How long has it been that you have been outside Calcutta?
I went to study in the US in 1978. So what would it be? Thirty-eight years. But I’ve been back here twice for a year each during sabbaticals. And these days I live in Calcutta as well as in Oxford.
 
You do keep close links with Calcutta...
Very much so. Not only through frequent visits, but also through culture, literature and politics. I pay a lot of attention to Bangla sahitya, to theatre and cinema, and of course, to a whole range of social and political events. Every morning I read Anandabazar Patrika on the Net after I have checked my mails. I would like to believe that I’m connected to the heart and soul of this city.
 
A lot has changed over the 38 years that you have been away in the way one remains linked with Calcutta from abroad. Earlier it might have been letters, now you have Instagram and WhatsApp... Could you tell us about it?
In many ways the older methods of connection were less efficient but deeper and more meaningful than what they are today. Typically, when one uses an electronic mode of communication, one doesn’t pour out one’s heart.  One conveys information. For instance, I might receive a mail from a friend: “Our daughter got married last week.” And I can write back,  “Congratulations!” But it isn’t the same as my friend writing me a four-page letter on what it means to be a father-in-law after having been a father for over two decades.

So this year you would be in Calcutta for Durga Puja after how long?
Not too long. We were here in 2014. It is usually a bit difficult given our teaching schedule, but I have manipulated a few things here and there to try and be here during Durga Puja.
 
You come from a family with strong Leftist beliefs. So does Durga Puja have any significance in terms of faith or religion to you, or is it purely a matter of community or a social phenomenon?
It’s hugely important and a mixture of both. Mind you, it’s mighty difficult to tease out the purely religious from the purely social. The Ashtami anjali (flower offering) is something that I’ve participated in even when I was an active Leftist. Why’s that? Because I didn’t view it as a mechanistic ritual to get through, but felt the fervour and excitement of getting up in the morning, having a bath, wearing new clothes and going to the pandal. There must’ve been an inner resonance. I would hesitate calling this a deeply religious experience, but there was a kind of stirring which I cannot and will not deny. Further, Durga Puja gives ordinary human beings like us a reason to celebrate in the absence of personal triumphs. You might get promoted in a job, or secure high marks in an exam, or get a fantastic professional break. A writer might win an award, a filmmaker score a hit — but such personal triumphs are few and far between. Human beings though, need to celebrate, and events such as the Durga Puja provide us with a very legitimate, a very collective reason to celebrate without any need for excuses.

You’ve lived in various places — the UK, the US, Canada. What’s it like being a Bengali abroad during the Pujas?
There are Bengali communities everywhere. But for a whole variety of reasons we, my wife and I, haven’t been particularly connected to non-resident Bengalis. In my 38 years outside India, I have visited a “foreign” Puja perhaps twice. I find the Durga Puja abroad to be neither here nor there. It’s not the kind of public celebration like a barowari Puja in Calcutta. Ultimately, it’s yet another NRI party. My heart doesn’t warm to that.
 
Has the festival influenced the way you are as a writer?
The contribution of Durga Puja to my life as a writer has been nothing short of immense. And it goes beyond surface nostalgia, which isn’t a strong personal suite as far as I am concerned.

When we were young, Durga Puja saw the publication of the Pujabarshiki (the Puja annual). These volumes, published by the likes of Deb Sahitya Kutir, were a treasure trove of stories and, as a bookworm, I used to await them eagerly. It was the best gift that anyone could give me. I would devour a Pujabarshiki in two days flat. Importantly, these stories were all about adventure and travel, and they fertilised my romantic soul. My story-making impetus came from the stuff that I read in Bangla when I was young and a lot of it came from Pujabarshikis. There is certainly a strain in my writing which is about exploring new worlds, for which I owe a debt to my Puja readings.

 
Any particular author?
Hemendra Kumar Ray — he was my all time favourite! Novels like Jakher Dhan and Aabar Jakher Dhan.
 
