There has been much talk around Anjum Hasan’s latest novel, The Cosmopolitans. The huge turnout at The Hindu Lit For Life launch of the book, in association with Penguin Books, at Galleryske was a testimony to that. Anjum, whose earlier books include Lunatic in my Head and Neti Neti , was in conversation with Archana Nathan (journalist at The Hindu) , and Nisha Susan (writer and editor of The Ladies Finger) .
The Cosmopolitans revolves around the unconventional life of 53-year-old Qayenaat, a lover of art. To Archana’s question as to why she chose to locate the book in the art world, Anjum said: “I set it in the art world, which is largely the world of the imagination. But I didn’t see myself writing a novel about art, but about a character who is a rasika. It is a kind of meditative novel without any answers.”
Archana observed: “It is not easy to categorise Qayenaat. She is strong willed, yet indecisive, impulsive, yet deeply conscious of herself.” Anjum said she decided to peg all these ideas onto an older character, adding she didn’t want Qayenaat to be a cut-and-dry character. “I wanted her to be older, experienced, but at the same time someone who can also take risks.”
Anjum said that it is not as if she deliberately set out to write about an older woman. Nisha interjected saying: “I saw Qayenaat as a cosmopolitan who also has links with Nehruvian India. She is a dam builder’s daughter. It can’t get more specific than that. It would have been difficult for a younger person to observe changes in the city and the art world.”
Anjum said Qayenaat belongs to a generation that is ambivalent to the Nehruvian dream. “Not in a technical sense, but in a personal way, since her father was invested in that dream. There are also younger characters, one of them she imagines to be in love with. Qayenaat sees herself as in-between, not of the MTV generation and not part of the Nehruvian generation. Perhaps she’s cosmopolitan.”
To Archana’s comment that Qayenaat also engages with questions of performance, such as how does the dancer become the dance, adding that such questions often do not find a place in fiction. Anjum said: “A novel is a wonderful place to explore polemical questions and the ability to hold two completely opposing views. There are other characters who disagree with Qayenaat. In a novel, you don’t have to really provide answers.”
Archana said she was intrigued by the kind of maps each of the characters draw, and how the construction of these maps makes us view these cities. “If you read fiction of natives written by natives, for example Proust, Thomas Hardy, Orhan Pamuk. They still write about their places as if they are seeing it new. For me, it is important to map the place where the character is in. Details such as which street did the auto take and which place she stepped in, matter.”
Nisha observed that the line in the novel, “Being a modern Indian is a very hard thing,” in a way, makes The Cosmpolitans a big Indian book.
But Anjum said she is hesitant to call it an Indian book at all. “It’s hard to write about contemporary India in fiction.”
