“As A Writer You Can't Be Self Indulgent”

Even though it may seem some what unexpected coming from a versatile, veteran, Bastiat Prize (2007) winning journalist and blogger, Amit Varma insists that he has always been a novelist first. The reason why his debut in the world of literary fiction My Friend Sancho (Hachette India, 2009), makes its appearance lies in the sloth that comes with “Bengali genes”, Varma rationalises. Yet in keeping with his profession, the author’s first novel traces the coming of age of a young journalist within the multilayered matrix that Mumbai/Bombay represents. In an interview with Alokita Datta, Varma talks about the ideas that led to the development of the novel, his take on journalism , the blog culture and how he is and isn’t like the protagonist of his novel.

How did you begin writing My Friend Sancho? Was there a point of inspiration?
I wrote the novel last year. I have always wanted to be a novelist and gradually at some point gave up my career in journalism and before it in television and advertising. My last proper job was as the managing editor of Cricinfo. I gave that up to essentially focus on my writing. But I got sidelined when I started writing a weekly edit page column for Mint and I also freelanced for the Wall Street Journal. Sometime in the beginning of last year I realised that this was not something I really wanted to do and I was just procrastinating (having some Bengali genes!) and taking too much time over getting to start writing.

When I started writing, I just began with the idea of a character (the protagonist Abir) and wanted to explore how he changes when he is taken out of his comfort zone, over the course the events that take place. The book is fundamentally a love story between him and the girl, Muneeza, he meets but because they come from such different backgrounds and the unusual circumstances under which their meeting takes place, Abir re-examines a lot of things about himself. That is what I found interesting.

The book is primarily a love story but there is an undercurrent of satire against issues such as class divides and religious stereotypes, among others which are tackled at a subtle level. They aren’t incidental to the narrative, are they?
These issues aren’t incidental but at the same time they are also not central to the theme of the novel. Certainly part of the conflict in the book is brought about by the class differences between the two characters. If you really think about it, Abir and Muneeza come from two different Indias. They live in the same city but belong to contrasting Bombays. While there are a lot of issues such as law and order in the backdrop of the story; I don’t examine any of them overtly.

There is bound to be an obvious comparison between you and your protagonist as you are both/have been journalists and the books revolves around Abir’s experiences in that area, to a large extent. Did you think of yourself when you were sketching Abir’s character or try and dissociate yourself from him?
The interesting thing is that when I had written the first few pages of this novel, I was quite surprised because I realised that this wasn’t my writing voice at all. The character is very different from me and since the novel is in first person narrative I had to get into the skin of the character and think like him. Even as a journalist I have never been in the newsroom. I have reported on different things such as cricket and have been a columnist but not the kind of crime reporting Abir does. But there are a lot of elements of myself that are there in him, for instance, Abir’s sense of humour is similar to what you will find in my blog. Otherwise, he is a different person and it was in fact challenging to write the whole book in the voice of someone else.

So, how would you describe Abir’s personality?
At the start, he is a cynical, smart Alec dude who chills out and doesn’t take things very seriously which is established in the beginning with the story he is writing, about a man who died trying to kill a mosquito that landed on his stomach. Through the course of the book he becomes a bit more serious, not necessarily about life but himself and journalism. That is something that happens at a very subtle level; I didn’t want to spell it out in the novel. In the last chapter for instance, Abir asks himself the question — would I now look for a blood stain on a dead man’s shirt — which indicates that the way he looks at the world has changed. I think all good literature begins with a character at a certain point in time, a particular state of mind and how he changes through the course of the novel as a result of a conflict.