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Ep. 9. Gurnaik Johal, Saraswati
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In this episode, we read the opening passage from Gurnaik Johal's new novel Saraswati (2025). Buy the book from a local independent bookshop or Bookshop.org.
Gurnaik Johal’s short story collection, We Move, won the Somerset Maugham Award, the Tata Literature Live! Prize and the Galley Beggar Press Short Story Prize in 2022. Saraswati, his first novel, is out on 12th June.
Find the transcript and more about the show on Substack. Follow the show on Instagram.
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Produced, hosted, and edited by Chris Lloyd.
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Transcript
Podcast Introduction
00:00:02
Speaker
Hello and welcome to Books Up Close, to the podcast. I'm Chris Lloyd, a writer and academic, and on this show I talk to other writers about their work and their practice. We also collaborate on a close reading of their writing, looking at a particular passage or a whole poem, and talk about its meanings, resonances and the technicalities of language.
00:00:22
Speaker
This is a show for book nerds, aspiring and established authors, or anyone interested in how texts get made.
Interview with Gernik Johal
00:00:30
Speaker
In today's episode, I talk to Gernik Johal about his new novel, Sarasvati, which comes out on 12th of June. We're going to talk about the opening paragraph, so if you don't have it yet, that's fine, but order it now.
00:00:44
Speaker
Gernik's short story collection, We Move, won the Somerset Maugham Award, the Tata Literature Live Prize, and the Gali Begge Press Short Story Prize in 2022. And Sarasvati, his first novel, is out in June.
00:00:58
Speaker
Welcome, Gernik. Thanks for joining us. Thank you so much for having me. Excited to be here.
Importance of Close Reading
00:01:03
Speaker
Great. So what do you think about close reading? What are your thoughts, feelings about it as an activity, a practice?
00:01:09
Speaker
And how do you feel about close reading this novel today with me? Yeah, I think it's interesting because I think so much of what I'm trying to do when I'm writing is like controlling the pace, if that makes sense.
00:01:24
Speaker
You can almost see it as like sort of I'm trying to keep a sort of musical notation or whatever in in a piece of music that I've written, and then I want the reader to to come at it at the pace that the piece would ideally be played at.
00:01:37
Speaker
um So I sort of see close reading as almost like when you're learning to play a piece and you slow down a lot and you're like maybe repeating things a lot more, um sort of figuring it out, which is...
00:01:49
Speaker
been really important for me in terms of learning to write I think I did that sort of corny exercise that they say you know when you sort of like you can write out an entire short story like if you buy someone you like or whatever and you can sort of look under the hood that way if you're physically typing out each each line or whatever um so I found that really useful but as a as a thing I almost sort of see it as like looking at like the back of a watch you know those watches where you can sort of see all the cogs turning and stuff um like it's not the point in itself because the point is to see the time but it's a fun sort of side thing to do I guess I i mean now I have questions who what short story did you type out oh there's two stories in the New Yorker by Stuart Dybeck
00:02:33
Speaker
uh pet milk and paper lantern and i just think that they're two of the most like perfect things ever written and like i i did a few sort of courses teaching ah short stories and every time like that was the one lesson i never changed because i was like they are so good but yeah i i don't think i i actually learned anything by writing them out because i just ended up basically going along with the rhythm of it and reading it anyways but yeah Yeah, i've seen a few but like I've seen a few people say that. like Joan Didion apparently used to type out Hemingway ah novels. She would just do sentence by sentence just to like find out how it worked.
00:03:11
Speaker
And I'm like, oh, I've never tried that. Maybe I need to try that. It seems like it could be in your wheelhouse. Yeah, yeah maybe that's it. I mean, it's better than doing my own writing. I might as well write someone else's story. Maybe I'll actually ask you very quickly on that.
Writing Short Stories vs. Novels
00:03:23
Speaker
How did it feel moving from writing a book of short stories? I don't know the timeline of how you wrote those stories in WeMove, but ah the moving from that to the novel form. Yeah, I think it's... um just by virtue of the form like a lot looser with the novel because it can just keep expanding the more you put into it whereas in a story like you can really control like ah you know like a sort of don't know like a music producer pushing all the dials up and down if you add something on page three you it makes you think oh on page 13 I've got to add something there right I often have these moments where I
00:04:00
Speaker
in the writing, like a sort of a flower appears, but I haven't put the seed in, if that makes sense. And it's really easy to do with a short story where you can sort of ah make that really tight and work. But with a novel, it's like, oh, if a flower appears on page 300,
00:04:13
Speaker
you know, do I, where the hell do I plant in the seed? um So I've sort of allowed myself to relax a bit more in terms of the actual formulation of the story. And then, yeah then I could bring that kind of close focus on the sentence level that I maybe honed a bit with the first book, bring that in the editing and all that kind of stuff.
00:04:32
Speaker
Yeah, it was, it was a fun, fun difference. Yeah, okay, we can get it we can get into more about that when I ask you about your writing practice later.
Analyzing 'Sarasvati' Opening
00:04:38
Speaker
So as we're reading the very opening of the novel, I don't think anybody needs to know anything about it, right? there's no context they need.
00:04:45
Speaker
Yeah, why don't you just jump straight in and read Sure, yeah, that's nice. I'll just jump in. and There was water in the dead well. It might have been a trick of the light, Satnam thought, or his eyes, his contact lenses in the suitcase, air India had lost.
