Varsha Tiwary, one of our regular contributors, and ardent cheerleaders, speaks to Chandan Pandey, a bastion of contemporary Hindi literature, on his recent book “Keertigaan”.
Born on August 9, 1982 in UP’s Deoria district, Chandan Pandey is currently based in Bengaluru. He has published three collections of short stories, Bhoolna, Ishq-Fareb, and Junction. His two published novels are Vaidhanik Galp and Keertigaan. His stories and novels have been widely translated in English and Punjabi. He is the recipient of Bharatiya Gyanpeeth’s “New Writing Prize;” the Shailesh Matiyani Story Prize, the Krishna Baldev Vaid Fellowship and the Vanmali Young Writers’ Prize.
Society may not be ready to listen to certain things but the task of a writer is to go on chronicling them nonetheless. Not necessarily for others, but for themselves, because it somehow allows the writer in them to stay alive. Chandan-ji best symbolizes this spirit. The first book of his trilogy Vaidhanik Galp, came out in 2021 and its Englsih translation, Legal Fiction has become a bestseller. Now he has released the second book of the trilogy, Keertigaan. He was kind enough to give me a little time for an interview, conducted over Google Meet.
But first, let’s take a look at Keertigaan.
The widow of one Tabrez, lynched by the mob; keeps repeating the word “justice.” Sanoj, the journalist protagonist of Keertigaan, feels pity for her.
“She does not know that no difference between justice and injustice exists for the System playing around in this land. Now, only a difference of a couple of alphabets remains between the two words. Injustice kills you in one blow. And Justice, because it is more privileged, kills you slowly, a little every time.”
In his novel, Keertigaan, Chandan Pandey deftly braids the unrepentant strut of mob politics and office politics. The latter tends to work like a mob too where the only voices heard and paid heed to are those of fatuous consensus. If the mob in the streets kills the body; the mob of the office murders the heart. The two protagonists—the lonely alcoholic divorcé, Sanoj, who writes poetry in his spare time (which makes him the butt of a myriad office jokes); and his Bangladeshi-Hindu refugee colleague, Sunanda—are given the job of collecting data and testimonies on lynching across the country. The sexual politics informing the relationship between them prevents the storyline from getting didactic.
The two journalists are part of a news-mag team, Keertigaan, literally the “Song of Glory.” Their brief is to travel to the sites of these ‘incidents,’ meet, and talk to the affected families, other witnesses, and record their testimonies. At times, they also end up meeting those who had proudly organized the lynching and filmed videos of the brutal act.
One such bleak evening, after drinking too much, Sanoj makes a pass at Sunanda, who had only thought of him as a good friend. She rebuffs him, and the tension between the two journalists as they travel all over India mapping mob lynchings fuels the storyline.
Initially, Sanoj has no interest in collecting data on the lynchings and wants to go only for Sunanda’s company, for an opportunity to touch her. He feels this would alleviate his feelings of emptiness. However, as the narrative progresses, the audio-recordings of the testimonies, the images of grief-stricken wives and mothers, bereft sons and brothers affect him so much that he starts seeing the murdered men everywhere—sitting next to him in office meetings, where the format of data presentation is being debated. They peer mutely at the faces of his uncaring colleagues; whispering in his ears as he is talks to a Gaurakshak-cum-proud-lyncher.
These visions of dead men enable the reader to dive, as it were, into Sanoj’s mind—the meditations on violence—which are linked to memories of his own troubled past; connect to the present through his conversations with Sunanda. Increasingly under siege by these disjointed memories of violence, the images of helplessness in the victims’ kin, the echoes of the voices of the testimonies in his head, Sanoj disintegrates.
Sunanda, on the other hand understands the politics of mob-justice. Her brother was a victim of lynching in Bangladesh, and it was this that had forced the family to move from Bangladesh to India, to North Dinajpur in West Bengal. She negotiates these journeys while being within the grip of her own memories. The conversations between Sunanda and Sanoj move the plot along by showing two different viewpoints on lynchings. Take, for instance, the time when Harvir the local stringer facilitating their visit in Mewat recommends the Prem Pavittar Bhojanalay as it offers a delicious, but reasonably priced dinner. They oblige, thinking that a good meal would be a cure for their despondent moods. Sunanda enjoys the simple local fare which is followed by an even more delicious dessert, makhane ke kheer. Then Sanoj remarks that when a man gets hit in the head, like in Tabrez’s case, there is usually no blood. Instead, their cracked heads leak something white and viscous, much like this kheer. After that, they all leave the kheer uneaten.
Their interaction also leads to other debates. Are these incidents a result of a historical legacy or are they a result of falsified history? Are they a part of the enterprise to supplant and shove aside the regional aspirations of dalits and members of the scheduled tribes, and take control of resources in the guise of avenging their injured religious pride? These interactions and travels also expose the complex web of socio-political currents of these regions and the predominantly patriarchal sensibilities of the people. For instance, their interaction with a Gaurakshak and a visit to a Goshala in Nuh, where the men completely ignore Sunanda’s questions shed light on the intersectional nature of the issue(s) at hand.
