A Conversation with Amitabha Bagchi
Ashima Sood: So how come Above Average? Where does that title come from?
I'm not surprized that there are a few novels out in India over the last few years set in business schools and places like IIT. A new class of people is being created in these places, people who are trained to want certain sorts of success, aspire to particular things in life.
Amitabha Bagchi: At IIT when exam papers are returned, the class average is always revealed and you judge how well you've done by comparing yourself to it.
There's this possibly made up story a friend of mine told me in IIT. A professor came in to class to return exam papers and said: the class has performed very well in this exam, everybody has scored above average.
Ashima Sood: It reminds me of the town of Lake Woebegon in the radio show Prairie Home Companion where "all the women are strong, all the men are good-looking, and all the children are above average!"
Amitabha Bagchi: Now, there's the conundrum. It isn't possible for everyone to score above average. So what happens when you take a set of people who have been told all their lives that they are above average and put them in a situation where some of them have to fall below the average.
Ashima Sood: The paradox of meritocracy.
Amitabha Bagchi: The toppers and the bottomers are well clear of the average but for most others it's important to know whether they are above average or below average. That's what life in the middle is about, trying to figure out how badly off you are and where do you need to be to feel good about yourself.
This isn't competitiveness in the sense of a triumphal struggle between strong opponents. It's a struggle for survival.
Ashima Sood: OK, let’s get this out of the way: I have not read Five-Point Someone or the other IIT novel (I can’t quite recall it’s name) but how would you explain this rash of novels set in IIT-Delhi in particular? And also how does Above Average fit in that group?
Amitabha Bagchi: It's always interesting to see how old the protagonist is in the coming of age novel and where he or she is situated. It reveals what the author thinks is the most important formative experience or setting of his or her life. I'm not surprized that there are a few novels out in India over the last few years set in business schools and places like IIT. A new class of people is being created in these places, people who are trained to want certain sorts of success, aspire to particular things in life. They come from fairly diverse backgrounds, but end up running the same fairly limited set of races.
Your question is also interesting when you put this set of books (which includes Mediocre But Arrogant and Five-Point Someone and, now, Above Average) in contrast to a book like The Shadow Lines where the site of coming of age was essentially within the family. Definitely history plays a big role in that book but the central quest is an attempt to understand who you are with respect to who the people in your family are. That's what's different about these books, the journey to adulthood and the search for definition takes place in college not necessarily in the family. In Above Average I've tried to bridge these two settings.
Ashima Sood: I think that explains why Above Average seems to me doing more interesting things than the rash of other IIT books. How would you, as the author, characterize the USP?
In fact I have felt that English writing from India has been too concerned with large political narratives. The way I see it, the response to that is not go extremely personal and start writing psychological novels, but to find a middle ground.
Amitabha Bagchi: To give them their due, I think the others were visualized as "IIT books" whereas Above Average was not. It ended up being an IIT book because the themes I wanted to explore came out of my experiences at IIT and were best dramatized there.
Ashima Sood: As my Professor Lucy Corin puts it: "Fiction is always smarter than you." You can never quite pin it down. But you know I was struck by that point in the book where thinking about himself and his IIT friend Bhats, Arindam says: "Growing up Bengali and English-speaking in Delhi, we both absorbed the city’s fine-grained and destructive notions of class." That line does such a fine job of encapsulating the themes of this book. Can you speak to how this fits in the narrative/character arc of this book?
Amitabha Bagchi: Arindam implicitly understands that it's his relationships with people like Sheikhu and Neeraj - people who come from outside the English-speaking bubble - are what rescue him from the destructive notions of class he talks about. The encounters with Sheikhu and Neeraj and Bobby are encounters which many of Arindam's English speaking friends will not have till possibly later in life when they are much more formed people. These are encounters that even people like Bhats who went to IIT will choose to avoid. The whole book is about the importance of these encounters in Arindam's life, the window that they open for him. That window does not just out onto a world he has not previously known, it is a window which allows him to look within himself.
Ashima Sood: Would you say that Arindam's encounters with people from different class backgrounds are typical of the IIT experience?
Amitabha Bagchi: I don't know about typical. I wouldn't venture to guess. Writing a novel there's a danger of it being read as some kind of ethnographic tract. Especially when your setting is as specific as IIT. I want to avoid that kind of reading.
Ashima Sood: But that intersection of the personal and political interests me very much.
Amitabha Bagchi: Me too. In fact I have felt that English writing from India has been too concerned with large political narratives. The way I see it, the response to that is not go extremely personal and start writing psychological novels, but to find a middle ground. I'm hoping that I have found it here to some extent.
Ashima Sood: I think that balance works very well for me in Above Average. But as much as I enjoyed the personal narrative, I wanted to tease out the political. Those are the emotional and intellectual pleasures of novels, I guess.
Amitabha Bagchi: The political is there in this book. My take on the state of the nation in the mid nineties is definitely in there but hopefully it is hidden deep.
Ashima Sood: That puts me in mnd of something some New York Times reviewer said: the best fiction makes us more intelligent, more aware of what we knew without quite knowing it.
Amitabha Bagchi: I'm hoping you're saying this in the context of Above Average.
Ashima Sood: Maybe! But you know, one of the biggest strengths of this book for me was the way it echoed the voices of certain of my friends – their way of reasoning out life the same way they would reason out a math problem. Can you comment on how that voice – the voice of youthful reasoning – helped structure this book? I am thinking particularly about the seemingly episodic quality of many of the chapters. How does that function?