00:05:00
Speaker
Or maybe he was seeing things, still a little lightheaded from the drive, from the hours of conditioned air in the rented hybrid, driving up to the sit ledge and back to the farm, his parents looking out at the passing view, noting how things had changed, how nothing was the same, and Satnam nodding along, the emptied urn snug between his knees, warm.
00:05:18
Speaker
But here it was, water, a reflection. He looked down at himself, looking up. He'd asked his Bidby about the world the last time he was in Punjab, when he was a child. It had been dry for as long as she could remember, she'd said, his dad translating.
00:05:34
Speaker
The farms around Hakra relied on electric pumps to survive, which were lengthened every few years to reach the ever-receiving groundwater, perfect plastic roots. Still, on some evenings, Bibi would walk to the dead well at the corner of her square plot, and that summer, Sat Naam would follow.
00:05:51
Speaker
She would light the candles sheltered in a small makeshift shrine on one side of the well, and then a cigarette, which she didn't smoke. Satnam would watch it burn out like incense, trying to guess the exact moment the lengthening ash would fall.
00:06:05
Speaker
When Bibi was done thinking, she'd flick the butt into the opening, one more piece of confetti. His parents had explained that the shrine was a samadhi. Tradition, his mum said. Superstition, his dad.
00:06:17
Speaker
It was about honouring ancestors, they agreed, remembering the dead. Satnam leant over the edge of the well and felt something move within him, like the bubble in a spirit level.
00:06:27
Speaker
His left ear was yet to pop from the flight, his body caught between varying pressures. A bead of sweat dropped from his lip into the dark, the sun eclipsed on the surface by his shadowy face.
00:06:39
Speaker
Featureless, he could have been any number of people before him, reaching for water. Amazing. Thank you. ah love this opening passage. And it's kind of my contention on this show and in every class that I teach my students that the first page of a book will tell you everything you need to know about what's to come. Yeah, I think whether you're consciously planting the seeds or not, right, to use your metaphor, I think that first page or the first paragraph will tell you so much about what's to come.
00:07:08
Speaker
It sets the tone, right? it's And I think there's quite a few themes that emerge here, as well as kind of like linguistic sound things. It was interesting you saying that like pacing, because for those that don't know, the book is kind of split into these different chapters.
00:07:24
Speaker
And each one has its own tone style, I would say. But this one sets up so many of the things I think then kind of ring out later on that I'm kind of interested to. So we're going to kind of talk it through sentence by sentence.
00:07:37
Speaker
Okay, so in this opening passage, like there was water in the dead well. So we've got this really like short, sharp sentence to begin with. And the second one is really long and unfolding.
00:07:48
Speaker
And it made me think of something that I think Colm Tabin said an interview once, I think it was him. trying to remember if that's right. But he said when he's writing, if he writes a short sentence, he like, the next sentence must be long.
00:08:00
Speaker
If I write a long sentence, the next sentence must be short. He was like, um this idea of like, as you said earlier about pacing and like rhythm and speed, he was like, you want your reader to never not always know what's coming next and where they're going to be.
00:08:13
Speaker
And there was water in the dead well. Other than water, there were all these kind of monosyllables. And it's quite like a unassuming sentence, right? Like, oh, there's water in a well. Okay, okay. But the dead well, like as though a well can be dead, like maybe that is the language of wells. I don't know. But like the idea that this kind of inanimate object has life and that there's something where it shouldn't be is like a really interesting theme to kind of open the book with.
00:08:40
Speaker
I'm glad
Engaging Readers through Imagery
00:08:41
Speaker
you think so. Yeah, I think I actually... because often my advice is whatever you're opening, you end up, you start start with, you've got to scrap it because almost like, you know, in like time trials in racing, you know, you do a sort of lap to get to speed and then then you then you turn on the stopwatch.
00:08:58
Speaker
But this was actually the first line I wrote at the start of the book. And I was like, oh, I have a book here because like you said, there is that. It's unassuming, but it's short, it's snappy.
00:09:10
Speaker
And there's a sort of rhythm in the, there was water in the, and But then the dead kind of like, it sort of maybe disrupts that rhythm in a nice way. um it stands out. And yeah, it's like, it's sort of lying that if it was in the middle of like a paragraph, like halfway through the book, would you probably wouldn't notice if that makes sense.
00:09:29
Speaker
But as an opening, I hope it's sort of, captures the slight juncture of like, you sort of see what the status quo had been, right, that the well had no water in it.
00:09:40
Speaker
And it's like disrupted in the first line, which is something I'm always trying to do, which is sort of to get the ball rolling on the plot, and if that makes sense. But yeah, I think that's interesting about variance of sentence length.
00:09:51
Speaker
Not something I sort of think about actively, but yeah, it definitely makes a difference, especially now and I'm sort of listening to audiobooks probably more than I read. um and it does come through in that way. when when you When you enter a sort of repetitive rhythm, then yeah I sort of glaze over and I'm cycling or on the tube or whatever, and I'm like, I've no idea what's going on in the plot.
00:10:12
Speaker
Yeah. Exactly. I mean, actually, I can only do audio books if they're nonfiction. I cannot do fiction audio at all. My brain, it it like as you said, like I just drift.
00:10:24
Speaker
And maybe it's because of the beauty of the sound or something. where Or nonfiction, at least you can kind of catch up, right? Like if if you miss a sentence, you still know where you are with a novel. You're like, wait, who what happened? Who's dead? what So yeah, there's something about that. But also like water, well, like there's alliteration straight away.
00:10:41
Speaker
And that kind of soft... I'm going to say watery sound, right? Like runs throughout this passage. There's like a softness as well as the kind of brightness. Because in the second sentence, you've got might trick light eyes.
