A Conversation with Aatish Taseer.
Photo: Dawn
Dear Mr Taseer,
From contemporary Benaras to New York City, you’ve taken a very close look at culture, influenced it and presented it to the world in a way which is both evocative and original. Personal in nature and very strong in character, your writing is loved by millions of people around the world. You’ve written on politics, fashion and culture, made films and challenged yourself professionally in unprecedented ways. Your work has impacted political and cultural institutions and stared at people in power fearlessly.
Thank you, Thank you so much for doing this interview.
Q. How’s New York? Did you find the taste of Chandani Chowk’s Nihari in its Boroughs yet?
New York is great. Funny you ask about Nihari. I have learnt to make it through the lockdown. Not quite Chandani Chowk level yet, but definitely a work in progress.
Aatish Taseer, Photographed in Varanasi, India for Al-Jazeera’s “In search for India’s Soul: FromMughals to Modi.”
Q. In your recent film for Al-Jazeera, “In search of India’s soul: From Mughals to Modi”, you have talked about Urdu and its influences on India’s unique culture and traditions. Growing up, how has the language inspired the way you think about the world?
It’s not so much about any specific language. But language itself, especially in India, has acted as a metaphor for history, a way to unlock the different layers of the Indian past. I said to myself, after Stranger to History, that I would make a trifecta of Sanskrit, Urdu and English. That is what I was after, a way to make a whole of history through language.
Q. Sadat Hassan Manto’s stories have presented a beautiful understanding of partition that transcended nationalism at the time. How challenging was translating his prose, without compromising on the vivid nature of his style of writing?
It was hard at first, because I was sentimentally attached to the sound of Urdu. But when one translates, one has to be faithful to the language one is translating into, and fairly strict with the language one is translating out of. It is one’s reader that one has to think of, not the person who can read the literature in the original.
Q. You recently did a profile of Marc Jacobs for the New York Times. How different was this from your past projects? How would you define fashion?
I loved doing that piece. It opened up a whole new side of my personality. And it was a move away from Indian material. I was less interested in the fashion than I was interested in Marc’s process and upbringing on the UWS (where I live). I thought I could see in the way Marc worked a shade of how writers work. There’s always something powerful about that.
Q. How are Zinc and Ryan? Is it hard for you guys to socially distance during the pandemic!
They’re well. We’re driving to Tennessee in a few hours and then spending the New Year in Tulum. March and April in the city were hard, but things are easier now.
Q. You often talk about the convulsive disruption in Indian politics since the rise of the authoritarian and Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janta Party, or the BJP. In fact, From Latin America to Europe and even The United States, many countries today are facing majoritarianism and far-right populism at its very core. Do you think we can stop this? Where do we go from here?
It will run itself out. The appeal of that kind of politics is already beginning to fade here, and in the UK. In India, the effects will be more long lasting. We’ve lost a generation, which is a very sad thing. It will be twenty years before India finds its way again and who knows what bad ideas would have taken hold by then.
Q. Looking back, what would you say to your 22-year-old self?
I would want to be less sentimental about my attachments. More dispassionate. I felt I lost a lot of time and energy, writing with India in my heart. It was an utter of waste. India doesn’t care about anything except its tribalisms and to the West, the passion behind the work is inscrutable, so yes, I’d have liked to move on sooner.
Q. Anything you want to say to the readers of this interview.
ātmanam viddhi. There is nothing else.
