“At the end of the day, it’s a job like any other”

An Interview with Prayaag Akbar

Featured as one of our best South Asian titles of the year just passed, Prayaag Akbar’s Mother India is a novel that feels prescient and significant for today’s India. Just as he did with the dystopian Leila, Prayaag has been able to tap into the zeitgeist of virality, fake news, content creators, technology and polarisation in a manner of a natural. 

Focused on the stories of Mayank and Nisha, two young people in contemporary Delhi, and a social media ‘incident’ that lead to their paths crossing, it’s an apt snapshot of our current moment. I sat down with him (online) to talk about the novel, his writing process, inspirations and much more.

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I think a good place to start would be to talk about technology, particularly social media and content creation. In the novel, Mayank is working for a right wing content creator and the role of social media in politics and society is so relevant today. Was thinking about this current environment the genesis of the book? 

Not specifically, actually. I started off in quite an old-fashioned way, with the character of Mayank and the idea of Mayank seeing Nisha at a metro station, and that moment of infatuation. This was a while ago, in 2019 or 2020. When I started writing it, I was imagining Mayank working in the right-wing ecosystem but not for a YouTuber. Initially I had a few chapters that were essentially based on Mayank’s story, it didn’t have the alternating structure that it currently does.

Then, around when the pandemic hit or a few months after, I had written a few chapters but something about that time made social media feel even more relevant. I think devices became our source of information, entertainment, connection, a link to the wider world that was really amplified by the pandemic when we were all stuck at home. Of course it was big even before, but, at least for me, it really escalated during the pandemic. So then it seemed to me that Mayank seeing Nisha online felt more likely than at a metro station, particularly if he was looking for a girl’s image for online content. It felt more authentic that he would turn to Instagram and that led me to the current story. Once I started researching how YouTube creators function, it verified that and I began to rework some aspects of the story. 

That makes sense. So what was it that drew you to this world of YouTube creators? I know you’ve been a journalist for a while and I was wondering how you see the link between that and the new format of ‘creators’ or social media figures who are now a primary news source for so many people. 

Yes, it was definitely a commentary on the diminished impact of traditional journalism. I teach creative writing at a university, and when I was speaking to some students in my class, for some reason Arnab Goswami came up. None of them had any idea who he was, all well read and intelligent nineteen or twenty year olds. I was really surprised (lucky them!) and that was a moment of realisation for me. 

For a young person, of Mayank or Nisha’s age, they’re not watching TV or reading newspapers, they’re getting all their news from YouTube or Instagram or other places online. And increasingly, we all are too, even older generations. I have friends who run businesses but tell me they get financial advice from YouTube, which seems crazy but it’s very interesting how much influence these platforms have, and how much people are using them. 

So once I realised this, it felt like the right fit for the novel. I did a deep dive into some of these political accounts on YouTube, and the following they have is huge, on both sides. These are people who are having an outsize impact on politics, on elections. In a way it makes sense because there is no filter there, these people are free to say whatever they want, unlike a lot of the media. I don’t think that’s necessarily an indictment of these influencers, it’s also an indictment of the traditional media, of people feeling that its quite circumscribed. 

That’s a good point, though there are people who say that even the digital world and freedom on the internet is also being increasingly restricted in many ways. Do you think it still offers that freedom?

I think the internet offers space, offers community and opportunity for small media outlets. There is a flexibility or ability to do things that larger media sources are unable to do. For instance, I was recently at a lit fest in Kerala, and a young woman came to my session to ask some questions, she told me she worked with a small independent outlet started by a former NDTV correspondent which covers stuff that is counter to dominant or convenient narratives. 

When I saw her Instagram, there were like twenty thousand people or so following her political or cultural commentary, so there are clearly opportunities for individuals to carve out a niche. I don’t know how long it’ll last and there’s definitely censorship there too, but the scale of the medium offers a lot of space.

I wonder whether there is also a shift in terms of credibility of the internet. Perhaps because we’re older, I always had a certain skepticism about stuff read on social media, but in the novel, that doesn’t seem to be as much of a concern. For the characters, they aren’t worrying so much about what is true or biased or not, but you’re still able to carefully observe so much about the medium and its effects, which felt very honest. 

