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India Booked | The Climate Story
109 Plays3 years ago
In this episode of India Booked, host Ayushi Mona talks to Rajat Chaudhuri about 'The Butterfly Effect', on how his work as a climate activist is reflected in his fiction, the necessity of "enveloping scientific ideas in a story" to make it more accessible, the interconnected roles of technology, politics, public health and the environment, especially in India, and more. Listen in for a scathing yet succint breakdown of how consumption and corporate lobbies work, and the role activism can play in correcting injustice. The Butterfly Effect reveals a grim picture of humanity, it brings to life an eco-dystopian story revolving around the threats of technology and genetically modified crops. It goes on to show the disastrous circumstances that may befall humanity when scientific experiments go horribly wrong. Humans are thus pushed into a bottomless pit of dystopia and dejection; and with the theme of a pandemic running through the narrative, it is a timely adventure story to watch out for.
It simultaneously addresses classism, capitalism, extreme poverty and inequity, as well as the rise of autocracy (none of which is unimaginable or restricted to the pages today).
Recommended
Transcript
One India, Many Voices
00:00:11
Speaker
One India, many voices. India is not one nation. Imagine as a nation state for sure, the very multitude of unique voices and situations and cultures and languages makes India impossible to categorize, classify or bind in the boundaries of simplistic definitions.
00:00:32
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Of course, India is imagined uniquely through economic, social, cultural, political and geographic lenses. But
Welcome to India Booked
00:00:40
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the diversity of the extent of imaginations as well as the plurality in the individuals imagining it is breathtaking. This is India Boat, a podcast where we delve into the lives of Indians through caste, cultures, religions, groups.
00:00:58
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counter-cultures, genders, faiths, beliefs, laws and we use the voices of its authors and literary works to bring it to life.
00:01:12
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Hello everyone, this is Aayushi Mona. I'm your host on India Booked, a podcast where we lean into the idea of India through its literature.
Meet Rajat Chaudhary
00:01:22
Speaker
Today I have with me Rajat Chaudhary. Rajat is a bilingual author. He's a translator. And most importantly, for the purpose of today's discussion, a climate change activist. He's published novels, short story collections, translation, and has edited the science fiction anthology.
00:01:39
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His most recent work of fiction which is the Butterfly Effect we are discussing today actually was listed by Book Riot as one of the 50 must read eco disasters in fiction and among 10 works of environmental literature from around the world.
00:01:55
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Rajat is also working on a very interesting video game project which we'll be discussing through the podcast today that imagines alternative futures for our planet in the backdrop of climate change.
The Birth of 'Butterfly Effect'
00:02:07
Speaker
If I'm not wrong Rajat is based out of Calcutta and a lot of his works also set or take off from there. Welcome to the show Rajat. Thank you for sharing your time with us. Thank you Aayushi. Thank you for having me on India Book. It's a pleasure. I'm looking forward to our conversation.
00:02:24
Speaker
So Rajat, I want to begin at the beginning which is the cover of the book and the title of the book itself. Did the concept of building a book on the butterfly effect and chaos theory come first? Or did the story sort of take shape first and was it that you retrospectively thought that it aligned well with chaos theory?
00:02:47
Speaker
Yeah, actually, the stories in my case, the stories usually come first might begin with an image. It might begin with a character. In this case, it was it was many things. I had been working as an activist for a long time on environment and climate change issues. And so I'd been thinking how to gather all this together in fiction.
00:03:11
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Not only the characters that I meet when I travel to villages or in other countries to do activism or for advocacy, but also how to put my learning into fiction because I had been writing fiction, more literary fiction rather than environmental or eco-fiction.
00:03:28
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So that's how slowly the book came into shape. I had been working on climate change for quite some years. That's how I began. And then the characters fell into place. And quite later in the book, maybe when I was in the middle of the book, it occurred to me that chaos theory and butterfly effect and all these things does fit into what I'm trying to plot here
Fiction's Role in Climate Advocacy
00:03:50
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in a way.
00:03:50
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Very interesting. In fact, Rajith, I have to tell you that you're a pioneer of climate fiction. I know Amitav Ghosh has written Gun Island and spoken prominently about Sundar Bants and actually has a work on climate change. But really there is no almost next to nothing in Indian fiction.