00:10:55
Speaker
Like that assonance is is running through. and and it is the brightness, right? Of the the light that maybe Satan doesn't quite... know what he's seeing. So again, this is the second theme, right? If there's something where it shouldn't be is the first theme.
00:11:10
Speaker
And then can I trust what I'm seeing is ah is a second idea. And then what you do, which is quite remarkable, I guess, which, you know, when people say like, show, don't tell, you give us so much context in that long sentence without it being like, by the way, Sat Nam has traveled back to India. did a You know, like but we learn that he, his sight is dubious right now because he's lost his contact lenses, that he's been on a really long flight, that his parents are there, that he's got, yeah yeah and then we learn he's got ashes between, and you're like,
00:11:39
Speaker
Okay, we've got tons of information, but at the same time, we're kind of just seeing it in little glimpses. And I wonder how much you were wondering about, like, how much do I put in in that opening paragraph? Like, how much information versus tone or imagery or something?
Literary Devices in 'Sarasvati'
00:11:53
Speaker
Yeah, it's so it's so difficult at the start of a thing to sort of get the ball rolling, but like have the reader able to sort of situate themselves. So I think there is often maybe in the way that Tobin is talking about like variants of like sentence length, variants between like, oh, here's this interesting thing happening.
00:12:10
Speaker
And just to zoom back a bit, this is what's going on. do you know what I mean? But yeah, I think trying to nestle clear bits of info in a way that the isn't obtrusive is was something i was trying to do here so yeah the fact that it could have been his contact lenses in the suitcase the airline had lost right but the fact we don't know as a reader yet where we are putting air in India just makes it more efficient I guess and yeah I think little bits of specificity help with that like the fact that it's a rented hybrid rather than something else. It just also say sounds nice to me as well.
00:12:43
Speaker
And then the specificity of the the river name, is it large? And yeah, I think it's almost one thing I'm thinking about when I'm writing is I think I'm quite a visual person, if that makes sense.
00:12:55
Speaker
And the sort of cinematic movement here ah that i was trying to go for is like, so we start with the well, which is this dark thing. Then you've got the light and you've got the eyes, which is obviously him seeing.
00:13:07
Speaker
And then we're moving almost in sort of montage through the drive and then zooming in on the final image which is like you know classic to zoom in on the urn right um but that's that's like the heart of the story i guess and it's between his knees so yeah i wanted that sense of movement i think and this is just the quirk of writing i guess is you revise the opening of every chapter probably more than you do page page seven of every chapter just because writers are lazy and we're always coming back to the same thing or whatever but yeah i wanted each each chapter opening to have a sense of of movement
00:13:39
Speaker
Yeah, you definitely have that. And I think, you know, even in just the, these like clauses building up on each other, right. And like after that um little parenthetical bit, and then even then there's some repetition as well, like noting how things have changed, how nothing was the same.
00:13:55
Speaker
There's even like half rhyme in there as well, which I think is interesting. um And that emptied urn snug between his knees, warm, that little comma warm. Not like, not the emptied warm urn snug between his knees or the emptied urn warm between his knees, but between his knees, comma warm.
00:14:11
Speaker
There's like, there's all this kind of pacing and the kind of, the idea that they're warm kind of suggests a number of things, right? You're like, is this metaphorical as well, right? there's something, there's like a heat to this moment of of going back, right?
00:14:24
Speaker
Yeah, then I feel like there's a lot like nestled in there. I think, yeah, because the warm is the weird description, like emptied and makes sense, right? So I think it's something about ending on like that weird, slightly discordant note.
00:14:36
Speaker
And yeah, it's interesting you mentioned the half rhyme because it's something I just quite like just because I like the sound of words. But I think originally had been driving up to the sit ledge and back.
00:14:47
Speaker
comma, his parents looking out at the passing view. um But in to terms of situating the reader again, I've added in ah driving up to this s ledge and back to the farm because I wanted you know to make it clear where we're going to and from.
00:15:01
Speaker
But there was a nice like farm and warm noting nothing. I think it just makes the sentence sort of glide past slightly easier with less friction. And if I was, as I was saying about the sort of movement in terms of the content, I think that helps with the sound too.
00:15:17
Speaker
Yeah. But the idea of like there being no friction in the sentence when this novel is like full of friction, right? It's like, it's just full of people. rubbing up against each other in weird ways, up against history, up against like politics, up against the past, right?
00:15:31
Speaker
So like there's um there's something maybe deceptive about the softness of some of these lines that then you're like smuggling in stuff. because And I guess there's also like not every reader is going to know what Sutledge means, right? They're going be like, wait, what right there are sort of a couple of words like, okay, I know where we are, we're in India, probably.
00:15:48
Speaker
on Air India, but maybe, maybe. And then you've got this word. there's kind of little moments of kind of like things that are held back or not explained, which I really appreciate. um When you have, he'd ask his BB about the well.
00:16:00
Speaker
I don't know. I'm sure I've read books where like they're explaining BB as a word. and And there are interesting ways in which you're not doing that, which I like. But yeah, so there's kind of like, what am I giving the reader? What am I holding back? What am I letting you figure out? What am I, there's like a push pull.
00:16:14
Speaker
Yeah, absolutely. I think, I mean, I'm someone when if I don't know a word in a book, like I'm not talking about like words from other languages, but just like an English word that I don't know. I'm normally just like, I'm not going to really stop and like Google it. I'll just be like, oh, i can sort of get the vibe of what that's supposed to be.
