Bihari angst in downtown LA

Q&A: Amitava Kumar

Amitava Kumar has authored several works of non-fiction (including Bombay-London-New York and Husband of a Fanatic) and has edited five anthologies. His first novel, Home Products, is being published by Picador in January

Tell us something about Home Products.

Okay. This is the first time I'm doing a synopsis, so let me take a deep breath.

A Bihari journalist is asked to write a story about a small-time poetess who's been killed by her politician lover. Instead, the journo narrates the story of his cousin who is in prison for running an Internet porn parlour but who is dreaming of making a film when he comes out. The actor who will star in that film is his old school-friend from Bettiah, a man who is now big in Bollywood.

You specialise in essays and personal-experience pieces. What creative leap did you have to make to write a full work of fiction?

Actually, I began this book as non-fiction but then found I wanted to add more layers. For a long time, while rewriting the book, I thought fiction meant that one needed to add dramatic details to what had already been collected through travel and research. What I learnt, however, is that writing fiction is more about taking things away and letting the silence stand.

As an academic are you over-conscious of your own primary writing?

In writing, my conscious choice has been to go in the other direction: to admit incorrectness. To make space for faults, to make mistakes. And, at times, even cultivate perversity.

Do you find blogging (at http://amitavakumar.blogsome.com/) helps you get a regular stream of feedback?

No, I don't have a large volume of online readers. What has happened instead is that blogging has given me an opportunity to read other blogs "" it's a sort of pressure I feel, that one must check out what others are saying "" and that gives me a lot of feedback about the world at large.

How much time do you spend in India?

I visit once or twice each year but it isn't enough. What I miss is the participation in the changes taking place in the only country I know well enough to care about.

What are you working on now?

Twenty years ago I stepped into a plane for the first time and travelled to America to study. I have written a bit about the experience in Bombay-London-New York. But there is so much else to write about a more marginal experience, about being a Bihari in a place like New York or Los Angeles.

A superficial part of that is dreaming of snow, and white women, and cream puffs. But there is a more profound side to it. The part about working through newness, nostalgia, grief, age, model minority status, even those things that in bad Bollywood productions get called "Indian soul, American dream".