I think that was something I observed online. Because these internet commentators and influencers have such a fast turnaround time, the daily delivery and volume of videos makes it feel like it doesn’t matter what is true or what was said a few days ago, it’s about reaching as many people as fast as possible. In some ways this was true for earlier daily papers and other forms of journalism, but it’s been accelerated a great deal. You don’t always get the right take or to reach the most insightful places, but neither did newspapers twenty or thirty years ago. 

The difference with the internet is this immediacy is also accompanied by the longevity of being able to see what people said months or years ago with just a click, and there is such an overload of information. So there’s a fine line they have to balance and that’s what I tried to capture in the book. Though at the moment I am trying to stay away from the YouTube or social media news ecosystem after all the research I did. By the end, I was done because it’s debilitating and quite addictive, now I’m trying to return to just reading the actual newspaper or a PDF of it rather than multiple videos across platforms. 

That makes sense. I know we’ve talked a lot about content and journalism, but the final question about this point I had was about the end of the book. Without giving too much away, I think there’s a point being made about the ‘post truth’ environment and about the silencing of journalists, which is clearly relevant to India today. Can you talk a bit more about this element of the book’s conclusion?

So the character you’re referring to came to me because of my experience with stringer journalists. I have a lot of sympathy for them and they’re so important. When I was working from Delhi and Bombay, often you go to smaller towns or places and contact the local stringer who your editors might put you in touch with. These guys are fascinating - they have all the information about what’s happening on the ground, but often they can’t publish that locally because of political pressures or sensitivity. 

I remember once I’d gone to Jharkhand, and a stringer was so excited to give me all of these files about a coal scam when Shibu Soren was the Chief Minister. He had gathered all this data and folders that he had probably risked a lot to acquire, evidence of what was happening. At the time, in Jharkhand, it felt like a huge story and he just wanted me to break it. But when I went back, trying to get the story through the editors, it took two weeks and nothing passed. The general attitude of senior editors was almost apathy, like ‘this happens in Jharkhand’, and I wondered if it wasn’t actually such a big story. 

This happens a lot with foreign correspondents I’ve spoken to. Guys with NYT or Washington Post pay a high dollar rate to these local stringers to get stories, but once the foreign correspondent goes away, these guys are the ones in the firing line. Usually they deal with the fallout, and sadly the phenomena of whistleblowers or journalists who are taking on the real estate mafia or sand mafia or powerful people being silenced is not a new one. So I thought this dynamic, of someone who is risking so much in the place they live to report on the truth but getting nothing for it is something that needs to be talked about. 

Definitely. I wanted to move on to questions that are more writing focused, about your process and your structure. How did you come up with the alternating structure for the novel, and how much do you plan and outline versus letting the story flow? 

Well, structure is so crucial, and I’m always telling my students to think of it first. But if I’m honest, the final structure came to me after I’d reworked a couple of drafts. Earlier I was planning on writing a greater span of Mayank and Nisha’s lives, and something wasn’t working. My editor and my wife both picked up on it, and then all of the other stuff fell away when I realised that containing it within a smaller time span seemed to click. 

I wish I’d planned it out better, I might have saved a year or something! But it’s never easy. Even now, I’m planning my third novel and thinking I should lock in a structure. But I guess your process is your process, and mine seems to involve floundering about a bit until I come upon the thing that works. 

Actually, there was this Zadie Smith essay, I think, that says there are two types of writers. One who starts with a sentence and lets it unfold, and the other one plans every single chapter and element before they write the first word. I’m not sure it’s such a binary but I definitely lean toward the first type. I actually wrote the first sentence or had the idea for Mayank and Nisha when I was sitting in some workshop years ago, getting bored. I typed this long flowing sentence, started imagining while daydreaming, and that later evolved into the beginning of what the novel is today.

I suppose related to that, what’s your writing routine or schedule like? Do you write daily or does it vary according to the project? And how do you balance it with teaching?

I’d say I have a pretty fixed routine. I write almost every day, I wake up early and get to the desk almost immediately. I don’t need coffee or anything, I find that mornings offer the most space to write. I like to write every day, except occasionally on weekends when I try to spend time with my kid. When I’m teaching, the routine varies more. I teach only about three months of the year, so during that time I write much less. 