00:16:31
Speaker
And I think it totally works the same way when there are little bits from other languages. And if it is like a key thing, I do trust like a reader would just would just Google because I mean, who doesn't have their phone in their pocket when they're reading? Yeah.
Themes in 'Sarasvati'
00:16:43
Speaker
so yeah i think for me if i was to stop and explain like uh driving up to this ledge a river in punjab de like you slow the pace and then you lose you lose the sort of what what you're trying to gain i guess yeah for sure and then this last sentence of that paragraph but here it was comma water colon a reflection he looked down at himself looking up you you suddenly do some, like, A, we haven't had colons yet. the the gra The punctuation is doing something a little bit different, but like, but here it was, like, what's the it in that sentence? We've just heard about this urn, right? We've heard about so many things. Like, what is the it?
00:17:22
Speaker
Here it was, water. So you get that W alliteration again that we had at the beginning. Here it was water, a reflection. like the water is a reflection. You're like, huh? Not it is reflective, but it like it is a reflection of something. He looked down at himself looking up, which is a beautiful image of this like inversion.
00:17:41
Speaker
A looking at himself, but also like looking at the past. I don't know. And then even like the kind of reflection in the sentence, right? That colon, I feel these two sentences like are reflecting each other in some kind of way. ah Yeah, I sort see the colon like a equal sign in a,
00:17:57
Speaker
equation if that makes sense so it is a kind of reflective point where one side is equal to the other so yeah so then you've got the water equals the reflection but there's also he's reflecting on the water not just physically and what you're seeing but in he's thinking about it and the sort of other the other meaning of the word but I think I just yeah I like the rhythm of this and maybe now I'm like maybe Colton Tavines just figured it out and I'm yeah but after that long sentence having this like two two shorter ones which I've sort of broken up with with punctuation yeah
00:18:34
Speaker
Yeah, which is very different from what we've had before. So like again, we're in an unexpected place. But yeah, reflection as both literal and as this kind of introspection runs throughout each of the chapters, really.
00:18:47
Speaker
And then the second paragraph, he'd asked his baby about the whale last time he was in Punjab when he was a child. So again, like we with a bit of a zoom out again, it had been dry for as long as she could remember. She'd said his dad translating.
00:19:00
Speaker
Here is where I'm going to be, you know, the person that talks about indirect discourse. I wonder, I had the question of like, why many of the chapters are in the third person, right? Not first person, like what that's doing. I think there's an interesting thing happening there.
00:19:14
Speaker
So it's already indirect discourse. It's like, you're not giving us speech marks here. it's also, she'd said his dad translating. So like, it's even like a double remove from what the BB had said, right? So there's something about distance as well.
00:19:29
Speaker
for the narrator and the characters that we're witnessing like I could easily see this book as just being like what is it six or seven first person narratives right but like you don't give us that you don't have to reveal why you've done that but I'm just interested in like what that does for you I guess on a linguistic level yeah well in terms of this sentence and uh sort of microcosm or whatever she'd said his dad translating like as two different bits of it is there to sort of, one, it it explains very early on that he can't speak Punjabi, so the language of his grandmother.
00:20:02
Speaker
and So they need a kind of person in between them, a conduit to sort of communicate, right? And you get that sort of, by like you're saying, that extra level of remove in the in the sentence, I think just drills at home maybe that like this isn't what like if we did have it in speech, the reader would first assume,
Narrative Techniques
00:20:19
Speaker
okay, so they're just speaking.
00:20:22
Speaker
And then if you had that after, I don't think it would make sense. But in the indirect way, it kind of, it makes sense because he's sort of summarizing a memory of, of a communication. In terms of the third person, i think it is sort of my maybe my natural way of writing.
00:20:36
Speaker
But I think that's also because my natural impulse is not to stay with one character all the way through a story, like in a kind of like linear way. um I'm always interested in other people in the room, like the minor characters and stuff like that.
00:20:50
Speaker
And being in third allows the movement. And I do see that free and direct discourse as a kind of is the sort of cheat code that a novel can do that no other form can. Do you know I mean? Or not not a novel, but like ah prose, right?
00:21:03
Speaker
It's like this, but and i I do believe in if you're making a piece of art, you should justify the form in the content. So like the reason this is a novel and not film, beyond the fact that I don't have millions of pounds of financial backing,
00:21:17
Speaker
is that like I'm able to move between people's points of view and their thoughts and all this kind of stuff. And another thing, and it may be a bit of a spoiler, but there is a first-person character that comes in later in the book, and I wanted to hold off on that in this sort of fun way.
00:21:34
Speaker
i never really like wrote poetry, but in university, I remember ah we did a course in poetry, and the lecturer said, you know, you should always should always be sort of thought through moment as in when you introduce the I in a poem.
00:21:50
Speaker
um It doesn't just happen, you know what mean? And I i always liked that kind of sort weird sort of narrative tension of when, oh, now we know so-and-so is speaking or whatever. So I wanted to play with that with the novel too.
00:22:02
Speaker
Yeah, really interesting. But yeah, that moment is is a very striking one, but having the most of the novel in this third person, like you say, like free and direct is quite a capacious way of being in different people's minds and like filtering through.
00:22:16
Speaker
but I just think that was like a really beautiful moment early on where you're telling us kind of what the narrator can and can't show us and... who's speaking and when and whose thoughts and whose voice and I think that's like it's just a very small way of telling us some of that information and like the farms around Hakro relied on electric pumps to survive again like the well being dead electric pumps can survive as though they're also alive there's like some like liveliness to things that we assume aren't alive and that that's really interesting to me not least because as I was reading this book
00:22:49
Speaker
I've also been reading um Robert McFarlane's new nonfiction book called Is a River Alive? And the whole book is, can we think of rivers as having liveliness and life in ah in a language, you know, in a different kind of way from like human life or other kinds of life?
