Anirban Roy’s journey began in 2009, with Avijit Ghosh’s first book, “Bandicoots in the Moonlight”. Now, with “Up Campus, Down Campus” (Speaking Tiger), Ghosh uproots his protagonist from the easy familiarity of small town Bihar to the “alternative planet” of JNU in the late 80s.
Excerpts from an interview:
In the introduction to the book, you talk about how it was difficult to find a publisher for the book, and how its relevance was questioned by publishers, who wondered at why anyone would like to read about JNU of the 80s…
Yes. I see the book as a work of fiction, but it is relevant probably because you always need to know your past to understand your present. To understand where JNU has arrived today, it is important to understand JNU in perspective, and see the way things were. To that extent, this book gives you a kind of peep show to the world of the JNU of late 80s and 90s.
I am not saying it is totally representative of its time; as I’ve said in the book too, every JNU is a version in the head of the person who lived the experience, it is the JNU that one went to. Even as fiction, this is the JNU that is the world of Anirban Roy.
You introduced Anirban Roy in your first book. Tell us about this one, and the idea that sparked it.
In my first book, ‘Bandicoots in the Moonlight’, Anirban was the protagonist and the book was set in ‘70s Bihar. After having written that novel, I wanted to do this, to sort of see the way his trajectory plays out. As I’ve said in the book also, Anirban isn’t me, but there are parts of me that find their way into him through observations.
Since you share so much with Anirban, in terms of having lived in small town Bihar, and studied in JNU, how was it, to create fiction with what are your own experiences? How difficult was it, to keep the book from becoming too much like an autobiography?
There is a category that people often talk about, called faction, which reads like facts but feels like fiction — this book is a bit like that. I deliberately wanted this to be a work of fiction, because fiction allows you to explore things also from realm of imagination; to go beyond observation and make comments, etc. To that extent, writing a fiction helped me travel to places as a writer which probably would have been not possible in non-fiction, where you would have to stay the course.
In my first book I had written that it’s a combination of what I have seen, observed, lived, and imagined. With this novel also I’ve followed those basic things. Some characters are fictional, and some of them are, in a sense, not based on one person, but individuals created out of four-five different influences.
And what about the other protagonist of the book, JNU itself. It is, in a sense, the biggest character you’ve written. With all the nostalgia that comes with looking back, was keeping yourself from romanticising the past a concern?
Yes, JNU is the central character of the book. I didn’t want to romanticise it, but at the same time, JNU is an enduring romance of every party who has been there. It’s quite fascinating that if you reach out to people who went there in the 70s, 80s 90s, they still have so much of JNU in them, there is still nostalgia and fondness, and they take so much pride in it. JNU leaves a huge amount of impression on most of us. As I’ve written in my introduction, JNU reordered me; I think it shapes everybody, especially if you have spent a significant amount of time in that university. So much so that whatever you do in your life, you do it from a certain kind of looking glass that JNU gives you.
Your book comes soon after the recent events at JNU, which brought a lot of attention and scrutiny to the university. Was that a factor, or a trigger, for the book?
I have never written a book thinking whether it will sell or not. I just think it’s a wrong way to approach a book. You write something because you want to write it. I believe if you write something with a certain level of honesty, it comes across as a good work, whether it sells or not. I always say that books have horoscopes. They may or may not work. But as a writer I can’t look at something from that point of view. I wrote ‘Cinema Bhojpuri’ knowing that it didn’t have any potential in terms of sales, few people bought it. But I’m happy I did it. Similarly, I wanted to write this book. I started it in February 2013, and I finished it sometime just before the Kanhaiya Kumar incident. In fact, this is why no one wanted to buy this book. People said, who’s going to want to read about the 80s JNU right now?
So keeping the present out of the book was a deliberate move?
My focus was to live the times I was writing. I wanted to relive the 80s and early 90s when I was writing it, and keep the present out. Anirban’s story is the story of so many boys and girls who come from smaller towns and how they negotiate an international university that is so modern, so cosmopolitan, especially in terms of the ideas, and how they negotiate life here. That’s what I wanted to concentrate on.
