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Rahul Bhattacharya at the Calcutta Literary Meet. (Anindya Shankar Ray) |
Rahul Bhattacharya’s books Pundits from Pakistan, about the Indian cricket team’s 2004 tour of Pakistan, and The Sly Company of People Who Care, a novel set in Guyana, have scored big with reviews and awards. t2 caught up with the author on the sidelines of the Calcutta Literary Meet.
How was the Lit Meet experience?
At other literary festivals, it is all about the writers and the event. Over here, it is part of a bigger festival, which is all about books, reading. The sight of thousands of people browsing and buying books is uplifting for a writer.
Being half-Bengali, do you have a Calcutta connection?
I actually lived in Calcutta for more than nine months when I was less than a year old. My parents were here for five years in the late ’70s. In fact this time, my mother and I went to our old house at Udayan Park.
I have also twice watched cricket matches here. The first time was for the infamous 1996 World Cup semi-final (India vs Sri Lanka), which had to be abandoned. I was 16 then and a cricket nut. I knew somebody who used to work on the hoardings around the boundary line. He got me a ticket and I tagged along. It was quite a heart-breaking experience. Not because India lost. I was just so upset that my country could behave like that. But otherwise it was a spectacular cricket match. I will never forget the noise when Jayasuriya and Kaluwitharana got out.... I also watched an India-Pakistan Test match here while promoting Pundits from Pakistan.
Did you always want to be a writer?
It happened by chance. I got into writing because of cricket and I got into cricket because I didn’t know what else I could do after my pure mathematics degree. I was a terrible student. And I wasn’t interested in a career of any sort. I would live in the world of cricket and got into a cricket reporting job three days after my final graduation examination. I found that writing and travelling were nourishing me as much as the game, sometimes even more than the game. At some point I wanted to go out of cricket and write and travel. It was one thing leading to another. I am not somebody who plans much.
Your pure math degree is intriguing. What thought process prompted that?
I don’t know what I was thinking. I did science in Plus Two to keep my “options open”. Then I contemplated arts, commerce and someone said why don’t you do mathematics and afterwards you can do all kinds of things: finance, economics or further studies. It was ridiculously difficult. I understood nothing. It’s a mystery how I cleared those exams.
How difficult was it to publish your books?
It was a struggle to write the books. Publishing them in contrast didn’t seem much of a struggle.
Both your books are inspired by your travels. Do you need to travel to write?
I think I do, not to write necessarily, but to understand. It’s possible that the themes I explored in my novel can be explored in other ways, without travelling, but I needed to travel to understand. Travelling opens up ideas, people and the world... the physical world as well as the lives of people in a way, say, library research doesn’t. James Ellroy, I think, set a book in a foreign country and sent an assistant to do all the legwork for him. I could never think of doing that. But writers evolve. Maybe there could be a period when I think I could understand more just by reading or by staying still or thinking of things that are more psychological than physical.
Does your love for travel come from moving around as a child?
I have been a bit of an outsider all my life. I have grown up in two cities and I now live in a third (Delhi). If I count Calcutta, four. I come from a mixed background: my father is Bengali and my mother is Gujarati and I studied in basically English-medium schools. That has always made me a little bit of an outsider. Sometimes it’s frustrating. You feel you can’t take any of these worlds for granted. This foreignness stays with you. It is perhaps a useful itch as a writer... being outside something and trying to scratch your way in.
How does it feel to be compared with V.S. Naipaul, as a number of reviewers of Sly Company have done?
It was unexpected. I didn’t seek to emulate Naipaul. I think he is a giant, a properly great writer. His Caribbean books mean a lot to me but I never held him up as my model. I have been influenced by him but not as much as some people might think. But yes, it’s humbling, he is a Nobel laureate.
How was the novel received in Guyana?
It’s been really heart-warming. There are things in the book that only a person from the Caribbean can fully understand. I wanted to write the book that is of Guyana even more than I wanted to write a book about Guyana.
Are you working on a book now?
No. I haven’t been and I want to. I have a few thoughts but haven’t had a chance to explore them...
Any plans of returning to cricket writing or have you given up on the game?
I am exhausted by the amount of cricket there is. I can’t keep up with Twenty20 and One-Day cricket especially. I follow Indian Test cricket very closely. I watched most of the England series. Same with the Australia series. The Melbourne Test was fantastic, I watched it with exhilaration. I even watched the West Indies Test match in Delhi. But One-Day and Twenty20 cricket can be very repetitive. I feel jaded by them. Cricket writing is not on the agenda right now.
Are you a finicky writer?
Yes, I revise over and over again. I am always fiddling and rewriting.
Your wife (Shruti Debi) is an editor. Is she your first reader? Does it help/hinder to have an editor at home?
Haven’t thought about that... She is my first and best reader. She is an excellent editor. I think anyone would benefit from her editing/reading.
STRAIGHT BAT
Favourite writer I don’t know. I go through phases.
Favourite
cricket writer
You go to them for different things. I used to love Peter Roebuck’s match reports.
Favourite cricket tour 2002 West Indies tour, my first ever international tour. It gave me my first novel. I returned to Guyana. World Cup 2003 was also very interesting.
What else do
you enjoy? Listening to music. I unfortunately play guitar very badly. I enjoy cooking. I used to enjoy watching The Bold and the Beautiful very much. I used to feel very lonely at home while writing so I used to time my lunch with The Bold and the Beautiful. I was very upset that they knocked it off the air.
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