00:23:05
Speaker
I've really got to read that because one of the sort of impulses at the start of me doing this was um that because of the crazy levels of pollution and in the rivers in India, in the Yamuna, I think it was, they'd legally defined it as a living being, like ah as it gave it the legal state as of a as a human, as a way of being like, you could now, you know, if someone put loads of toxic waste in it you can sort of sue them or whatever.
00:23:31
Speaker
But yeah, and then obviously in the context of Indian rivers being deified already, I thought it was like, yeah, something so interesting that. So yeah, I've i've got to check that. that's That's just come out, right, hasn't it? Yeah, yeah. And there's like and i this is the one I'm listening to on Spotify because his good voice is really beautiful to listen to Like the first one is in Ecuador and there are and he kind of talks about indigenous...
00:23:52
Speaker
groups who have kind of argued the same thing, right? For kind of like the rights of ah natural spaces. And then he moves to India, but i can't remember where, I think it's in Southern India. i can't remember what he said the beginning. And then the third one is in indigenous land in like what is Quebec or somewhere in Canada.
00:24:06
Speaker
So yes, it was like reading those two alongside each other was really making me think about like what has life, what doesn't. And like the river is something both historical and mystical, but also has agency of its own in the book, right? In a kind of way.
00:24:22
Speaker
Yeah, yeah, yeah. and I think um something I was interested in too is like the the notion of animism and stuff like that. I got quite into sort of reading about animism, not just it like, I don't believe in, you know, spirituality or stuff like that, but I think it's an interesting thing for a writer to sort of feel like animist text should be part of like a syllabus or something, because it's something about seeing a fundamental like richness to everything, if that makes sense, or like add all like an interconnectedness, right? Like the fact that we're speaking through ah computer right now that's like, isn't just a computer, but it's also like loads of metals and bits that have come from mines and who who who worked in those mines and how far has it traveled and who designed it. Like it's all like connected.
00:25:10
Speaker
um And I think there's a lot of sort of good narrative goo in that. If I was titling these episodes, I'd call this one narrative goo now. That was great.
Interconnectedness and Themes
00:25:18
Speaker
Okay. But the intermingling of all of this stuff, right? That is the novel, right?
00:25:23
Speaker
that you're doing like The novel as a whole is the intermingling of people, places, times. And what might feel like a very big sweeping heavy kind of thing, like actually feels very light in this book. And I'm not, I'm quite interested in that.
00:25:38
Speaker
You know, it could easily feel like here's the big historical sweep novel, but like it doesn't feel that way. And these opening paragraphs kind of give you a sense of that lightness as well as giving you all the history.
00:25:50
Speaker
There's again, like loads of sounds like the perfect plastic roots. I feel like that was just like a one-time little sentence here, like perfect plastic roots. Again, like roots aren't plastic.
00:26:01
Speaker
So again, this intermingling like what's alive, what's not. And then even the cigarette, which she didn't smoke, is the which i love in that and line. But even like candles, sheltered, small, shift, shrine, cigarette smoke, like that illiterate, you know, the S sound runs through there and it's really soft like the smoke, right?
00:26:21
Speaker
It's so interesting, isn't it? I think it's maybe a wider thing on close reading of like, there's a thing going on, right? There's sheltered in a small makeshift shrine on one side of the Samadhi. Like, it's definitely there, but I couldn't tell you why.
00:26:33
Speaker
Like, I guess it does, there is a kind of whooshing of the smoke. Not that smoke makes a noise, so it doesn't really work. ah But yeah, I think, like, I can imagine myself as a sort of A-level student underlining that and being like, ooh, something going on here.
00:26:50
Speaker
And maybe this is a sort of death of the author moment where I'm like, I have no clue what was going on there. just sounded good. The sound has emotive effects, right? Like sound isn't just sound is I guess.
00:27:02
Speaker
I was what I'm trying to say on this podcast is like, there is stuff happening in the level of language that has an effect on you but on me anyway, if no one else on me. And you get that even like in the image of when she was done thinking she'd flick the butt into the opening one more piece of confetti, like those T sounds, right?
00:27:17
Speaker
Even you're not consciously doing that, your brain is going flick, but confetti has those sharp T sounds, right? It's sort of like, you know, the sort of downbeats and upbeats on drumming or whatever, like definitely there are bits that stick out. And then I often think of like, because I'm not a very fast reader, but people who are fast readers do just sort jump from the keywords, don't they? Like, you know I mean?
00:27:40
Speaker
And it's sort of only seeing the sort of the up notes rather than the down. um So they would go, yeah, flick, butt, confetti. And you you do get the sense of... what's going on just by those kind of bits that stick out and I do think like perfect plastic roots which was a few lines earlier it does annoy me when I reread it because it sticks out but like it's supposed to but I've read it like a thousand times every time it sticks out and you're like oh it's annoying that that sticks out because it's almost like a bit of like an unruly bit of hair or something but I'm like but want to draw attention to something not
00:28:13
Speaker
not being quite right. It's the same with like the urn being warm and ending on warm, ending on perfect plastic roots, ending on confetti. It's like often I think the sentences here are like tending towards something that doesn't quite fit in the north in the way it should be.