00:04:16
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I personally can't really say for vernacular fiction but in general what your work has done is to sort of now start creating a genre as well because for the longest time climate
00:04:30
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Change is really relegated to articles in the newspaper right and which is again mostly dismissed or taken lightly or just spoken off at conventions and then we still obviously grapple with every single challenge that climate change presents so was it a very deliberate choice to make.
00:04:52
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fiction the vehicle of this as opposed to you know write an alarmist work in non-fiction because we have a lot of that and a certain set of people read it and discuss it but but things really percolate better when it comes to fiction what was that or sort of at the back of your mind when you were writing this
00:05:14
Speaker
Yeah, absolutely. We connect better when we convey an idea through fiction. That's my firm belief. And that's what theorists of climate fiction have been saying. And here Amitav Ghosh has been a big inspiration. No doubt, not only his gun island, but his
00:05:32
Speaker
other book, The Great Derangement, which talked mostly about culture and climate change and how the culture has been ignoring climate change because of several reasons, like there's a problem with modernism and several other things. But in the West, in advanced countries, people have been writing climate change and things are changing slowly. Actually, in India also, there are a few writers who have been addressing these issues
00:05:57
Speaker
It's not always climate change. Some people have been writing about water and then there have been novels written about pollution. But yeah, climate change is also entering the literary sphere in India, but it's very little, two or three writers I can think of at the most.
Impact of Climate Fiction on Perception
00:06:15
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So yeah, I had been thinking that climate change
00:06:19
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I am an activist, so I know how to write activist papers, do research and stuff like that. But that always doesn't convey to a wider audience. And scientific papers are even more difficult to convey. So I thought that enveloping these ideas within a story would be a very good thing to do. And that connects very easily with people. You know, when I'm talking about climate change, I do small classes and lectures and workshops and things like that.
00:06:44
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I show these students three different framings of climate change. One is the scientific framing. I pick up a line from a scientific paper on climate change. Then I pick up a religious framing of climate change, which you know is a line from the Pope's letter.
00:07:00
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the very famous letter the Pope had written about climate change called Lata to Sea. And then I pick up paragraphs from a well-known climate novel, something like Road or Barbara King Solver's book or any of these. And then I compare how easily the fictional depiction, the literary framing of climate change
00:07:20
Speaker
touches us at the deepest core of our heart. So yeah, that was a big thing for me and that's how I went about writing climate fiction and of course Amitav Ghosh was an inspiration because of his great derangement that book non-fiction and that's how it happened.
00:07:37
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No, but this is so interesting. I didn't such an interesting way to introduce this to younger people, right? I mean, when I was in school, you know, all we were asked to do was, you know, or make a poster or not cutting trees. Or, you know, you would have a moral science kind of class or a lecture and you'd be told that, you know, plastic is bad for you, right? And it was so ineffective because we were never told the why.
00:08:06
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We were never told the where, what, how, when. You were just given a diktat, okay, chopping trees is bad, plastic is bad. There's going to be an increase in the temperature of the world. I know you will see these very disassociated phenomena happening, but no real impact of what climate change and the kind of post-apocalyptic world that you've drawn up in the book was ever really communicated. I do presume that and I hope
00:08:36
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that it's different in schools today and continues to get better and sharper with changing times. But it's such an interesting lens and I think the students who've been part of something like this are really lucky and I hope that it influences them to continue to think about this beyond the class. I think that's also important.
00:08:59
Speaker
Yeah, actually, the literary framing should be introduced in curricula of schools and colleges. Not only, you know, these textbooks about environment or a paper on environment, but climate fiction excerpts from climate fiction novels or climate fiction stories, Indian or otherwise Western stories.
00:09:18
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these should be introduced in school curricula and college curricula of course because they touch in a very different way and and in fact research is being done on this how climate fiction influences reader behavior reader perception about the problem
00:09:33
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There is very good research done by someone called Schneider Meerson. He's an American researcher. He has shown how climate change novels change perception of people
Climate Fiction in Education
00:09:43
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and how they're very popular among millennials and civil other things. So, yeah, I think it's very important that these things should be taken up. We shouldn't only have textbooks, but we should have climate change stories, excerpts of novels and things like that in the courses.
