Every life is the wreck of a perfect dream. In the case of Vishwanath, the protagonist of Delhi-based author Amitabha Bagchi’s fourth novel, Half the Night is Gone (Juggernaut Books, 2018), it is the same. Spurred by the loss of his son in a car accident, Vishwanath, a Hindi novelist, sets out to write — after a long dry spell — a novel set in the household of a wealthy businessman, Lala Motichand, in the early 20th century, revolving around his three sons — “self-confident Dinanath, the true heir to Motichand’s mercantile temperament; lonely Diwanchand, uninterested in business and steeped in poetry; and illegitimate Makhan Lal, a Marx-loving schoolteacher relegated to the periphery of his father s life.” As he reflects on his life, Vishwanath, the son of a cook for a rich sethji, also tells the story of the lala’s personal servant, Mange Ram, and his son, Parsadi. With the demise of the lala looming in the near future, the story puts the spotlight on the notions of fatherhood and brotherhood, love and loyalty, and poetry. As the event of his demise unfolds in the devotional landscape of Ramcharitmanas, Vishwanath finds himself seeking to make sense of an emerging new India in the first half of the 20th century. 

Reading the novel, which won the 2019 DSC Prize for South Asian Literature, in the early 21st century, you’d see how well the echoes of its ideas on religion, literature and society speak to our fractured times. Bagchi, by telling his story through the voice of a novelist, is able to achieve something utterly remarkable in the novel, which brims with life, even though it’s steeped in mortality. Lurking behind the acts of piety woven into the narrative, there is a great deal of poetry — couplets that capture life in a manner only they can. The writer of Bagchi’s imagination is a character who wins your heart early on in the novel by the honest assessment of his life, and his perception of the world around him. In a 2008 letter, with which the novel begins, he writes to his publisher, Sarvesh Kumar of SK Prakashan, he talks about how hard he tried to “capture the entirety of our lives and this world that seduces us with all it can offer”! He writes: “How easily, how routinely, our lives shrink. How easily do they dwindle and diminish. This process of diminution, this deflation, we do not even notice it until it reaches its logical conclusion. And that conclusion is reached in the moment when we are no longer able to notice it.” In the same letter, in which he terms a writer of fiction as a “professional liar”, he writes: “My attempts to convince myself that I have done something worthwhile with my life are fruitless. The arguments don’t ring true. The writing doesn’t ring true. The praise doesn’t ring true. Nothing rings true.”

As a writer, Bagchi has been interested in the lives of individuals caught in the everyday rigmarole of domesticity. He seems to be quite at home while writing about the householders. Like his previous three, this novel, too, brings that element to the fore. His characters seem to scratch the surface of realities around them in order to arrive at the meaning of their lives. Bagchi’s characters seem to be engaged in some sort of conversation with themselves. In an interview, he says that he tries “to enter into the character’s consciousness, try to feel what they feel and guess how they will respond to situations as they arise”. Characters generally appear to him first as images or as located histories. “Sometimes, I feel as if that first inkling of the character contains most of the character’s aspects already and the further fleshing out is more like a revelation of the possibilities rather than a creation,” says Bagchi, adding that the process of entering the skin of a fictional individual is one of the fundamental aspects of fiction writing. “In fact, you could say that is one of the constitutive aspects of fiction writing,” he says. 

Shireen Quadri: In Half the Night is Gone, did you set out to write the “Great Indian Novel”? How much of the novel is shaped by your appreciation of the writing tradition in India, especially those in languages other than English?

Amitabha Bagchi: It was not at all my intention to write the “Great Indian Novel”, nor do I believe that such a thing should be attempted. I started out with the idea of two brothers and with an image of a pujari who later transformed into a kathavachak, i.e., an expounder of the Ramcharitmanas of Tulsidas. As I went along, many of the things I had been reading over the last decade or two kept finding their way in. At first, it feels like serendipity that something you once read somewhere appears to be an apt reference for a particular point in the book. Then, with hindsight, you realise that the work takes a particular shape so that it can accommodate the things you have read that resonate most with you. So, I think it is correct to say that the project was shaped by my readings over the last so many years, most of which happened to be of Hindi prose and Urdu poetry.

Shireen Quadri: There are two parallel narratives: the generational history of a patriarchal family of lalas, and the letters written by writer Vishwanath looking back at his life in his sunset years to the girlfriend of his son, and his publisher. Was this parallel aimed at capturing India’s journey to modernity even as it continues to hark back to traditions? 