Did anything else about Durga Puja influence you?
There is a second thing, which relates to one of my novel, The Miniaturist, set in Akbar’s reign in Fatehpur Sikri and Agra. I really needed to get under the skin of the Mughals for this, and as I started to do my research it seemed that the novel had already fallen into place inside my mind, almost subconsciously, as if I had known about this all along. This was strange since there is very little connection between me, a Bengali born and raised in the 20th century, and the Mughals of the 15th and 16th centuries. Looking back, I remembered that barowari Pujas in our younger days used to stage jatras following the Pujas, mostly on Mughal themes like the life of Shahjahan or Alamgir. We’d stay up all night and watch the jatras, my sister and I.  The images, the scenes, the dialogues and the characters seen as a child were indelibly inked inside me. I could feel, for example, the tumult of Akbar leaving Agra and her inhabitants and coming to his new capital Fatehpur Sikri, in my bones! The Mughal jatras that I’d devour during the festive season found their outpouring in The Miniaturist.

And all of this was from much earlier in your life…
Yes, and the third one was, perhaps, the most poignant contribution of the Pujas to my life as a writer. During one Puja, when I was eight years old, an elderly person whom we called Kaka (uncle), took a set of young boys and girls of the neighbourhood out to visit the (various) thakurs. Now Kaka was a bit of an eccentric and he didn’t care whether we had anything to eat, or if we walked for miles from the south of the city to the centre to the north. We went to Bhabanipur to College Street and pretty much everywhere. It was a day when it rained torrentially, and our small entourage was totally drenched. When I came home that night, I was struck by fever that morphed into a very difficult medical condition. I was taken out of school for a few months. I used to lie in bed all day and read books, draw and paint. Art, incidentally, was my first love. I was all by myself for five to six months at a critical point in my life when I was very young, and it developed the imaginative side of my mind since I had to entertain myself in lieu of friends, tell myself stories. When I was allowed to go back to school, I found that all my friends had forgotten me. Kids can be very brutal in this respect, and I had become an outsider who didn’t have access to their private conversations, their pranks, or their jokes.

So it took you a while to get back into the fold…
No, I remained the perennial outsider. That was the beginning of my journey “inside,” at a very early age. While others frolicked on the playground, I stood by the sidelines and watched. When as a young person you are constantly surrounded by friends, your outer life develops very quickly, you become sociable. But your inner life doesn’t receive much attention. This day of soaking during Durga Puja, took me out of collective childhood and put me in solitary childhood. It released the fountainhead of imagination, helping me become a writer.

You haven’t used Durga Puja as a motif in your writing yet?
Not yet. You see, I don’t write themes or settings. I write stories. If I ever dream up a story that involves the Durga Puja as a setting, then I shall surely write about it.

This year you have followed the writers that you idolised in your childhood and gone into a Pujabarshiki with your first Bangla novel. How does that feel?
It’s a special feeling in many ways, not the least because it is my first Bangla novel.

Why did you decide to write in Bangla now?
Bangla is my language. I didn’t grow up in an Anglicised milieu, but in a very cosmopolitan milieu. My father was a publisher, my mother a writer. Our house was full of books. It didn’t deny Bangla its place; in fact Bangla took centre stage. There were esteemed Bengali authors and poets who used to visit our household. My very first act of creative writing was in Bangla.

Last year, when Kalkatta was about to be published, I started working on this novel called Rabi-Shankar, a story set in Calcutta that links the turbulent ’70s (when I went to university) and the present time. It is a novel about two individuals — Rabi, an ex-Naxalite, and Shankar, an ex-policeman. The two have a shared past, one that is deeply antagonistic. I am quite pleased that it has come out this year, 1423 (the year according to the Bengali calendar) in Anadalok’s Pujabarshiki.  In many ways it is as significant to me as the publication of my first English novel in 2001.

Why did you decide to write your first novel in English?
For me, the story suggests its language. When I thought of the story of The Opium Clerk — a historical novel encompassing India, China and Malaya, with a huge sweep of history involving all kinds characters — it seemed to suggest its own language.

Now, if I had the facility to write in Urdu, which I don’t, I would’ve written The Miniaturist in Urdu because it would’ve been the natural language for that world. Since I couldn’t do that, I had to write it in English, but in a way such that you’d read the text in English, but hear Urdu in your ears.

What about historical novels draws you?
Maybe it’s because I am a failed historian. Growing up, history was my favourite subject!

Photographs by Rashbehari Das