00:10:00
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I think that's the first recommendation, really, Rajat, that I'm going to be taking from today's chat and look it up. And I'm sure that's more to come. So another question, you know, that, of course, as I told you, right, your book really opened my mind at least to climate fiction, even though I mean, I think I've read the road and I've read Gun Islands. I haven't read Liz Jensen, etc. And I, of course, want to and hope
00:10:28
Speaker
to be able to read that soon enough as well. But your book is biopunk. And for those of you listening to the podcast who don't know, it's a sub genre of science fiction that focuses on technology and implications of biotechnology and synthetic biology, which is which again segues into your book, Rajat.
00:10:48
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because of the whole aspect around genetically modified crops. Why this particular lens when you were writing this book or was it or did it fit into the narrative?
Genetically Modified Crops: Myths and Dangers
00:11:01
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And of course from a knowledge lens, why did you choose to sort of go about it in terms of your narrative? But really from a knowledge perspective, what
00:11:14
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Does the ecosystem around genetically modified crops for a layperson who is not very aware of this mean? Yeah, actually, this is a very important question. First of all, genetically, genetic modification of crops is dangerous and it's kind of uncharted territory. And it's mostly being done by multinationals who are saying that these modified crops are safe for human consumption. But most of the studies that have been done
00:11:44
Speaker
on these crops, after these crops have been produced, like tomatoes, brinjals, and several other stuff, golden rice. These studies have mostly been done on mice. And their lifespan is one to two years, never on humans. So it's not really comparable. These studies are not very good studies. But these are still being pushed on the basis of something called equivalence, like if the composition of the modified, genetically modified tomato and the real tomato are more or less the same, then you can use it.
00:12:14
Speaker
That's what these people say. But there is a lot of contraindications. There is a lot of other research which shows that it is really dangerous technology. You can get anything from quick, rapid aging to allergies to changes in organs, several other things. Several other nasty things can happen to us who consume it. But luckily in India, we still don't have any genetically modified, at least not in the laws. There is nothing, no genetically modified food product allowed. There is cotton, of course.
00:12:43
Speaker
And a scarce story from there is that the cotton, the BT cotton, the oil of that cotton has entered our edible oil through adulteration. So that thing has happened. So all of this, again from my activist days, I had worked on GMOs, genetically modified organisms, genetically modified objects, whatever you call it. I have worked on these issues and so I thought it would be a good idea to put it into a narrative because
00:13:08
Speaker
You know, climate change is a very slow phenomenon. Storm can have its dramatic moments, but you cannot write a novel about a storm. It's not very easy. You can write a short story, but climate change, otherwise it happens over many years and in different places.
00:13:24
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Slowly the climate changes, the number of the frequency of storms increase, there are more and more wildfires, species go extinct very slowly. So it's very difficult to tell all these in a novel. So my work around for this was to have something in the plot.
00:13:44
Speaker
which moves very fast and have climate change in the backdrop or climate change related to that fast movement. That's where genetic engineering of food crops came into my story because that is something which can affect a large number of people very quickly, very similar to the pandemic that we are in right now. It spread so fast in a year, every country is affected and millions have died. So a GM experiment gone wrong can move
00:14:13
Speaker
as fast as that and all of this again is connected to climate change. So, when writing climate change novels, I have often thought about this. One work around is to have a fast moving action in the middle related to something which is
00:14:31
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Distantly related to climate change, like GM, then there is this Liz Jensen's novel where she has used methane mining. There are methane deposits under the ocean and mining of those is very dangerous because they can lead to submarine landslides and other stuff, tsunamis and things like that. And it's also related to climate change. So in her novel, she had used a fast moving incident around methane mining, a deep sea methane mining, to tell her story about climate change. So in my case, it was GMOs.
00:15:00
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which was a fast-moving narrative device or fast-moving plot device, fast-moving incident, what we will call it, which was at the center of the climate change story. And it's very important.
00:15:15
Speaker
As I told you, GM crops are dangerous. In the midst of this pandemic, our government has recently allowed field testing of BT Brinjal, which is a genetically modified Brinjal. This is the first time that this has happened. Once this field testing is over, if the results are good, they will try to commercialize it. So that's not good. There have been studies done by CAC, the very well-known Center for Science and Environment, the NGO in Delhi, two years back, and they found that
00:15:44
Speaker
Children's food, then edible oil and several other food stuff imported into India are contaminated with GM products. And some of them have on the label that they are GM free. So it's dangerous. All this is happening. You cannot really stop it. But as activists, we have to fight on, we have to push on.
