“There are two kinds of people in the world: Those who extrapolate from insufficient data” goes the popular joke. Writers of fiction, I think, belong to that category of people. Extrapolating from insufficient data is something we are good at. In doing that, we inhabit the joke. And those of us who feel at home there live to write of our times. The joke is upon us — it has been upon us since the beginning of jokes and the beginning of writing.
The act of making stories set in this world comes from great love not just for language but for the world we seek to read closely (setting stories in other worlds is also love, as the escape velocity to launch into fantasy takes a push that matches affinity). And that love is rarely returned as the world has always been rife with tragedy and farce. We have written through war (in all its evolving forms), and famine (natural and induced), and countries colonising others (and their own). People have always been horrid to each other — even, and especially, when they have claimed to overthrow older forms of tyranny. But there has also been love and fellow-feeling and concerted efforts at healing. In these contradictions, the undying will to create and the hunger to consume stories has probably been the only constant of history.
It is, perhaps, presumptuous of me to speak for all fiction writers at one-book old (the second one is on the publisher’s desk, and half the third is in the Camlin bottle on my desk). But it is the same river we have all stepped into at least once. And that is the river that makes us ask ourselves who we are in this world.
What does it mean to be a fiction writer in an election year?
To wonder what it means to be a fiction writer in an election year reminds me of the question we dread the most: “What is your book about?” The works of fiction I admire, though hugely varied, have one thing in common: Their irreducibility to one idea or theme. And they are all political sans a message. The Tin Drum by Günter Grass isn’t about the shenanigans of a rather unlikeable dwarf. Gabriel Garcia Márquez’s One Hundred Years of Solitude isn’t about lean pickings in male baby names. Even when novels are set against the backdrop of momentous political events such as the Biafran war or Indian Independence, they are narratives of the vast complexities of life.
And complexity will continue to be a writer’s fodder in an election year. I’m sure non-fiction writers have a bigger task at hand as their medium is facts (it ought to be, in any case) and the madness despite its evident method is rather overwhelming. As writers of fiction, however, and as sensitive people, hopefully, we have a heightened sense of belonging in these times. It may not be just another cowry cast to choose between Machiavellian rocks and hard places. It may indeed be a culmination of the trajectory of a democracy that has gone from feeling let down by unkept electoral promises to dreading they will be kept. The same things that hurt and disturb any conscientious citizen of this country hurt and disturb us too. And those feelings have a way of finding their way into literature — mostly indirectly. Literary fiction takes pride in drumming the humdrum into beautiful music. Events, subconsciously, dictate the beat we play. Fiction can be as political as it is creative. In the seemingly innocuous act of choosing a word from a pool of synonyms, we show where our hearts lie. Even being apolitical is glaringly political. It highlights one’s privilege and the ability to afford detachment; and apathy is, essentially, siding with the baddies. Thus, the ink on our fingernails is forever indelible.
It also happens to be election year in another, doddering enormous democracy where the choice is between two warmongering parties: One suave and articulate, the other, proudly incoherent but single-minded in its pursuit of a megalomaniac’s whims. And that land has produced some of the best writers who have written through its staggeringly chequered history.
The joke is on us
Irony and satire have been my favoured elements of expression for the longest time. And election times are the veritable paydirt of irony ore. I find it easy to laugh at myself in my writing; in doing so, I am taking to task my communities and my country, which are an inalienable part of me.
Come rain or prachand bahumat, a healthy sense of self-deprecatory humour is important for a writer to tide her through the world as she hopes to not get too cynical or jaded to lose her capacity for wonderment. Because, as I said earlier, the joke is upon us and to keep writing through everything is our comeuppance. And giveuppance is not an option.
Karnoor is a Charles Wallace Fellow in writing and translation. Her second book, Gooday Nagar, is forthcoming
