“Sometimes I think the commercial aspect of writing and the humanistic aspect are at complete odds”

A Conversation with Atharva Pandit

Illustration by Shyamli Singbal

Atharva Pandit’s Hurda is one of the finest debuts to come out of India in recent years. A literary take on the crime procedural, inspired by a real-life case in Maharashtra that remains unsolved, the book has been longlisted for various honours including the JCB Prize and the Godrej Literature Live Award. But beyond the acclaim is the actual quality of Pandit’s writing, which is at once literary and fluent, polyphonic and polished. Through the eyes of its protagonist, who is a journalist investigating the murder of three young girls, the book showcases the pervasive misogyny at the heart of modern India with precision and compassion. I sat down with Atharva to talk about the novel, the trials and tribulations of writing, journalism and various other things.

I wanted to start off by hearing about the genesis of the novel. I know it was inspired by a real-life case in Bhandara, Maharashtra, and there’s a long history of writers turning real crimes into compelling fiction. So what was the process of turning it into a book? 

Like you said, this is a real incident that happened back in 2013, when I was only 16 or 17. I think looking back, I am a bit conflicted about how I felt because over the years my views of it have changed. I read about this incident in an article by Smita Nair in the Indian Express, a two page feature that was really good. But the article really affected me and one of the first thoughts that came to mind was that I need to write about this. 

At that point of time, it seemed natural but now when I think about it, I’m a bit conflicted because I don’t know if that’s the first thought one should have when confronted by such a tragedy. Of course, as someone who really wanted to be a writer it is one of the first things that came to mind, but now I’m not sure how I feel about this. I suppose that this conflict also made me think about the response of writing about an incident as heinous and grave as this.

I started writing about it because I felt very deeply about it, and writing can help us to process what we think about something. And this internal doubt also helped me to develop the character of the protagonist, who is a journalist who goes to investigate this case. At the time I was also watching and reading things which made me feel this was the only way to respond to something so grave as a writer. I think being so young also made it feel more urgent, and I didn’t doubt myself because it was an interesting story.  

I don’t remember who wrote this but there was a piece I read online in which a writer’s brother is dying in hospital, and the first thing this guy does is to go to the hospital bathroom and jot down notes about what is happening to his brother. It’s something that really made me think about how we respond to tragedy. But I suppose it started with being touched by the news report and then grew into something more over years. Was that the correct response?

I think when something is so traumatic or intense, a common writerly response is to document it. Many writer friends often joke when something bad happens that ‘at least you’ll get a script or a book out of it’. But having been on that journey and with your book now out, how has your perspective changed? Also, with the frequency of these kinds of cases every few days or weeks, like the recent one in Kolkata, how does that affect you now? 

Ever since I started writing Hurda, not just publication, incidents like this keep happening far too often. Sometimes I feel like, oh, I’m writing about something that is clearly present in our society, but over the course of time that’s definitely not my first response because it’s not about me. When I read such stories and news reports, it’s sad and obviously I think it would be unfortunate if my only response would be ‘I wrote a book about this’. This incident happened in 2013 and it keeps happening again and again, so sometimes I wonder if anything has changed.

I think it comes back to writing and a sort of writerly ego that I try to keep to a minimum. I don’t think that I am the person who can help to make sense of society or problems that are so deep-rooted, but I have obviously been thinking about this for a long time. I try and learn from or examine my responses, or start questioning my own morals and ethics, questioning who I was at that point of time. 

Don’t you think that as individuals in a massive country, we can’t change much, so it is also an empathetic or human response to want to record it, not just a selfish act?  

Maybe. I think that’s true, but there is still a conundrum I have. If one of the first things you think is that you want to write this story, assuming that your intentions are empathetic and humanitarian, assuming you are critiquing society or its hypocrisy, you are still creating a product. You’re still going out there and saying ‘buy this product’. Every time there’s a longlisting or something promotional, I share it on social media, but the book is about three sisters who are no longer here, about a very disturbing incident which continues to happen in our country in many forms. 

Sometimes I tend to think, the commercial aspect of writing and the humanistic aspect are at complete odds. When I think about structure or narrative, I’ve taken a very serious incident and turned it into a story, which at the end of the day is a product that I hope would sell. So it feels a bit like an ethical dilemma. 

Very fair, but isn’t that also just a function of the marketplace, the system and not a reflection of you?

Yes, I try to be objective about it. Marketing and promotion is one aspect of a book, and I do think it’s good that we think about this as writers. But the fact remains that at some point, people throughout the process might hear about a rape and murder case and say ‘oh this is very marketable, very tragic’. Even though I’d like to think I’m above that, it is also the way we think in society today. 

But I think you are right that this is a problem which is an occupational hazard, and which also makes me think carefully about how I present a story like this. 

That’s interesting. I know you come from a journalistic background, where there used to be much stricter ideas of how to present a story than fiction has. Were you ever reporting on crime or doing other forms of journalism? 

I went to the Asian College of Journalism and then my first job was as a ‘deskie’ (desk editor) for MoneyControl, and I was mostly editing copy for other people. But I was very interested in reporting and getting stories out of people as well. Luckily I had very good bosses, who were encouraging when I wanted to report on my own time or write my own stories. I had an interest in politics but I was also always interested in crime. 