00:16:05
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And because these stories are related and this pandemic has some interface with climate change, climate change has an interface with science, so it's a way of telling my story to have this fast-moving incident at its center.
00:16:20
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I mean Rajat all of this is so fascinating and so essential for people to know and of course most of us hardly know right or hardly care because of whatsoever is that we are consuming in media or are given sources of information and one of the things to ask you right and is that the role of the state right I mean you did of course mention
00:16:49
Speaker
whole aspect of cotton and brinjal but going forward right i think one of the major pieces with respect to governance and and politically also pm crops are going to i mean i think the brinjal discussion did take up news and print space but this is going to become a bigger and bigger issue every passing month year and then how does
00:17:17
Speaker
How does the fact that there is actually no political discourse, and I'm talking specifically to India, on the repercussions of this, right? Because obviously there's a spectrum of issues, right? And genetically modified crops are literally at the bottom of it in terms of prioritization.
00:17:37
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And it always strikes me as funny that the things that matter the most, for instance, healthcare spending or something like, you know, DMO crops that impact the health and lives of people get sidelined in terms of obviously whatever is most catchy or can be milked.
00:17:55
Speaker
for the most attention. How do you as an active historian and especially again I'm drawing this in context of your book right because there is a supreme ruler and a totalitarian and the full governance aspect around the book as well. How did you sort of chart out this in your fiction and how do you see the political and the governance ecosystem playing out in the coming years especially with relation to India when it comes to genetically modified crops?
00:18:24
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Yes, see, there are two questions here. One is what is happening in the book. In the book, it's a lab where this test is being done, where these experiments are being done with GM crops and then it somehow is taken to another country where there is an authoritarian rule.
00:18:39
Speaker
So I always believe that dangerous technologies become even more dangerous when they fall in the hands of authoritarian, even a disease. I like China and the Chinese people. China is a great country. But if you have an authoritarian rule in a country, they will always try to hide something. And whenever you try to hide something, it slips away unnoticed into the wider world and can affect the wider
Risks of Technology in Authoritarian Regimes
00:19:04
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world. So that is what happens in my book.
00:19:05
Speaker
this technology is stolen and then other things happen. I don't want to give out the plot, the climax and all. Yeah, that's one of the things that I have always, you know, also trying to skirt around. How do I not give away spoilers?
00:19:20
Speaker
Dangerous technologies become more dangerous in the hands of authoritarian states or even corporations, which don't have rules, checks and balances. Then the other thing is what is happening in India. In India, the discourse is around climate change.
00:19:38
Speaker
and climate change, food, and all these things. That's because we are a developing country, and developing countries are more concerned about some different issues like health, and not environment really, health, poverty, and these are bigger issues. And if we can provide food for our people, then GM doesn't carry with politicians. But this will change if good studies are published by NGOs or scientists.
00:20:08
Speaker
that show direct linkages between the use of GM food, consumption of GM food and the health of the population. That's one thing. There's another logic used by corporations who pervade these GM products that GM products, GM crops will feed
00:20:26
Speaker
the world in the future will take care of puts and that's really not true because if we balance consumption across the world, if overcomes consumption in the West decreases, if we eat less meat because for farming, meat farming, you need a lot of land, pasture land, which can be used for cultivation of crops.
00:20:46
Speaker
And there are several other things. Meat processing also has a linkage with climate change through all this. So if consumption is balanced across the world, if overconsumption in the West decreases, in the advanced countries, in the rich countries decreases, then there will really be no food. We don't need GM foods at all, GM crops, GM food products. So that is another kind of logic pervade by corporate to design GM crops.
00:21:15
Speaker
And their hold on several governments is very strong. They have their lobbyists, they have their advertisers and things like that. But activists, activist groups are also trying. Writers are writing about it. So let's see. And the linkage with climate change, if that can be heightened, then in the long run, things can change for the better. But I'm not so sure climate change is much more important right now because, you know, many parts of India will be non dated. There will be food scare cities.