00:28:27
Speaker
And yeah, that's why I sort of wanted a sort of slow disquieting opening maybe. And I think, I hope that kind of contributes to it. For sure. And then that disquiet, I guess, becomes more explicit when you have his parents had explained that the shrine was a samadhi.
00:28:43
Speaker
Tradition, his mum said. Superstition, his dad. It was about honouring ancestors. They agreed, remembering the dead. So like you've got this tension of like traditional superstition. which is one of the dynamics of the book, right? how Where do we sit in that like fake binary, if you like? Because actually, ah kind of you know it goes in different ways.
00:29:02
Speaker
But then they agree upon something, right? it was about honoring and remembering the dead. And that also seems like a tagline for the book, right? that like That the book is trying to honor ancestors as well as figure out what's going on there. What is remembering look like? Who's remembering what?
00:29:18
Speaker
And I was waiting for the epigraph from Toni Morrison at the end, I feel like he's going to quote this essay by Toni Morrison at some point, right? Where she's like, when a river floods, it's remembering.
00:29:29
Speaker
It's like, right? Whatever the quote is. Water has perfect memory and is forever trying to get back to where it was. Something like
Theme Emergence in Writing
00:29:35
Speaker
that. Yeah. Right, that essay is perfect because she's talking about this is what happens when colonialism and settlers change a landscape, right? Like if you change the course of a river, it is going to go back to where it once was.
00:29:49
Speaker
And then you're going to complain about that? Like this is you, you did this. Yeah, I think um Amitav Ghosh is really good on stuff like that with sort of how... town planning and stuff ah in colonial times just goes against like the way things had always been, right? Like you didn't you wouldn't build a city by the ocean because it's going to get flooded.
00:30:10
Speaker
Like that's just basic, you know, you build London weigh way in on the Thames and then you can still get out to sea, but you're safe. And yeah, now we're seeing consequences of all those things in places like Jakarta. and But yeah, no, that Toni Morrison quote was a very like,
00:30:25
Speaker
one that early on I was like oh she gets it. Yeah so I was excited to like just see a little mention of um that later on but the idea of again like everyone interpreting the river in certain kind of ways right and ah both interpreting like signs and signifiers of this thing right water in the well must be the Saraswati right like it's like there's no for some people there's no question about that or all of these kind of appearances are like signs of things even the kind of climate eco chapter it's like what are the signs of our destruction the signs of the change i don't know there's lots of speculation going on by most of the characters about what what do these signs mean and i think you're kind of building that in to the language too yeah i think yeah the sort of tradition superstition like the same sort of thing like on either side of a colon type thing of like two sides of an equation
00:31:14
Speaker
And like, they obviously sound quite similar too. And yeah, this sort of binary thing that and sort of started the book, I thought was quite interesting. I don't know how you feel about this, actually. I'm interested, like, of like novels having theses.
00:31:28
Speaker
Because I'm sort of like, I don't think a novel should have a thesis. Like, I don't think it should have a thing that sets out to do and then try and prove. However, like when you do close read and opening, it's there, isn't it? Like, is there some sort of murky thesis here, I think, maybe?
00:31:44
Speaker
Yeah, even in that next bit where says his left ear was yet to pop from the flight, his body caught between varying
Symbolism and Imagery
00:31:50
Speaker
pressures. And I was like, well, those are the pressures of his parents, right? Like the varying pressures of the two of the spectrum. And whether that's a thesis or whether it's like you're staging an idea,
00:31:59
Speaker
right like it's maybe how i think about it i'm putting this idea on the page and letting it play out rather than arguing for something i mean i've read books that clearly argue something and i'm like well these are obviously less good books in my mind right because they're too didactic or too direct in what they want to do right whereas i think There's just like a staging of some ideas.
00:32:19
Speaker
But even like, that's why I said a kind of like fake binary, right Because like tradition or superstition, like there's there's a middle ground of like, what is belief really? you know what I mean? like and And what does this ah return of this river mean or the possible return of this river? And like, what does that mean?
00:32:33
Speaker
signify and then and then we return to the body right at the very end a bead of sweat dropped from his lip into the dark the sun eclipsed on the surface by a shadowy face beautiful sounds throughout there right this s and the c's again you keep coming back to the same sounds through the passage it's almost like a poem right like the recurring of certain soundscapes and so we return to his body which I feel like is important because that's where he kind of started but then yeah there's little tab right featureless featureless like oh uh he could have been any number of people before him reaching for water kind of devastating but also telling in a way right like he is just one of many that we're gonna get in this book yeah and I think it's um
00:33:12
Speaker
when you have a sort of shift like that from the very like physical to slightly more abstract right i think it's important that the abstract thing is still accurate so if you are bent over and the sun is behind you so the sun eclipsed on the surface then that would be like backlit on you. So like, I was sort of trying to really physically see it and I'd be like, well, you wouldn't see the features of your face.
00:33:37
Speaker
um You would just be a kind of silhouette, if that makes sense. And yeah, then it sort of tied in, I thought nicely with the idea that like, if this well had been in use, which obviously it had been like however many years ago, um and it's on his family plot, the family plot of land,
00:33:54
Speaker
yeah it's sort of i just felt this sort of connection come through with like him doing the same thing that had been done by his ancestors yeah and yeah yeah exactly I just feel like that featureless has like such a like an edge to it but in that moment you wouldn't see his feature at the same time like no he's a fully fledged person and he's actually like is he you know in the in the story he's he feels like lost in various ways right and kind of caught between different worlds it could also be a slight maybe subconscious joke from me and that I don't describe anyone's physical appearance really in the book or in any of stuff really I sort of if I do it's because it's maybe oh you've got to remember that guy with the glasses or compared to the one without the glasses but they are in my head all featureless and look however the reader wants them to look I don't even think about that which is interesting because you describe like their bodies in intense detail throughout the book like but not necessarily like features in a way right
00:34:48
Speaker
Yeah, it's kind of a pet peeve of mine. when you it it It might be somewhere around this point in a book when they would sort of stop the flow of what's happening and be like, he had brown eyes. and And it's always like, but does his brown eyes mean anything? Kind of like, so yeah, I sort of, and it might be something the way like I've sort of contradicted myself too now, because earlier I said I'm quite a visual reader or a writer, but yeah.