But the real power of this novel, ostensibly about data-collection, is that it soars above its avowed subject matter, and even mocks it. At the same time, it uses this very data as an adjunct to the horrific images and conversations that the protagonists hear and record on their journeys. The process which Sanoj and Sunanda go through, along with their various experiences, bring out the gruesome horror of these routine, “normal” acts of lynching. The police reports, the postmortems serve only to sanitize the crime and erase the evidence. The courts acquit the murderers whose videos are in public domain and counter-cases are filed against the victim’s kin for daring to go to the court.
The writer, or even a journalist-protagonist cannot change anything as a witness and conscience-keeper. Their limited job is only to record and bear witness to the unconscionable crimes which the System does not even deem as such. They must do this with all their heart, their intelligence and emotions working in tandem. These unacknowledged acts of witnessing lead only to the loss of the protagonists’ sanity. In a paranoid stage towards the end, Sanoj is sent for psychiatric treatment. He has internalized the pain of the lynched. The widows and sons of the deceased, the deceased themselves, constantly keep him company. They beseech him to procure at least his death certificate; because they cannot even get the measly compensation money that the government announces as long as the police refuses to grant them a death certificate.
The reactions of others—his colleagues, the doctors who call him mad—show, how, in a world where lynching is normalized and even celebrated, a man gripped by horror at this depravity, is bound to be marked as insane.
Posterity is bound to ask us many things. Who were they? What were they like? The ones who lynched, and the ones who watched; the ones who stayed quiet, and the ones who lauded them; the ones who erased all evidence, and the ones who used the data to further themselves and their own careers? How did you let this happen? They might not find answers in any of the state-sanctioned repositories meant to preserve a record of these sins. For that, they would have to revisit fiction. Because times like this, when the relationship between words and meanings, words and actions gets all jumbled up, where does one locate the truth?
In fiction.
Do read Keertigaan.
Chandan-ji, our social setup has increasingly come to a point where a free and fair exchange of views on any topic has become something of an exception. Even television debates and social media, which were once touted as bastions of free expression and exchange, have turned into rigged hotspots for bullying and trolling. In this atmosphere, daring to talk about things that cannot be talked about is both an act of moral courage and the uppermost duty of a writer. And yet very few actually do it. What compels you to do it?
I had been in the grip of writer’s block. I was stuck with a number of unfinished drafts and then the news of a lynching in a city like Pune put me in a trance. The thought would not leave me. While not talking about the excesses committed by those in positions of power has always been the norm, right now, there seemed to be this sudden, rather systemic endeavour to underplay, deny, justify and plain ignore a crime against humanity and our collective conscience at work.
And the very folks who would get so upset over petrol prices and corruption a while ago now found nothing outrageous, or worthy of note in these incidents. And if anyone writes on this, one question immediately comes up, why did you pick this topic? These are “akhbari baatein,” stuff of newspapers, not a subject for fiction.
At least on the citizenship question there were protests and it lead to debates that raised consciousness; but lynchings continued to be seen as isolated, one-off individual crimes even when everything—from the way they were executed, filmed, made viral and treated as deeds of valour, to the way perpetrators were garlanded by the local leaders, indicated that there was a clear premeditated pattern to them.
Is there any particular experience, image or memory that inspired this book? Did you choose the subject or did it choose you?
Like I said, the Pune lynching of Shaikh, an innocent IT sector man had shaken me up. Those were the initial days –of this culture of hate crimes and impunity on the part of the perpetrators. As these incidents kept rising, the need to decode them, to understand, not particularly to write a book as such, but for my own self, became inevitable.
So, in a way, the subject was such that it became unavoidable. So I thought, why not try to write about it? And it grew into three books. Vaidhanik Galp, and its English translation, Legal Fiction, came out last year.
And Keertigaan is before you now.
I love the way the tense-ambiguous relationship between the two journalists helps in creating the reader’s interest in the narrative in a way that a story only about a Kafakesque “system” wouldn’t have. Also, the use of the ghosts of the dead men and the visions Sanoj gets of their family members also rack the reader’s conscience and bring alive the sordidness buried in statistics. Can you elaborate on why you made these choices as you wrote this book?
Look, a writer employs two kinds of tactics to tell a story—one is cerebral and the other emotional.
If you look at my decision to include ghosts, you will realize that it was a cerebral tactic. I have read Toni Morrison’s Beloved with great admiration in my college days and the great Iraqi writer Hassan Blassim’s stories left a very strong impression on me. And the idea of having the ghosts of the dead must have wormed its way into my consciousness from these sources. I mean, someone is dead, how else do you bring alive their emotions and experiences on the page?
But my decision about the relationship between Sanoj and Sunanda pulling the narrative forward was an emotional one. Without it, the story would not exist. Blunt prose would not have served the purpose of engaging the reader thus.
