A Scholar's Long Shadow

Author Amitava Kumar spoke with India today about his new book, the immigrant experience and remembering Bihar. Excerpts:

- Achala Upendran & Chinki Sinha

The ‘Indian immigrant meets the West’ novel has been written so many times and with such varying levels of talent and skill that a reader could be forgiven for rolling his or her eyes at the premise of Amitava Kumar’s latest offering. Part fictionalised memoir, part academic discussion of history and memory and part erotic romance, The Lovers is nonetheless a testament to Kumar’s ability to make his readers think, even if against their will.

It is not an easy read, though the opening is simple enough. An Indian student goes to America in the eighties, and along with picking up a PhD, he goes on a quest to understand the concept of desire and love by sleeping with a number of women, most of them not Indian. It’s almost like Anurag Mathur’s The Inscrutable Americans, but with a twist—and that’s where things get more complicated. Our narrator may be as curious about this new world, but it is a touching curiosity— neither glamourised, nor ridiculed. Kailash, the protagonist, feels lost in his new land, and searches, perhaps unknowingly at first, for anchors. He searches for meaning by writing down new words and expressions, and eventually falls in with a group of eclectic students who are gathered around a central figure, a professor from Pakistan.