00:35:13
Speaker
No, but it's the visuals of like the scene, right? I mean, is you know, not to like jump ahead and spoil it, like for much of the next scene, like he's naked on the roof of somewhere, right? Like his body is actually very visible, but the specifics, I guess, are like how we're imagining, right? But you're right. Like it is a very, I hate when people say books are cinematic. Like, I don't know, but like, but it is very visual. is very like, you see like an entire world here.
Writing Practices and Routines
00:35:37
Speaker
I sort of see the third person maybe, yeah, if I had to compare it to another form, less like a movie where you see all the characters and more like one of those video games where you're sort of floating behind the character. Like you're not actually like seeing the eye, like through the character's eyes, but you can sort of see them walk around with their gun or whatever.
00:35:56
Speaker
um Yeah, over their shoulder. Yeah, there are not too many guns in this book. But anyway, I won't spoil any of the rest of it. Okay, so where and when do you write?
00:36:07
Speaker
Do you have practices? Do you have rituals? Do you do on phone, hand? Like, what what is the setup for you? Yeah, the setup is very all over the place, um especially for this book. I was writing it while working full time.
00:36:23
Speaker
One thing that sort ran all the way through each redraft was a kind of energy and compulsion that I had to get the story out quickly. In a sense, like it so it took me five years, but like in a sense that like real world news stories are constantly catching up with what I was writing.
00:36:38
Speaker
and the sort of speculative elements so it was like I'd wake up I'd work before work and then on my lunch break I'd go off and switch laptops and then after work I'd stay out at one point I got like a prep subscription for free just because it was like I was working in central London and it was like wherever you are in central London there's a desk and a coffee and a prep so i was using that and then I sort of started going to libraries and stuff instead But no, rituals never worked for me. I think one thing that does help is maybe a slight commute in a sense, like rather than just rolling out of bed and sort typing at home, I think it helps maybe to go on a bus to a library or something like that, where you can sort of separate and enter the zone and in a sort of way. Yeah, it's definitely fitting it around making money, but maybe further down the line. or
00:37:30
Speaker
Because I always love when you sort of read interviews with writers and they're like, I wake up. And I do 50 words and then, you know, and I run in the park or something. And then I'm like, that's enough because it takes me a year and then I'll end up with a lovely sliver of a book.
00:37:44
Speaker
So, yeah, of course you do if you if it's it's sort of self-sustaining thing. But yeah, I think little sort of scraps here and there piece it together. But always on a laptop then.
00:37:54
Speaker
Yeah, yeah. I don't write by hand. um And on my laptop, I'll always have two windows and side by side. um and one is like the draft they currently have and then I'll on the right is a blank page and I'll just rewrite the entire thing so I think that's a key part of my practice maybe it's like basically never doing track changes or like like ah if I do get track changes from an editor I'll have to rewrite the entire thing because otherwise I'm just sort of glazing over the problems and like just fixing the bits that are like clear problems if that makes sense and I think in the repetition like the constant rewriting but the entire book like
00:38:31
Speaker
I don't know how many times over I did, it was like a lot. it just keeps you active in it in terms of if there are kinks in a sentence or like bits that don't quite make sense, you've got to retype that entire thing and then you're like, okay, well, I should probably fix it now.
00:38:46
Speaker
But I think I'd be a lot quicker if I just sort of read through, put the track changes in and then later on made those track changes. But I think a lot more would slip through the cracks, maybe.
00:38:56
Speaker
so yeah so oh yeah, on my laptop screen, I've got those two windows. And when the right-hand side is filled up with the new draft, I then move back to the left and then start again and just keep sifting and sifting.
00:39:07
Speaker
Wow, that's a lot. How many words is this book? Oh, 120,000 maybe. and and twenty thousand Something like that? I can't remember. Yeah, I'm i'm a very quick type, although i get I've got told off, ah recently joined the London Library for a year, got like a free year, which is great.
00:39:24
Speaker
I was going to say bougie what? I know, it's so bougie, I love it, but Yeah, I got told off by the guy next to me like, oh, can you please ah type a bit quieter? It's ridiculous. Because I sort of get into a bit of a fury. um So now I'm a bit ah slower writer and more self-conscious, maybe.
00:39:42
Speaker
That's fascinating. Because, I mean, we started off with like you typing out other people's stuff. So it's interesting that you're also typing out your own in that really methodical way. right Yeah, yeah. every single person I've spoken to you so far like has such a different way of doing it that is really nice because it means like all those books like this is how you must write no throw out the window like there is no model there is just write when you can write and do it in the way you do it right it works for me I don't think it will work for everyone yeah do you remember first writing when when did you first say to yourself like oh I want to write yeah well I actually um
Transition to Writing
00:40:18
Speaker
I wanted to do like art and like printmaking and stuff like that, but at A level, I didn't get the grade. ah to get to get into uni so then I sort of pivoted and was like oh well I'm good at English Lit so maybe I'll try and do creative writing as a kind of like it's also creativity and I remember like when i had to do the art pieces I got less and less about the actual like making of the piece and more about the like the write-up that you would have to do about it and I'd be like I feel like I could express myself more in that than I could in like
00:40:50
Speaker
you know, because reached this sort of limit of like what my hands could do. so yeah, so then I was applying for university and the entrance was like, you have to write a short story, I think. And that was the first story I wrote. I was like sat down.