Another thing that I wanted this relationship to demonstrate was that no matter how indifferent and aloof a person wanted to be, the atmosphere out there, the toxicity would somehow implicate and infect the most intimate of spaces.
When did you start writing this novel? How long did it take you to finish this book? How much research did you do?
In 2014, I had drafted a story on this issue but I never finished it. But in 2016-17, I began tackling this issue systematically once again. I read up all the books that I mention in the credits. Lots of conversations with people. Its effects on individuals, its scale, and the generational impact of horrific violence.
Was there any point when your story got stuck and how did you come out of it?
Yes, I began writing with only one character, Sunanda. She was so strong a character that she did not allow for any compromise in the narration. She was so determined that she would have finished the task and even published the results with X or Y media. But the point is that no media house can have a non-vested approach to this issue. So all of this stalled me for a while.
Then, I found a lead in this confused, derailed, irresponsible and emotionally shattered character of Sanoj. And got a foothold in the story again.
A couple of things I really love about your writing are the sense of place and your facility with the dialects of spoken Hindi. This is not an outsider looking in. This is a person emerging from the very soil and talking to the reader. In this book, when you wrote about Nuh or Saraikela-Kharsawa, or rendered the audio-testimonies in granular dialects, how easy or natural did it feel? Did you travel to these places? Did you do any new research or was it already stored in your grey cells?
I did not do research on places and people as such. Though after finishing the first draft, I certainly had the idea to actually go and talk to the victim’s families. But the prospect was also very distressing and frightening for me. Then the pandemic began, and it was not even possible. But the thing is, in the course of my job I travel extensively. I have traversed the entire Nuh-Mewat-Alwar belt, for example, so much that it is seared in my mind. The cow-shelter posters are something I have seen there and they stayed in my mind and ended up in the book.
As for the dialects, I actually try merely to convey a flavor of it in my book, or it would be too difficult for the reader to understand the whole of it.
You have a demanding full-time job in the private sector. How do you balance the demands of this with the discipline of writing? What is your ideal writing day like?
What can one say about a job except that it is something that a man is forced to do because there is no way to survive otherwise. But one good thing that working in an office has taught me is that a loop has to be closed. A draft has to be finished. Earlier, I was in the habit of not sticking with a story long enough. Now I am more disciplined about keeping the thought process intact. On good days I get up at three am and write till seven or eight am and then go to work.
What do you have to say on the subject of the neglect of Hindi literature?
See, the Hindi language as it has developed in independent India is more of an officially curated language. And the biggest harm has been inflicted by the culture of designated institutional purchases of Hindi books for the express purpose of preserving the language and its literature, which did two things. One, it gave rise to a feeling that nothing more needs to be done beyond it; two, among the readers, it gave rise to the feeling that this patronage is because nothing is good enough in Hindi to stand on its own. It needs this dhakka of official patronage.
So both this official curation of a particular kind of Hindi and a misplaced duty-bound support did more harm to the vibrant potential of the language than good.
A language grows because of the readers and speakers. Even a small European state with a population of two million has more readers in languages like French, German or Polish. And a country with sixty crore Hindi speakers hardly has books coming out in it and books which are read in any comparable manner.
But in a way, this has also set writers like me free. Because if no one is reading Hindi then why not write what I want? Why not dare try things which no one else is touching?
Toni Morrison had said that if you can be tall only when someone else is on their knees, there is a problem. But isn’t our caste-based society built on this very logic? You come from Deoria. When we read in mainstream media that the eastern UP-Bihar belt is prone to a politics of hate because of illiteracy and poverty, do you agree? Please share how diverse communities lived and maintained relations peaceably and in mutual respect in this region.
I agree. Not just Indian society. All societies evolve and develop in order to keep a structure of dominance and subjugation intact, so that the dominant group can derive profits from this exploitation. But societies crumble when the scale and extent of this becomes such that it is beyond endurance.
Whether it is the Jews in Europe or the blacks in America, or in the caste system in India. Whenever there is great inequality in the ownership of resources, some politics of hate can easily gain traction.
But this is also true that within the parameters of inequality and exploitation, people still work out ways to live with some humanity. If not in love, then at least in peace.
But things become dangerous when a new fake narrative is made up and encouraged to keep the structure of exploitation intact. Take the matter of lynching, where videos were used as a tool to create an atmosphere of terror and gloating. An atmosphere of taking sadistic pleasure in the misery and pain of others.
My experiences of growing up in Deoria were very positive. I used to study Urdu in a nearby mosque and that vitalized my hold over the Hindi language.
When do we expect the third book of your trilogy to appear?
I wrote the third book first, as a matter of fact. At least the draft. Which made me realize that exploring other facets of the subject was essential. How individual lives are destroyed, the scale of these incidents. And this led to Vaidhanik Galp and Keertigaan. Which I feel should be read first. Now that they are done I will work on that first draft. Let us see how soon.