I remember for one story I spoke to a few policemen in Bombay, because I was very interested in their lives. Particularly the hierarchy and the lower level of constables and sub-inspectors and so on. I used to meet a few of them and they always told me about different aspects of their lives, how they view people and the personal and professional mix in such a job. Because I was at MoneyControl, we didn’t do many crime stories but it definitely informed my understanding of the system. 

Was the choice of having your protagonist, Chitranshu, be a journalist as well something that related to this and to your experiences? 

Well at that point of time I didn’t really consider it. I personally didn’t report on the Bhandara case at all, I went there and spoke to people much later. But it left me with a sense of hopelessness. What I was thinking was more about the narrative and the cultural image of a man going to a new place as a detective. I remember this meme I saw which said something like ‘is the cure to male loneliness being a detective and solving a strange case in a small town?’ Hurda, I hope, is also a critique of that cultural perception that many detective movies and shows have promoted.

But in the case of Chitranshu, I think it makes sense partially, because he is lonely and directionless in life, and this case is a way to move up in his career. He thinks that solving this case would be a grand thing to do. He is not the kind of character who is doing it for morality or the greater good, he just wants the clickbaity headline and the recognition. I don’t think he’d have the same dilemmas I was just referring to. I wanted him to be a bit of an a-hole and yet someone who looks at a story in a certain manner. 

Was this something that you think reflects the state of journalism now, drawing from the real world?

Well I don’t think journalism was ever truly about only ethics or the story as some of us would like. But now it’s definitely much more about numbers and propaganda and even less about those things. Despite this, there are some portals and publications which still have courageous reporters and good journalism. Despite everything they continue to bring out stories which matter, often at great personal cost. 

But yes, I think the move towards purely data and the way papers or portals are folding is concerning. I sometimes wonder whether there would still be a two page feature about a crime in Bhandara for a print newspaper or if it would just be a tweet or a post now. Though Indian Express is still a good paper. But I’ve worked in corporate media houses and there certainly is a narrative shift and more political influence. TV is absolutely the worst, but even newspapers and the internet have been affected by changing ideologies in the country. 

Yeah, undoubtedly. Another related question I had was one that is about both journalism and language. Was this case more of a furore in Marathi news? And how did the process from speaking to people in rural Maharashtra to turning it into a novel in English work? I guess I’m also asking more broadly about the relationship to language as someone who writes in English. 

That’s a really interesting question. I’ll come to the Marathi news part later, but in terms of relationship to language, I was in an English-medium school but often teachers would switch to Marathi. Most of the students spoke Marathi, and most of us would think in Marathi. It is my mother-tongue, but I was reading English books as I got older for a combination of reasons. We were told growing up that English is the language of professionals and success. We used to have a Scholastic Book Fair at school every year, which is truly where my reading and browsing of books began. I would always read in English even though most of the rest of my life was in Marathi. It was never an alien language for me throughout my life, until I went to Bhandara. 

Going there, even though it’s in Maharashtra, in India, just a few hours from Mumbai, it’s a completely different universe. Their dialects and how they speak Marathi is completely different, whereas in Mumbai it is much more inflected with English or Hindi or other languages. When I was writing, it was a problem I often came up against. Because I was translating sentences in my mind from Marathi to English, and I was familiar with both languages, I kept trying to make them more understandable. 

But as I came to later drafts, I realised that I need to stop doing that and that the books I write wouldn’t be like the books in English that I was reading. I started thinking about the way these characters would speak and being much more literal in how I conveyed their personalities through language, the variations in their language. Instead of trying to turn it into pure English, I realised the texture has to come through and the English we read and write doesn’t capture that. 

Initially I worried that people would think this is just ‘chutneyfication’ of English, but I think that the process of basically keeping some Marathi words in and maintaining the rhythm of those sentences was the only way that made sense to me. At that point I thought nobody will read this anyway, it doesn’t matter, so I started to write in that manner and kept the Marathi words in wherever I thought it felt natural. 

The language of the book evolved by experimenting and I was lucky that it made sense to my agent and editor as well. My editor in particular was clear that we were going to stick to this way, not to italicise or provide glossaries, and I am very grateful for that. 

Since we’re talking of drafts and language, something else I’ve been meaning to ask was about your writing process. Is it a daily practice, do you outline or is it however it flows? What are the habits you have around the process?

It’s funny, I was talking to a friend recently and telling her that honestly I don’t remember the process of writing the book. I know I wrote it, that there were moments when I was banging away at the laptop, but I really don’t remember the time period. You would think that when you’re writing something or finishing a story you will remember where you were, the physical aspect of things, but I don’t remember it too much. I suppose it was over a long period of time. 

When it comes to routines, I am not someone who writes everyday. I have often tried to, made schedules and come back home from office and tried to do 500 or 1000 words, but it never works. I think you write best when you’re away from it for a little while, when you’re immersed in the real world and obviously this varies a lot from person to person. But for me when I am working on a project and I’m away from the fictional world for a few days, I start getting the internal feeling to go and write. 