00:21:45
Speaker
So these are much, much bigger issues compared to GM. But if a link with the health can be made by activists, by scientists, if a clear link, it's not only about making the link, you have to also communicate it to the people that why this is dangerous. Then politicians will get interested about it. That's what I feel. No, Rajal, I think thank you because you make such good points. One is, of course, the issue of justice. And I think
00:22:14
Speaker
One of my favorite parts about the book, and this I'm not saying in terms of the narrative, which is of course a separate discussion, but in terms of scope of your book, right? It takes place in the UK, it takes place in Calcutta, it takes place in Seoul, right? There is a developed world, there's a developing world, and I think it was so important to actually have
00:22:37
Speaker
this kind of narrative, right? Because it's not a country's issue, it's not a continent's issue, it's the world's issue.
Global Nature of Climate Issues
00:22:44
Speaker
I don't think any issue ever, I mean even something like nuclear warfare has affected the lives of every single living being, right? So I think one of the most fascinating aspects for me for the book was this, that it travels
00:23:02
Speaker
and straddles so many universes and identities as well and again I think that correlates so beautifully with what you just said about us as a developing nation and what our priorities and where they lie versus others and of course and that's also the fulcrum of this whole developed versus developing world debate which comes up at climate change forums
00:23:28
Speaker
on sustainable development. The next question rather than I wanted to ask you was about the characters in the book. You have a detective, you have a scientist, you have a very interesting array of characters. You start with someone who I'll just call Captain Old and then not really give spoilers again, just being very mindful of it.
00:23:58
Speaker
Between a scientist, a detective, there are all these characters. Where do these characters spring from? Were you trying to make the metaphorical or was it a decision led by the narrative?
00:24:17
Speaker
Yeah, actually both. This detective character. First of all, how do I research characters? I know most of these people, you know. They are not real people, but I have picked up bits and pieces from people I know, from detectives, from scientists, and so on. So that's one part. That's about the construction of the novel, how it was done.
00:24:36
Speaker
But he appeared in my books in a Bengali story that I have written. I write in Bengali also. And then he was there in another book called Hotel Kolkata. From there he came to butterfly effect. And he is both metaphorical and real. He is the binding logic of the book because the detective follows reasons.
00:24:58
Speaker
There is a lot of unreason also in this world in around us and there is a magic in this book in butterfly in the final parts where we go to those mountains and there are strange stuff happening.
00:25:10
Speaker
And the detective wants to wade through all these waters. And so he is kind of representative of reason. And the story will tell us whether he succeeds to make a reason out of whatever happened to him in the end. And the end is very, very different from how he begins. So that's how the detective came to be. And the scientist, of course, in many climate change novels,
00:25:33
Speaker
you will find a scientist character because it becomes very important. You have to have your science right. Science fiction, this is partly science fiction. So, the scientist character comes from there and it's based on someone I had worked closely with when researching this novel, a real geneticist friend. And an environmentalist, of course, you know how he comes into the picture because it's a book about environment, it's about climate change. So, to posit all those ideas, all those clashing ideas about development versus environment, about growth versus environment,
00:26:03
Speaker
You need characters to work out those ideas through. So that's how the environmentalist character comes in, Henry David. Of course, his name comes from Henry David Todow. So anyway, that's how it happened. Rajat, since you alluded to your other works as well, right?
00:26:26
Speaker
And of course, I'm so glad that you bought this whole point of scientific training. While I think we've touched upon so many aspects of the book, of climate change, of speculative fiction, of research that goes into writing, I was very, very fascinated. I mean, of course, while I did call out a short bio at the beginning of the podcast, right?
00:26:51
Speaker
But it is very fascinating because you are of course an economist I think by education which you keep saying I think in your other interviews also that you know that this economist to environmentalist segue happened the way you know politicians get drawn to power.
00:27:11
Speaker
Yeah, exactly. When you are doing all this growth, theories of growth, and how the world can be driven by oil for hundreds of years, civilizations will be powered for oil, all these are kind of pipe dreams. And when you are too much into these pipe dreams of economics,
00:27:29
Speaker
you begin to think what lies beyond that. And that is environmentalism. That is how to be sustainable. That is about thinking of other species around us. And lawyers and politicians, of course, you know, lawyers deal with the laws that politicians make. There is a very good connection. And if you look, if you make a small research study, if you design a study to check the backgrounds of politicians in our country, you will find many of them are lawyers too. So, yeah, there must be some connection there with power.
00:27:59
Speaker
And yeah, that's how the training in economics pushed me towards this work around environment and then on to fiction. Yeah, and I think you started writing when you had a fall, right? So that also, I find it so fascinating all of the serendipity in life. How did you find that out? Did I mention it somewhere? Yeah, maybe, maybe. Yes, that was my research before speaking.