But at the end of the day, it’s a job like any other. If I don’t take it as seriously as I can, no one else is going to. I’m not some big ticket author selling my agent or publisher so many copies that they won’t survive without me, so I need to be self-motivated as a writer and keep the routine. I remember, I used to like the Art of Fiction interviews and what I noticed was that most of the writers I admired write every day, usually at a fixed time. If you don’t block off that time, you’re not really doing your job. 

Very true. Another question I had was about setting, and particularly about Nisha’s job at the fancy chocolatier. I thought the sections at the mall were very well-observed and revealed a lot about class and aspiration, and wanted to know a bit more about the way you selected that setting. 

I actually wanted to talk more about this. The mall is like this theater of the new Indian commercialism: it’s a fascinating microcosm of our society. Mall culture is relatively new in India - they’ve only been around twenty years or so. The malls were probably inspired by my time in Bombay and Delhi, the huge towering spaces they have now. But the way that they keep ‘undesirables’ out, the way they demonstrate changing Indian tastes and public spaces and class, is all very interesting to me. 

Even the choice to have her work at a high end Japanese chocolate store came from a combination of research and fascination. Chocolate is such a childhood thing, such a treat, but stores like this reflect the shift in ‘refinement’, moving up the ladder of consumerism and prices. I know someone who works in one of these companies, and I had a chat with them. It’s crazy the kind of stories they had: how much these products sell, the way people show up with cash or huge orders, how they’ve become a status symbol for events or weddings. 

So it was really interesting to me to imagine the life of someone who is earning not much more than the cost of a few boxes of these chocolates, the way they view people coming in to the store, the tensions and theater at play there. 

I really liked the way that was captured, as well as the aspiration of the people who work there.

Yeah, I think I can understand the various kinds of behaviours inspired by that environment. I wanted to explore the power dynamics at play, the naked ambition and get ahead at all costs mentality that it instills in some people. 

In many ways, this book is about the aspiration of young India, the kinds of jobs people are actually doing. We have this idea that India is booming, and in many ways that’s true, but the jobs that often drive that boom are these dissonant and banal ones. In some ways Nisha and Mayank are thriving, they’re earning more than their parents did at that age. But at the same time, this new economic power and agency comes with its own set of costs and pressures and social controls. 

The final thing I wanted to ask you is about reading and influences. What books were you most inspired by and what are some favourites that you always recommend? Do you lean towards classics or more contemporary work?

So it’s been a while working on drafts of this book, but I think it started with this Czech writer called Bohumil Hrabal. He’s a really great writer. When I first started writing about Mayank I was inspired by a novel called I Served The King of England. He has such a distinctive style, and covers a long time span where you see the transformation of central and Eastern Europe under various regimes. It’s told through a guy who starts off as a bell boy in a hotel, and it made me think about how Mayank could represent changing India. Obviously, things changed a lot since, and you have to have your own way of doing things, but it was certainly an inspiration.

Another book I read was Somerset Maugham’s Of Human Bondage, which is old-fashioned but also was really good at capturing one life. I also really enjoyed Sarah Bernstein’s Study for Obedience. It’s a study of minority, in a way, very powerful and disturbing and slim. But there are so many. Claire Keegan’s Small Things Like These was another huge inspiration because it showed me what a short book can achieve. 

I also really liked Paul Lynch’s Prophet Song. I like a lot of Joshua Cohen, Ben Lerner, and then older stuff like Steinbeck. I reread some things I liked before, I heard about this book by Susanna Clarke even though I never read fantasy and thought it was amazing, a book called Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell that’s about nineteenth century magicians. But I don’t think I have any hard and fast rules, I try to read as much as I can, as varied as I can. Classic or contemporary, there’s always a mix. You don’t want to sound like everyone else, so you don’t want to read only what other people are reading. 

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Prayaag Akbar is the author of Mother India and Leila, which won the Crossword Jury Prize and the Tata Literature First Book Award. He teaches creative writing at Krea University, and lives in Goa with his wife and son. 

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