The House with a Thousand Stories
Author: Aruni Kashyap
Publisher: Penguin, Rs 399
Aruni Kashyap may be young, but he is not new to good writing and writers. In an interview with KAUSHIK DEKA, he talks about his new novel, what made him suppress his anger while writing it, and how he learnt so much from Indira Goswami, Amitav Ghosh and Arundhati Roy. Excerpts:
What made you write this novelIJ
The memories of my parent’s generation are divided by the year 1979: The year UlFA was formed, the year Assam agitation started. For them, life is divided into ‘before 1979’ and ‘after 1979’. ‘Before 1979’ was good, ‘after 1979’ was messed up; but they still have ‘before 79’ to cherish, be nostalgic about. But young people of my age don’t have that album of wonderful memories. We grew up accepting violence as the norm. I wanted to write a story that my contemporaries in Assam would identify with. But I also wrote this novel because I wanted to celebrate the perennial resistance of the common Assamese people who have lived under state-oppression and insurgency for more than 30 years now.
Tell us briefly about your novel.
It is the story of a young boy, Pablo, who has grown up in Guwahati. Most of the drama unfolds in his ancestral village, where he goes to attend a wedding in 2002 — about six months after a new Government has been elected by the people of Assam. The state is emerging from a series of extra-judicial killings that impact the lives of the people in the novel.
Was it difficult for you to write a historical novelIJ
The House with a Thousand Stories is not a historical novel. Yes, a lot of things that happen to the people in the story, is because of the secret killings of Assam. These killings were a series of extra-judicial killings allegedly conducted by the Government roughly between 1998 and 2001 to crush militancy in Assam. During this period, masked gunmen would kill the mothers, fathers, brothers, sisters, friends and extended relatives of underground insurgents so that they would leave arms. It is sad that few in India know about these human rights violations, which is one of the darkest chapters of Indian democracy.
But my novel is about how political terror impacts the lives of common people, not a retelling of Assam’s history. The book is rather an exploration of fear, about what it means to live under state-terrorism and violence of armed rebellion, about the far-reaching consequences of living under the duress of terror.
Do you think your novel would change the way we have come to think of contemporary writing coming out of Assam, as writing born of violenceIJ
I don’t know how it would change writing from Assam, because it is for readers to decide but I hope it will begin a conversation about this dark chapter of Indian democracy. When I read about the widespread human rights violations, I was so angry. But I didn’t want to write an angry book. I was worried my rage would consume the book itself. An angry book meant speaking to power and rendering it a central presence. I had to turn that presence of the oppressive Indian state irrelevant and marginal to display the resilient life of the common people on the proscenium. I felt it was the best literary resistance my fiction could offer instead of angry rants because there is more meaning and depth to life in Assam than just the violence perpetrated by the state or insurgents.
How long have you been writingIJ We hear that your parents are writers as well. Did that have an impactIJ
I think I have been writing from the age of eight or nine. My father would wake up at four in the morning and write everyday, all through the year. I grew up seeing my mother write her debut novel in the early 1990s, sitting up till late night. I would like to believe that that had an impact.
Please tell us a little about your writing routine. What are you working on at the momentIJ
I always have a long project such as a novel that keeps me going and I write something everyday: a poem, tweak an old story, a few pages of a novel, etc. I am working on another novel now, which is taking forever to finish.
It’s a very interesting title. How did that come to youIJ
I got it from a poem I wrote during my undergraduate years — “The House With a Thousand Novels.”
Tell us something about your literary ancestors.
Toni Morrison taught me how to blend politics and aesthetics. Indira Goswami gave me the metaphors and taught me the importance of endings in fiction. Wiliam Faulkner helped me with perspectives and gave me the permission to write unapologetically about Teteliguri or Mayong. Amitav Ghosh gave me the confidence to write ‘Assamese novels in English’. Arundhati Roy taught me that ‘Great Stories have no Secrets’. Nadine Gordimer demonstrated how to take social responsibility.