00:28:30
Speaker
Yeah, that helped actually. Because I was doing a heavy duty job and there was no time to write. So this helped really. I could be at home and write for six months without any disturbance. That happened sometimes. Silver lining.
00:28:47
Speaker
Yeah, I know, you know, the world is always fascinated by sportspersons and actors and artists, right? But I think writers are one of the most interesting artists because it's just the time that they spend, right? Very, very, I mean, your book is called The Butterfly, right? But very much like that metamorphosis process, right? A book is so cool for so long that I found that anecdote so interesting. And I'm sorry if it's out of context, but I just had to bring it up.
00:29:14
Speaker
No, no, thank you. Actually, it's kind of boring also sometimes. Days on end, you don't meet people unless you are doing a day job. Many writers do nowadays because writing always doesn't pay. So, it tends to be boring. Umberto Eco has written somewhere about it. There are two kinds of writers. One is
00:29:35
Speaker
who writes for days without meeting people, they get cooped up in the library or study and then write on. And there's another kind of writer who, after finishing the days writing, they go out for a drink and meet people and party a bit. So I think I am of the second kind. So yeah, I always keep in touch with people, with friends and family and all.
00:29:58
Speaker
Because that is also part of the experience that adds to your experience. I meet strange people. I have very, very interesting friends in my city and elsewhere also. So when I'm writing, I'm not always cooped up in my study and only writing. I'm also going out and kind of meeting people, having a drink and so on.
00:30:15
Speaker
that's actually lovely and I think the fascinating external world that you sort of carry for us as readers because of say the characters and how they directly and directly get drawn out in the characters at least that you fleshed I mean you alluded to the genital so I just
00:30:34
Speaker
That's my next question for you right is that you're working on a video game that's going to be out next year. Tell us more about it because again one of the most under explored area I think for Indian authors and writers is to
00:30:51
Speaker
tap into these routes which are very common globally, right? Which is, you know, this whole merchandising route. Until unless, of course, something is like fantasy fiction or something, it really doesn't see the light of the day. So is the video game related to your work as an activist or is it related to the butterfly effect? How did the full project sort of land into your lab?
00:31:16
Speaker
Yeah, it is related to my fiction writing, of course, and this is not a commercial. I don't know whether it will be marketed commercially, but it is a video game being developed by US university and several other organizations. It's a worldwide international project.
00:31:32
Speaker
Video game is a very good teaching tool actually for climate change, for environment because it gives several options and it's very, very, very close to storytelling. In a story, in a printed book, we have only one plot line and the video game gives you more than one plot line. So when you're thinking of the future, when you're thinking of climate change, there could be several things that can happen depending on
00:31:55
Speaker
whether the world leaders listen to Greta Thunberg or not, whether we move away from coal, whether we exploit more oil, or whether there is a new discovery, like artificial photosynthesis. If artificial photosynthesis becomes very efficient, then the world will move in a certain direction. Otherwise, it will move in a different direction. Climate change-wise, and society also will move in different directions.
00:32:20
Speaker
But then there is this rise of authoritarianism, versus liberalism. So this video game brings all these together. In the research and academic sphere also, a lot of work related to climate change is on these things. It's called socio-economic pathways, shared socio-economic pathways, like where the world might go, where the world might be headed.
00:32:40
Speaker
whether there will be rising nationalism and more emissions, whether there will be more use of coal, whether we'll slowly move towards a green economy, there are four or five kinds of pathways that have already been developed by scientists.
00:32:53
Speaker
And the video game explodes some of these. And I am doing the narratives, you know, say things like what will be a restaurant review in 2090 of a submerged Washington. In a submerged Washington, there is just one Ethiopian restaurant that's still operating. And so there's this review of this that I have written. And many other things. That's just an example. I'm doing the narrative background of part of this game.
00:33:21
Speaker
There are two or three more colleagues with me. Yeah, and it's very interesting as a teaching tool, I think. And when you finish the game, you get, if you win points, you can donate to a climate organization and things like that. That is also there. And we need more of these, actually. You know, the video game as a teaching tool on climate change or environment,
Gaming for Climate Awareness
00:33:42
Speaker
It's very popular in the West, in Japan and other countries. But in India, it's just beginning to happen. I haven't heard of any other similar project here. Though my project is also an international project. It's not an Indian project. But I hope there will be more of these because millennials and kids, they are more hooked to games. And if games can pass on an important message, then nothing like it. So I hope that developers will take this up. Video game designers will take this up.