The one thing this is good for is that these natural gaps allow me to go back and read and realise if something is bad or not. I try to have some time between writing sessions. Say I’ve written a page or two on Thursday I come back to it on Sunday or the next week. If I’m lucky then I add to it and then the process repeats. But there are also times when it is flowing well, when I end up finishing a chapter or a story within a few hours. I think that kind of flow comes only when you’ve been working on that particular page or chapter or story for a long period. I think I’m constantly trying to search for that sweet spot when I can finish a chapter in one go, which might come tomorrow or in two months. 

I also think that routine is very different for different writers. Mine is very haphazard. But as you know, as writers we are constantly thinking about writing even if we aren’t doing it. In the case of Hurda, it happened over an extended period. I had the idea for almost ten years, I’d worked and thought about it on earlier drafts, but it was when had a break from work and the year I applied to South Asia Speaks that I was pushed to actually write the version that you can read today. I think the final draft took only three or four weeks to complete but it took ten years and many drafts for those three or four weeks to happen. 

I can relate. As we’re talking about writing process and routines and influences, I wanted to ask which authors or other works have influenced you, in terms of structure and choice of narrative and so on. I know you are a huge Bolano fan, because I always see you posting about him. 

Bolano is definitely a first love in terms of literature. I think influences just sort of naturally seep in. For example, the first time I came across the multiple narrator structure was in The Savage Detectives, which was a formative reading experience and maybe one of the reasons I’m so devoted to him. I don’t know why I felt so drawn to it and I suppose he has always been an influence even though I know there are drawbacks in his writing. 

But multiple narrators are everywhere, what I liked about him is that he writes differently. What Bolano does with this construct is the subtle and natural way he differentiates each voice and character, the way you get a sense within six hundred pages of not just the life of the characters who each narrator is talking about but also of their own lives. While the book might be ten people telling us about one ‘subject’, we also find out so much about their own lives, and that duality was a very interesting factor to me. 

But obviously, there are many other writers whose work has really inspired me. Meena Kandasamy’s The Gypsy Goddess is one whose structure I also really admired. I’m bored by stories that go from point A to B to C, I like the fragmented and natural aspect of information being revealed at different points. Which is not to say that is better or worse, it’s just what appeals to me. Fernanda Melchior’s Hurricane Season was also amazing, a lava flow of language that drives the pace. And it also deals with violence against women in a very different context. 

There are many books but also movies. I watch a lot of them, and one of my favourite films is Bong Joon Ho’s Memories of Murder. I think the atmosphere he creates and the way he tells the story was definitely an influence on me. Zodiac as well, because it has a similar aspect of obsessing over an unsolved case. Also Indian films like Black Friday and Ugly , which I watched years ago and sometimes rewatch. It’s not that I was actively thinking about the book while watching but I think while writing these are definitely things that have struck me or returned to my mind. There are also so many others, like 2666 or Once Upon a Time in Anatolia, many others that I’m forgetting that are somewhere in the back of my mind and suddenly occur to me while writing. 

I think it’s interesting that you talked about structure and fragmented narratives. I wonder if that has to do with technology and too much information killing narratives now. As a writer what is your relationship to technology and the internet? How does it inform or alter your writing?

I’ve been thinking about this a lot, because there are many writers who avoid the internet, don’t get too absorbed in the digital world, which I think is great. But I’m a digital person like most of us seem to be these days. I’m not a big social media sharer but I scroll reels often and sometimes get very interesting nuggets to gauge what people like or are thinking about. Within a few seconds or a minute! I am always trying to understand what it is people like about reels. It usually baffles me but it also fascinates me. 

You have a reel about someone just saying hello and looking into the camera and it can have two million views. What is it about this guy? Or this guy who just drinks every drink from the bottle in one gulp. Like alcohol, cold drinks, whatever. He just drinks it and he has hundreds and thousands of followers. So what is it that is getting all of this attention? People’s comments are also really hilarious sometimes. Of course, there’s also a dark side and there’s lots of horrendous stuff online, but for me it is a reflection of what society is thinking about or triggered by. 

I like to engage with it but obviously need to have limits as well. When I’m writing I inevitably try not to look at my phone and especially not if I’m in one of the rare moments when I am locked in. But sometimes people are so unhinged online that it is fascinating.

Unhinged is definitely the word. I guess to wrap up, now that Hurda is out and being received so well, what’s next for you? Is there a particular project you’re working on?

Honestly, I don’t know. Sometimes I am convinced that the thing I’m working on is what I will finish and expand and it will be my next manuscript. Then two days later I’m completely unsure of it and sure it’s not going anywhere. Like every other writer I have a few ideas in my head but I don’t have a certain project yet. Hopefully the things I am working on will turn into something in the future. 

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Atharva Pandit is a writer whose debut novel, Hurda, was published by Bloomsbury. His work has appeared in The Wire, Economic and Political Weekly, and various other publications. He was a South Asia Speaks Fellow in Fiction in 2021. 

Abhay Puri is a writer and the founder and editor of Hammock Magazine.