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IN I walk into the drawing room of his cosy apartment in a corner of Lutyens’ Delhi and fnd my writer sitting on a royal blue velveteen armchair. Surrounded by old- world furniture and contemporary art, the juxtaposition of what was and what is, ft- tingly, becomes our mise-en-scène. Aatish Taseer is ready with his most ambitious novel yet, The Way Things Were—a saga set in Delhi that looks back in order to ana- lyse the present. Since 2008, with the publication of the translation of Saadat Hasan Manto’s short Istories from the original Urdu, Manto: Se- lected Stories, he’s produced a book almost every year. Stranger To History (2009), part-memoir-part-travelogue, tracked his relationship with Islam and his estranged father, the Pakistani politician and busi- nessman Salmaan Taseer. His fction de- but, The Temple-Goers (2010), was short- listed for the Costa First Novel Award. His second, a collection of novellas, Noon (2011), further explored the boy-in-search- of-his-father theme, in the context of an emerging Pakistan. His writing so far can be labelled as autobiographical fction, a selfe-style school of writing that is a vi- brant thing of our times. Taseer places himself within a contemporary tradition that stretches from “Karl Ove Knausgaard in Norway to Ben Lerner in New York.” PAST, FORWARD While his latest novel carries on in this style, it deviates into a larger treatise on BOOKS the relationship between the past and pre- sent, between history and culture. Taseer tells the story of a family affected by the political upheavals of the 1984 riots, right up to the coming in of the Modi sarkar. It is The time simultaneously a love letter to Sanskrit For Taseer, learning and the disregarded ideas of classical India. Sanskrit was a “It all began in 2008, when I started learn- stepping stone to ing Sanskrit. I consider that the most im- this novel traveller portant aspect of my personal and intellec- tual growth. That brought me to a point Publishers are calling it his where I could write this novel.” magnum opus. As he readies for Taseer began learning the language as a pri- vate student in Oxford, in an effort to realise the release of his most ambitious his roots. “I remember feeling this incredible novel yet, AATISH TASEER leaves shame of living in a country with these big liter- ary traditions that I was ignorant about,” he the comfort of the first-person recalls. “I couldn’t help but feel that if India narrative to tell the story of a family were to project this cultural inheritance, not in READ AN EXCERPT FROM a crude weaponised manner but in all its AATISH TASEER’S NEW afected by the 1984 riots. BOOK, ONLY ON sophistication, it could resolve some of the anx- By SHAHNAZ SIGANPORIA ieties of colonisation.” While this novel is a paean to the classical, > KUMAR JAIN MANOJ 136 VOGUE INDIA NOVEMBER 2014 www.vogue.in IN “You often it also confronts India’s more recent history. ther-son relationship in this novel deviates feel like India With the 1984 anti-Sikh riots at its centre, Ta- from Taseer’s own. Instead, it is inspired by a forgets. But the seer taps into his maternal heritage (his moth- friend whose father died abroad, who had to er, journalist Tavleen Singh, is Sikh). “You of- deal with the logistics of bringing the body back past doesn’t go ten feel like India forgets. But the past doesn’t and arranging the funeral. “He told me that he quiet unless you go quiet unless you confront it.” In the book, was in a daze throughout, and all he wanted to confront it” Taseer observes with great sensitivity the per- do was party. There was this sadness coupled secution faced by the community and its after- with a sense of relief. Every time I was lost or —AATISH TASEER math on individual lives. unsure of how my story would go, I would come back to this feeling and it got me back on track.” SONS AND FATHERS Allthough Taseer departs from his usual Even though the story had been brewing in him style in this novel, he sticks to what’s closest to for a while, it took years before he could actu- him, be it his love for Sanskrit or his Delhi ally write it. “After my father died (Salmaan drawing room set; creating a slice of his privi- was assassinated in 2011 by his own security leged life but set against a sprawling landscape. guard) I just couldn’t get myself to write.” Refl ective of a particular disillusionment with For him, writing is neither therapeutic nor contemporary India, the four-book-old writer is cathartic. He sees it as too active and diffi cult fast becoming a discerning voice of his genera- an activity. It was only after his period of tion. With prose that glitters and a story that is mourning that he was able to write again. “By as precise as it is ambitious, The Way Things the summer of 2013, I found that relationship Were is defi nitely a coming of age of sorts in his between the tension of the past and present, body of work. Is it his ‘magnum opus’, as his and I began writing furiously. I have never felt publishers have pitched it? That might be un- this possessed by a book before.” derestimating the 34-year-old. ■ Understandably, the novel is about— The Way Things Were by Aatish Taseer will be although not just about—a son coming to terms published by Picador/Pan Macmillan India with the death of his father. However, the fa- next month BOOKS ___________ THE LAST WILD THINGS SESSION BY Two new photo books capture some of the most JESSE FROHMAN That Nirvana colourful lives in music frontman Kurt Cobain had a colourful life, A Life On Record ___________ as short as it was, is will be published by A LIFE ON common knowledge. Rizzoli this month RECORD BY Photographer Jesse MARIANNE Frohman captures FAITHFULL the moody musician The original wild child of as he fools around the 60s, British songstress with the lens in his Marianne Faithfull still now-iconic white knows how to rock. At 67, The Last Session is Jackie O glasses. she released a new album, out this month by Frohman’s latest book Give My Love To London, Thames & Hudson features never-seen- where she collaborates before images of with the likes of Nick Cave Cobain, shot months and Roger Waters. Now, before his death. she’s ready with a new Two decades on, the book—a photographic cof ee table photo memoir featuring a book brings alive foreward by Frohman’s photoshoot Salman Rushdie that took place in and photos of November 1993, for the artiste with which the frontman everyone from showed up three former boyfriend hours late. It was worth Mick Jagger to the wait, after all. model Kate Moss. WORDS: MEGHA MAHINDRU 138 VOGUE INDIA NOVEMBER 2014 www.vogue.in.

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