00:34:10
Speaker
Really cool. So Rajit, now I, of course, your book, I think I've read a lot of reviews comparing it to Cloud Atlas and that's largely because of the structure of the narrative, right?
Rajat's Literary Diversity
00:34:25
Speaker
But are there, but you've also, I mean, written Calcutta Nights, actually you've translated Calcutta Nights and you've written Hotel Calcutta and you've also worked on
00:34:37
Speaker
and edited anthology of speculative fiction, right? Rarely is there a writer who's a novelist, a translator, writes short-form non-fiction, writes
00:34:49
Speaker
such expansive imaginative fiction as the butterfly effect is edit anthologies so how do you as a writer of course i mean all of this these things have different timelines really how do you in your repertoire manage all of this what really hooks you into picking up projects i think one interesting thing that i really saw was that even like in amber dust right that that's a cross-cultural novel um and and there is
00:35:18
Speaker
But it's also backed by violence and different aspects like that. So none of your books are just stories for the sake of stories, right? They're backed by very, perhaps slightly complex narratives. I wouldn't call them very complex as a reader. But it might be slightly, I don't know, difficult for some, say amateur readers. Let's just put it like that. So what really has been your journey in writing or editing or translating these works?
00:35:47
Speaker
And how do you handle the kind of research which goes into all these cross-cultural themes, into editing and then really the kind of rigor that really is needed to bring so much different work alive, I must say.
00:36:04
Speaker
Yeah, the research, you know, most of it is because of the activist background and a lot of travel that I have been doing. I have done in the past and still doing now and meeting various kinds of people and then reading about various issues and stuff and reading on various themes. I have a scientific. There are technocrats in my family, scientists and technocrats. So the science part of my of my writing, the interest in science that will note in some of my books like butterfly effect.
00:36:34
Speaker
partly in Hotel Calcutta. That comes from, I think, the family background. People have been talking about science a lot, in my fact. Science and engineering and stuff like that. Beyond that, part of it is bad planning, poor planning, doing so many things together. I'm not really sure which is going where. But yeah, I always wanted to, if you are talking of translation, I always thought that Bengali literature has a lot of things
00:37:00
Speaker
that needs to be translated just like Tamil or Marathi. India is such a rich land for literature you know all these languages and each language has such a rich literary tradition. So I thought I have been reading Bengali books as much as English books right from school days. So I thought that some of these that haven't been translated should be opened up to a wider audience. That's how I did hotel Calcutta night this
00:37:23
Speaker
memoir of famous Bengali writer Hemendruk Murray about his nocturnal wanderings. It's a very interesting fascinating book and recently I just finished an anthology of Bengali poetry of 10 poets from India and Bangladesh. So that's how the translation happened like I wanted to
00:37:40
Speaker
open up these voices, convey these voices through a language which more people use in our country, more readers will understand. So that's how the translation part happened. And science fiction, my speculative fiction, anthology and butterfly effect, these kind of tie in together because butterfly effect is also a speculative novel in a way. Speculative is
00:38:03
Speaker
everyone knows what speculative is. Like what if the world became like this? What if things were slightly different? And that's how I started working on the anthology of speculative fiction. And Asian voices are not very, are kind of suppressed in world speculative fiction writing, in international science fiction writing, though it's changing now. So it was very important to do a book
00:38:25
Speaker
Asian voices could be projected in this sphere of science fiction. That's how that other book happened. And also I'm working on something very interesting. This is another anthology, which I'm working with the Japanese and an American group, a collection of short stories from Asia-Pacific. And it's about solar punk, you know.
00:38:44
Speaker
Everything is connected actually in New York. Solar pump, you know, it's like it's the future of climate. It could be one of the futures of climate change. Either it could go into dystopia. Everything could be destroyed or there would be floods, scare cities and things like that. But the solar pump futures, they believe that people will change.
00:39:01
Speaker
Human beings will come together, communities will grow stronger, and they will build a better world, mostly driven by solar power and less consumption, in conspicuous consumption. So, this book will be out next month, I think, in January. There are 15 stories from all over Asia-Pacific, from Japan to India, two very good Indian colleagues are.
