We live in a very politically charged time in India, when a lot of the debate is to do with whether the secular and inclusive inheritance of the country is coming undone. I wanted to write a novel about what this might feel like on the inside: in that space where one is not a morally upright citizen all the time or even most of the time, where joy in a new pair of shoes can override bad news politically, and where ambivalence is as strong a force as despair. Of course, the outer world can catch up with one in so many nasty ways but it’s also important to remember that none of us are either victims or oppressors in the comic book sense.
My hero Alif is something of an amateur historian and he admires that famous essay by Walter Benjamin with its image of the angel of history with his face turned with yearning towards the past and his wings propelling him towards the future. Benjamin’s essay is, among other things, a critique of social democratic politics which invests all hope in future progress. And Alif can see that happening around him. Many among his friends and family have a sort of toolkit of references to the past, easy to call up in debate, but they are really fixated on success in an increasingly treacherous free market.
Dreamy, erudite and shy.
The novel does explore various views on history. There is the simple ignorance about the past which can do so much damage. But just retrieving the past, trying to tell it as it actually was, can be a misplaced desire too. As Benjamin says, what we want is remembering not for nostalgia or sadness or scholarship or material improvement, but as an impetus to revolutionary action. So I’m asking: what is and what can be our relationship to the past given the kind of society we – or Alif – live in?
In the recent present: Allan Sealy, Yiyun Li, Vinod Kumar Shukla, Shehan Karunatilaka, Sara Rai, Teju Cole, Perumal Murugan, Siddhartha Deb, Kuzhali Manickavel, Siddharth Chowdhury.
From the past: the excitement is in rereading and there are writers – Dostoevsky, Nabokov, Bellow, Zagajewksi, Kundera, Coetzee – who continue to teach me.
