Writers on Reading. Part Eighteen, Raghu Karnad.
Collage by Labonie Roy for Soup
Raghu Karnad is a man of many hats - as he puts it, he’s “a millennial after all.” Whether it’s writing a book on his maternal ancestry that was a part of the Indian battalion during the Second World War, or recalling his tryst with dolphins off the coast of Mumbai in a new podcast series, Raghu keeps himself busy.
As a writer, he pushes the boundaries of fiction and non-fiction, traversing between historic and hard-hitting narratives, to humanistic and even familial moments in time. He remembers and reminds us of lesser-known stories through his various projects, especially since he believes “people have two deaths: the first at the end of their lives, when they go away, and the second at the end of the memory of their lives, when all who remember them are gone.”
Here, we speak to Raghu about childhood ambitions, integrity in journalism, his writing routine, and switching between roles in an increasingly restless world.
You seem to have a fascination for maps. Whether it’s in past interviews, your profile photographs, or at the beginning of your debut novel “Farthest Field: An Indian Story of the Second World War,”- maps seem to be a recurring motif. Could you delve a bit into this occurrence?
Good observation. I wish we could do this whole conversation about maps, that would be fun.
I’ve always liked the kinds of book that use maps: adventure stories as a kid, fantasy novels as a teenager, then history books. And video games use maps, too.
Maps stay so resonant because they do two things: they orient you through a story as you’re reading it, and then they capture it for you, once you’re done. In one picture, there is the whole of The Phantom Tollbooth, or The Many-Coloured Land, or Shogun.
Being a writer myself, I find it hard to switch working environments and usually stick to a particular “spot,” while creating. Is it similar for you? If you had one atmospheric must-have synonymous with your working space, what would it be?
Now I’m drawing a map, in my head, of the dozens of places I’ve gone looking for quiet hours to write. Personally, I like a fresh desk anywhere – because of what I call the 'Big White Room’ effect. It’s easier to write when you aren’t surrounded by the clutter of your life; by reminders of other things you could be doing.
This feeling was confirmed for me by Maya Angelou, who told the Paris Review about how she likes to write in hotel rooms: “I insist that all things are taken off the walls. I don’t want anything in there. I go into the room and feel as if all my beliefs are suspended.”
Do you have a routine before you sit to write? Does your writing process/ methods/ and research differ from when you’re writing a book versus shorter forms of writing that you engage in?
What I have is three elements of my ideal routine, which I’m always trying to combine for a hat-trick. Here they are. Wake and freshen up without looking at your phone. You can leave it with your flatmate or partner – someone to check and assure you there’s no emergency anywhere.
Fifteen minutes of meditation. It sounds kooky, but it’s only when you do it that you realise what a hot popcorn-machine of noise your head is. Then start writing, pen on paper, before you move to your laptop.
One of the lines that really stood out for me from the “Farthest Field: An Indian Story of the Second World War,” was “We only take a First World View of the Second World War, as if the Third World had slept.” Do you think we’re at a crucial time in history where the narrative has found its way back to us?
I can only really speak for myself. But what I’ve loved rediscovering about WW2 is that all our popular images of it – all our received ideas about the modern world’s pivotal conflict – are propaganda for Western imperialism. I’m ninety per cent serious.
What this propaganda hides is that WW2 was not a rupture, a break from a peaceful world order. Rather it was the logical climax of colonialism, when it was turned by Europeans back on themselves. So an Indian, or a West African, or Arab angle on WW2 isn’t a sidelight. Without them, we’re just watching this endless, ridiculous colonial propaganda reel.
Could you talk about what prompted you to join the founding team of the Wire?
I joined the Wire team just a couple of weeks before its launch – it was four people, and I was the fifth. This was the interval between finishing the manuscript of Farthest Field, and the book going to print (when, for instance, I was working with the cartographer on the book's maps).
So my early role in the Wire was not in its conception, but in helping it lift off. Which meant many, many raw, unpaid editing hours. Later, I did get to conceive and create new projects like LiveWire, the edition for younger people, which has been great. In August, LiveWire just published its 2,000th writer.
Did you envision it to always be what it is today?
The Wire has become what it was meant to be: a journalistic operation that is not professionally compromised – and not afraid. But its high profile today is a function of how badly corrupted or scared most other news media have become. I’d never wanted to envision that.
Since you’ve had a glimpse into the worlds of being a journalist as well as an author, do you find yourself partial to one?