00:39:23
Speaker
And it's about solar punk and multi-species cities. Multi-species cities are where we also respect all the other beings that share our cities with us. And that's how it all connects together. Climate change, solar punk, and science fiction. Though there are bigger debates whether climate fiction is science fiction, that's a different discussion. We can continue with that someday. But yeah, that's how most of my work now connects together or hangs together.
00:39:52
Speaker
Wow, you know, have been making notes through this conversation and I have a lot of post reading to do.
00:40:00
Speaker
And I think the best podcast episodes for me really are the ones where I have to go back and keep continuing to learn. And I am so thankful for the fact that you bought this up. I'm definitely going to look up this as well, Rajat. I have a question, Rajat, which is how, I mean, I have spent a lot of time browsing places you've already written that and in your past work, of course, prior to chatting with you.
00:40:29
Speaker
And how is it that you are still so, I would say, unknown in the popular circles outside? I'm sorry, I think this is...
00:40:42
Speaker
I think it's slightly out of line but what I really mean to say is that I think your work should be read by a lot more people than it's currently read and I think part of it might be and I'm just making a presumption which you please correct me on is that you enjoy the process of writing and meeting and learning
00:41:03
Speaker
So much more than the process of marketing and PR. Thank you. But yeah, actually, it's very difficult. I am kind of reclusive, though I have friends, but these are, you know, they have no connection with the literary sphere. Most of them are from a person who drives a truck, you know, from there to a scientist, but literary friend, writer friend, very few. And I am kind of a bit introvert, which you can understand from this conversation, maybe.
00:41:33
Speaker
And so that's one of the reasons why I'm a little shy of marketing. The rest of it is of course on you and my publisher and all the good podcasters and the magazines which can publish my work, which can take my interviews but aren't. I don't know why. So yeah, that might be the reason. And also
00:41:56
Speaker
I'm not really sure. Actually, it's a very good question. I started writing climate fiction butterfly effect. Before that, it was a different book. It was about Calcutta, short stories about Calcutta. That was quite popular. But the importance of the digital sphere has increased in the last four or five years, Instagram and podcasting and things like that.
00:42:21
Speaker
marketing was very different five years ago when Calcutta, my other book, the short story collection was published. Maybe things will change now. That's why you might interview me and I'm hoping that after this, more broadcasters will come and ask me to tell my story. Who knows? I really hope so. And I hope a lot more people read The Butterfly Effect. It is definitely one of the most interesting books and I'm just going with interesting.
00:42:51
Speaker
instead of you know using complex and magical and all of that and I think it's a very interesting book I think it's a it's obviously obviously a very topical book and I wish that more people read it and even listening to this podcast
00:43:09
Speaker
I'm not saying this because I'm talking to Rajat, but I'm saying that you should pick up the butterfly effect. It's available at Amazon, it's available at Flipkart, it's available at independent bookstores, but maybe just for the purpose of enhancing your own knowledge about what's happening to the climate, right? You should check out Rajat's Twitter account. He shares a lot of material from time to time, right? He also writes an article
00:43:38
Speaker
in the new Indian Express and learn more about climate change while you're reading this book because you know as readers we all have preferences oh I like fiction and oh I like non-fiction but this is one of those rare books that blends the two so effortlessly does it in a very captivating literary manner and with complex characters and the most
00:44:06
Speaker
lustrous language that I've read off late. So Rajat, thank you so much. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. I really enjoyed this conversation with you. Thank you so much. To all of you who are listening in, do tune in to India Book every Saturday. We release a new episode. Hope you enjoyed this conversation and do not forget
00:44:33
Speaker
that while this conversation was just for a few minutes, the effect and impact of climate change on all of us are going to last for a lot longer than that. So do check out the book, do learn more about the subject and keep yourselves updated. Thank you and have a great day.
00:44:58
Speaker
Do not forget to tune into us on Spotify, Google Podcasts, Apple Podcasts, Ghana, and HD Smartcuts. Stay updated with all the episodes of India Book on Instagram and Twitter. Check out India Book Podcast. Do remember that India Book drops every week.
00:45:18
Speaker
On a Saturday at 10 am in the morning, make sure that you do not forget to listen to the variety of shows that we have that talk about the length and breadth of things that India consists of.