Amitabha Bagchi: Whether this parallel captures India’s journey or not is for readers and critics to decide. I don’t think that works that set out to achieve such goals are likely to succeed as novels. My own reason for this parallel structure was different, more practical in some sense. When I started to read the Ramcharitmanas and thought about making it a leitmotif of the book, I felt daunted at the prospect. I felt, rightly or wrongly, that an English-speaking person such as myself couldn’t lay claim to such a text. So I borrowed the idea of the novelist writing a novel from Amritlal Nagar who used this device in Amrit aur Vish. The novelist Vishwanath came to me that way. Being a Hindi novelist, I felt, he could easily claim a major work of the Hindi canon in a way that I couldn’t. This was the practical reason for the parallel structure. Once I had taken it on, it opened many possibilities for me, possibilities that I later realised I had been wanting to explore. But those were writer’s possibilities. What interpretive possibilities it opens up is for readers and critics to say.

Shireen Quadri: Night and dawn as metaphors seem to be vital to the story. Many earlier writers have used this to compelling effect. Do you think these metaphors are relevant to the India story?

Amitabha Bagchi: I don’t think of concepts like “India story” when I am writing. I am not sure I even know if there is a single story or collection of stories that can be called the “India story.” Definitely, it is true that at key moments in the history of our republic the metaphors of night and dawn have been deployed. Faiz’s famous nazm, Subh-e-Azaadi that talks about a “shab gazida seher” (night-bitten dawn) comes to mind. But it is not my way to approach the narratives of the nation as directly as Faiz did at that time or as many others have done subsequently. The metaphors of night and dawn have many valencies, many modes of creating meaning. That’s what makes them so powerful. If you as a reader can connect them to the narratives of the Indian nation then that valency is also inherent in them. 

Shireen Quadri: Tell us something about your approach to characterisation. Most of your characters seem to have jumped into the pages from real life? What does fiction writing mean to you?

Amitabha Bagchi: My approach to characterisation is probably the same as that of other writers: you try to enter into the character’s consciousness, try to feel what they feel and guess how they will respond to situations as they arise. Characters generally appear to me first as images or as located histories. Sometimes, I feel as if that first inkling of the character contains most of the character’s aspects already and the further fleshing out is more like a revelation of the possibilities rather than a creation.

It’s interesting that you paired your question about characterisation with the more general question of what fiction writing means to me. I do feel that the process of entering the skin of a fictional individual is probably one of the fundamental aspects of fiction writing, in fact, you could say that is one of the constitutive aspects of fiction writing.

Shireen Quadri: How do you look at writings in English by some of your contemporaries in India or South Asia? Are there subjects you wish were more highlighted in their writings?

Amitabha Bagchi: If there’s one prescription I believe in it’s that one shouldn’t write by prescription. I wouldn’t like it if someone told me to write more of this or less of that so I don’t hold opinions about what my South Asian contemporaries should or shouldn’t do. In fact, I view it the other way: I see what engages my contemporaries and I try to understand what it says about the times they, and I, live in.

Shireen Quadri: Do you think awards like DSC Prize for South Asian Literature are taking the South Asian literature under a global gaze?

Amitabha Bagchi: The effort seems to be in that direction and that’s a good thing. However, I feel that the global gaze shouldn’t be given too much importance. Writing in English in India, I feel like I am suspended in this intermediate state, a kind of Trishanku state, between the global (which normally means Western) and the local (which normally means writing in Indian languages apart from English). Another metaphor comes to mind: dhobi ka kutta na ghar ka na ghat ka (hard to translate to let’s just say that it’s a crude way of saying “neither here nor there.”) Both directions are important but at the end of the day, it is our primary audience that we must be true to.

For writers, there are two very different things we seek from an audience. One is the money and the prestige that comes with widespread recognition. For these things, Indian English writers look to what you have called the global market. The other kind of thing is a connection, a kind of recognition, and where we seek that depends on the book. Earlier, I wrote a novel called This Place (2013) which was set in America and for that I sought that connection with a US readership but didn’t get it. For Half the Night is Gone, I feel I have been able to connect with English readers in South Asia but what I have been hankering after is the Hindi audience more than the global audience. A translation is ready but it still hasn’t found a publisher. Perhaps the search for connection is destined to remain incomplete. If the recognition the DSC Prize has already conferred on me helps my book find new readerships within South Asia and outside, then I will be very grateful for it. 

Editor‘s Note: This story was updated on December 20, 2019