Many of the cliches are true. Writing a book is a solitary slog that puts your mind on a long and rewarding journey of discovery. Working as a journalist is an energetic, social, anxious business that sends you off to physically grapple with places you’ll never otherwise go.
Doing both in one life has its trade-offs, I know, but choosing one would split me down the middle.
The author and his book shelf.
What prompted you to start your recent podcast series “Marine Lines: Mumbai’s Hidden Worlds, from the Suburbs to the Sea?”
I was actually invited by the producers to host Marine Lines – and I liked the idea, since I’m quite curious about urban ecology, especially Mumbai’s. Bombay has a funny relationship to the sea, which is very prized and cherished as a view, as a scenic backdrop, but is completely ignored as an ecosystem filled with life. Fishing communities remember this about the sea, of course, but we ignore them as well.
Especially through the pandemic, there has been a definitive rise in an interest for podcasts, audio books, and even apps like Clubhouse that are specific to host conversation. What do you think has nudged this trend? Has “reading,” become too much for our quick-info generation?
Yes, audio has definitely swept into my life in these two years, and I’ve accepted some recent projects to learn more about it.
I don’t actually think audio is replacing reading – rather, it’s replacing video. Four years ago, global media was all about the ‘pivot to video’, but I think we’re adapting to survive. We are so deeply screen-sick, dying to rest our eyes. Audio actually feels like a shift back toward reading – it is being read to. And you can do it while washing the dishes.
Three favourite books about Mumbai that anyone who romanticises the city must read.
Not a lot of people remember Trying to Grow by Firdaus Kanga, but we should! It has a disabled protagonist with a total openness about his libido and raunchy imagination. If I remember right, it’s delightful and very funny.
Everyone remembers Beyond the Beautiful Forevers, but I have to hail it here because it is just such an accomplishment in story-telling.
For my third, I’ll cheat: The whole archive of Time Out Mumbai. Under Naresh Fernandes, it was one of the best magazines in the last generation of great magazines in India. It helped draw me into the profession. It’s a crime that this archive – this amazingly rich chronicle of Mumbai through a special decade – has been deleted off the web. It’s as if someone ‘deleted’ The Moor’s Last Sigh, and nobody could ever read it again.
You seem to be somebody who is constantly dipping his toes into various mediums of conversation. Is there anything interesting you’re working on at the moment?
Right now, I’m leaning on a film-maker friend to make our dream documentary, which is about – in two words – the sky. And there’s a book I badly want to write next year. But loose lips sink ships.
The last three years have been unusual. It feels like there’s a new medium to consume every few months – and I’ve just been too curious to resist new opportunities. I guess I’m a millennial after all. Apart from writing essays and reporting, I’ve made video essays, worked on projects in audio, done stuff on Netflix, written a pitch for an OTT show. It’s exciting, to do many different things – but to do just one thing is the dream.
As a child, who was your favourite fictional character from a novel? What about the character intrigued you?
The figure that just popped into mind is Ford Prefect, from the Hitchhiker's Guide, which I read over and over in my teens. He’s a kind of rogue-ish sidekick, probably “chaotic good” in alignment, very savvy about the galaxy but not always smart with his decisions. He’s not a hero. His character is always halfway in the thick of things, in bad drunken trouble, and halfway aloof, an observer.
Many of those things are what aspiring reporters aspire to be like. And Ford is a reporter too, of course, for the Guide – obviously the best publication to work for in the whole galaxy.
Do you have an ideal spot to read?
My ideal place to read is an aisle seat on a long flight, ideally crossing an ocean. Until we learn to fight back, flights are our last refuge from the distraction-tech industry. We literally have to fly above the earth to escape it, and regain the pleasure of simple focus.
Still I do read quite a lot, for work and for relaxation, and anywhere feels ideal if I’m into it. I’ve nearly killed myself a few times, thinking I could keep reading while I crossed a road somewhere in Delhi.
Do you have a favourite bookstore in any of the cities you might have lived in?
All of them? Any good city needs a few different kinds: an expansive one that contains everything (Blossoms in Bangalore, or Bahri Sons in Delhi); a quiet place where they know you and have tasteful suggestions (The Bookshop in Delhi); an indie place advancing new and diverse voices (Champaca in Bangalore); a hidden place that’s fun just to discover (Trilogy, in Bombay); a neighbourhood bookshop (Nagasri, in Bangalore); a radical bookshop (LeftWord, Delhi) – and also a second-hand bookshop; a used-books place; a good magazine store. There you go, another map.
As interviewed by Zahra Amiruddin