00:41:03
Speaker
ah can't remember much about it. i think, well, actually remember I've, My first dream of the story was that it was going to be like set on a bus and it would basically like you kept moving from one character to the other, kind of the way like, you know, that Richard Linklater movie Slacker, like it just constantly like and that's sort of the start of my wandering gaze is maybe.
00:41:22
Speaker
But I kept failing at it. So then I ended up with this really small sliver of the story, which was um a bit more you know simple. But yeah, that's that's when it started. And then at university, I got the bug and was like, well, I've got it.
00:41:35
Speaker
This is really fun. Yeah, I think that's, yeah, the thing that's kind of lost, I think, when we talk about it and that it is a fun way to spend your time, like just sit down imagining things.
00:41:46
Speaker
I love it. I know you said you've done like workshops and stuff, but do you teach any lessons on creative writing that you want to share? i think in terms of the first draft, I think that's what I'm quite interested in. Like, I think that's the kind of roadblock for a lot of people.
00:41:59
Speaker
i think a lot of the time you're trying to get your head outside of your head so you can do the thing and then you can come back. So, yeah, one one way to think about it is that the sort of first draft is like a scaffold that you build that will allow you to eventually build the building and then afterwards you'll remove it. That makes sense.
00:42:15
Speaker
And there's a sort of Philip Roth quote I love, which is like he needs ah something like months of freewheeling play to get to a line that feels alive or something like that. And then he'll discard those hundreds of pages and then start from there, which is a kind of practice of someone like who sells lots of copies would be able to do.
00:42:32
Speaker
ah um But I do believe in that freewheeling play. like It's got to feel fun. like If you're not having fun, the reader definitely won't be. And then, yes, so if you sort of see the early stages of writing as a kind of,
00:42:45
Speaker
the sort of fuel ship, like the fuel pack on a rocket ship that's helping you get out of the atmosphere, which is, you know, the gravity of self-doubt is trying to pull you down. But you've got to burn through it and then jettison all that stuff and then you'll be out and in the lovely space.
00:43:01
Speaker
But yeah, so I sort of, I really believe in just writing and getting the words down and feeling ah youre feeling in the rhythm of it and stuff like that and you'll enter a story. um But I think where people maybe go wrong is like expecting...
00:43:15
Speaker
story to start where you start. What books do you want to recommend
Book Recommendation
00:43:20
Speaker
to listeners? They could be new things, old things, things coming out, stuff you go back to Well, one that I have right here, which I'm still, you can sort see how far through I am, is ah Lonesome Dove by Larry McMurtry, which is a sort of I think I've recommended it somewhere else and was probably a long time ago and that shows how long it's taken me to get through But I say that in the best of ways because it's this really expansive Western. It's basically like a cattle will drive from Texas to Montana and these sort of two guys running the cattle drive.
00:43:57
Speaker
um And it's so like every page has like, it's like witty throughout. So it's just like got that kind of, um, sort of looking at life askew kind of way.
00:44:08
Speaker
But there's always, like, he's constantly expanding on the characters. Like, there's maybe, like, 20 major characters. And, like, you always feel like you get you understand something a bit more about them after every page, if that makes sense, which is something like I find quite interesting where sometimes in a book it feels like you get the kind of dump of who the character is through like backstory or something, and then you move on.
00:44:32
Speaker
And then I think he just does a good way of it dispersing it out. and And yeah, talking about free and direct discourse, I think he's he's yeah really good at like constantly moving between characters.
00:44:42
Speaker
so yeah I think yeah and I love a good western movie this is like the opposite of a western in a sense that in a western movie especially like the spaghetti westerns it's sort of all about forward momentum and like concision and there's that clean narrative where it's like there's the gun the girl the bad guy whatever and you know where you're going and this is like it is a forward momentum because it's literally you know moving the cattle from Texas to Montana but it's like so rambling and like discursive and like takes like takes them like 200 pages to to leave the town they start in so so it's sort of like everything I would sort of say you should do in a book but you love it yeah I've yeah it's always been like I'll read it one day maybe when I'm old I don't know I'm in that period of my life from like if it's over 400 pages i haven't got the time there's too many things to read I know
00:45:32
Speaker
Yeah, so i so I sort of keep it here as I sort of, I return to it every now and again. And then I'm like, yeah, listening to that. Amazing. Went about and about. and That's a great recommendation.
Podcast Conclusion
00:45:42
Speaker
Well, thank you so much, Gannik, for joining me today. It's been a real pleasure.
00:45:46
Speaker
Thank you. It's been a lot of fun.
00:45:50
Speaker
Thank you for listening to this episode. Please subscribe if you haven't already, leave a review and share with people you know. You can also follow the show and me on Instagram at booksupclose and on YouTube.
00:46:03
Speaker
And if you can, please do fill out the feedback form linked in the show notes. It's really helpful
00:46:10
Speaker
You can get show transcripts and more information by subscribing to the Substack. This show is made possible by an Impact Accelerator Award from the University of Hertfordshire and the Arts and Humanities.