working so long. Yet, I am. Why? Because my employer — the government — didn’t pay me. They think it’s okay to not pay people, yet claim to be pro-worker.

The most basic requirement for hiring labour is paying for it. If you can’t adhere to that, why say empty words? I vote for the CPM, but the moment I start believing it’s a communist party, I will stop. I vote for the communist party here because it’s not a ‘communist party’!

Take Stalin, Kim Jong… all of them went the dictatorial way. Maybe the scripture is bad.

Moreover, if you are in an electoral democracy, you cannot sustain any radical ideology. So they lie. Not just them, human beings lie a lot. In fact, human beings have very little honesty.

There are certain fundamentals to these fakeness. We have to be fake in order to be normal in this society. Because society doesn’t want truth — it wants fiction. Telling the truth often becomes a radical act. And that is why, in fiction, we have to speak the truth.

Is that what you’re trying to do with writing?

Yes, but that doesn’t mean I am a prophet of truth or have some moral vantage point. Truth can be entertaining, sad, or miserable. But ultimately, truth is useless. For truth to have a positive impact, society must reflect on it. If society rejects it, it becomes mere entertainment.

Now that ‘Chronicle…’ has achieved massive success, are you worried about the next? And will it follow a similar theme?

I have said what I wanted to say about the regressive nature of Kerala society and how it views sex in the first novel. That is done. The Menon Investigation has none of that. It is about a police investigation of a cold case. And the third one is a political satire.

And I am not worried about the next book (laughs). I expect myself to write bad books. Every author in the world has written a bad book, and I don’t think I am going to be an exception. In fact, Chronicle… is my fourth book; the first three were never published.

Chronicle… was written in 2019, and The Menon Investigation in 2022. It’s just that they are getting published now. I am a slow writer, though my novels are short.

However, I love reading long works and reread them often. Like Ulysses, The Recognitions... but I am not writing like that because I don’t have the confidence that I would be able to finish it and publish it any time soon. I’m afraid that it would take five years to write and another five to edit, and I wouldn’t be able to live that far.

While beginning to write, one is always afraid that you are becoming a minor version of a great author you have read. You are always searching in your head whether this sentence, characterisation, or the idea are from something you read before.

All that said, literature is not without limitations. At the end of the day though, only very few people read literature. Some writers consider themselves rockstars. That’s not true. I believe we have to consider ourselves as the commonest specimen of the species (laughs).

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