Your latest novel A Time Outside this Time travels beautifully between fiction and non-fiction. Are Satya and Amitava two different people?
Yes and no. Yes, because the novel is a work of fiction in the sense that it is a way of arranging the truth, finding a pattern, rather than a raw report. No, because so much of it is drawn from life. My impulse is to craft fiction as if it were nonfiction, a report from life.
Your protagonist Satya is a news junkie and a researcher’s delight. He wants to know everything and also looks to substantiate it with research and scientific data on human behaviour. Are these two very important personality traits reflective of the times we live in?
When the pandemic hit, many of us were just doom-scrolling on our phones. With news coming at us from all sides, all the time, we consume news as regularly and as naturally as we breathe.
There are a lot of instances in the book where it is evident that you have been affected by an incident. While recollecting those incidents, were you able to retain the objectivity treating it as a piece of non-fiction or did emotions get the better of you?
No, I’m not interested in objectivity. Objectivity is a myth. I was writing a novel. I wasn’t wearing a white coat and conducting an experiment in a lab.
You have started painting to express your deep anguish over the events happening around you. Earlier this year, you did a series commemorating the Delhi riots of 2020. A new book on your paintings is also on the schedule for the next year. Tell us more about this facet of your life.
To draw or paint is to learn to look more closely. To observe. It is a part of what I do also as a writer. Another part of me wants to paint because I haven’t been trained in it, and it exposes me to challenges, and I like this vulnerability.
Your novel talks about slow news. We are living in a time when news is shouted and not read on our TV screens. In such a time, how can one adopt slow news? Where to look for it?
Where to look for it? Clearly, in the pages of my novel.
SHORT TAKES
Your favourite contemporary.
Teju Cole
A genre you will never explore.
The kind of Harry Potter Hindu mythology that are popular among some readers.
A book gifted by you the most number of times.
A Lover’s Discourse by Roland Barthes
Life’s mantra in a sentence.
Write every day and walk every day.
Has Fake News become a way of life?
Yes, I’m not lying.
A literary figure whom you admire.
Sarveshwar Dayal Saksena
Read A Time Outside this Time because...
It tells you what it means to be alive today.
A Time Outside This Time
By: Amitava Kumar
Publisher: Aleph
Pages: 226
Price: Rs 699