A Conversation with Amitabha Bagchi
Amitabha Bagchi: IIT is not the great equalizer. But it is a small equalizer. It is much less of a meritocracy than it claims to be but much more of a meritocracy than most other institutions in our society. I would love to believe the fiction that the entrance exam cuts across every single category and recognizes some pristine merit.
I imagine that if I had gone to IIT in the mid-eighties, speaking Hindi would not have been cool. And even in the mid-nineties, good spoken English won you the respect of many, but if you spoke only English you would be thought arrogant.
I would also like to buy into the myth that once these people are assembled at IIT all other markers fall away and they become some sort of pure scientists and technologists. That's not entirely true, and this is a criticism of IIT. But it's not entirely false either, and that is something I love IIT for.
Ashima Sood: At one point, Arindam, who is widely seen as the "Inglis boy" admits that "We speak in Hindi because it is not cool not to." Can you comment on the politics/aesthetic of language? And how does the IIT lingo figure in this tussle? That seems to me to draw more on the "Inglis"?
Amitabha Bagchi: The period in which this book is set (the mid 1990s) was a period in which the IITs got Hindi-ized. It was the early days of coaching class prominence (which continues today) and a time when larger and larger numbers of the students came from small towns. The fact that a lot of the slang is English-based is an artifact of an earlier time when kids came from the cities. When I entered IIT, for example, there was a music room in the hostel with a stereo system but the hostel's collection of tapes had reduced to one Chris Rhea album. My seniors told me of a heyday when the entire works of Led Zeppelin and Jimi Hendrix had been acquired at collective expense. With the coming of the Hindi speakers, these collections were allowed to deteriorate and by the time I got there, Chris Rhea sat alone in the cupboard, basically a fossil.
I imagine that if I had gone to IIT in the mid-eighties, speaking Hindi would not have been cool. And even in the mid-nineties, good spoken English won you the respect of many, but if you spoke only English you would be thought arrogant. And so those of us who came from the public schools of Delhi and wanted to fit in had to speak Hindi most of the time.
Ashima Sood: So the term "Inglis boy" is used as pejorative?
Amitabha Bagchi: It is but not completely. There is, hidden inside it, a grudging admiration for the person who owns English.
Ashima Sood: So how did all this lingo and the dynamic between Hindi and English affect your rendering of dialogue, for instance? That’s an issue I end up thinking about a lot in my own work.
Amitabha Bagchi: For the most part, I have stuck to simple but grammatically correct English with yaar thrown in here and there to syncopate the dialogue as needed. I've used Hinglish or grammatical variations only when they've had something to say about the narrative or the character's state of mind. After agonizing over the dialogue thing for a long time I decided that if I didn't take a common sense approach to it, I'd never get anything written.
Ashima Sood: By the way, I am very curious: what was your nickname at IIT?
Amitabha Bagchi: Nothing particularly interesting. People sometimes called me Baga. Some of my friends once decided that everyone should have a nickname ending in u and they named me Chiku. But it didn't catch.
The nicknames are crucial though. I met the guy recently on whom the character Rocksurd was based. He didn't have a nickname back then. When I told him the character is called Rocksurd, he was quite pleased with it.
The nicknames are crucial though. I met the guy recently on whom the character Rocksurd was based. He didn't have a nickname back then. When I told him the character is called Rocksurd, he was quite pleased with it.
Ashima Sood: Were you ever called "Inglis boy" at IIT?
Amitabha Bagchi: I can't imagine what would make you think I ever was.
Ashima Sood: Just guessing, you know. But something else that intrigued me. Given the various kinds of ambivalence Arindam has to overcome along the way, the book ends on this incredible note of celebration of the city How would you characterize Arindam’s understanding of Delhi towards the end?
Amitabha Bagchi: It's not just at the end that the city is celebrated, and it's not just a celebration of the city. Arindam feels a sense of intimacy with the city. It's a sense which the reader picks up throughout the book, I hope, and which he himself has to face up to in the scene at the end. More than celebrating the city, what Arindam does near the end is acknowledge that he loves the city. It is perhaps a side-effect of his loneliness that he feels so close to the built environment, to something which is inanimate - at least in the most literal sense. But whatever the reason for his attachment to the city, it is as strong as his attachment to any of the other characters in the book.
Ashima Sood: I loved the way you depicted Baltimore as well. Very brief but so evocative. I was interested in how Arindam is able to cross race/class boundaries in America. Because there is so much implicit racism among Indians in America.
Amitabha Bagchi: Yes, it's stunningly widespread.
Ashima Sood: I almost wished for more America.
Amitabha Bagchi: Hopefully you'll get that in the next book. I've been working on it for a while, but it's going to take some time to see the light of day.
Ashima Sood: Speaking of working on books, how did you manage your time while working on this book?
Amitabha Bagchi: I would write ten pages every six weeks. Take three days off and just write. Some people take a month off to write. I wouldn't be able to do that but it basically depends on your temperament I would finish writing one segment over three days then get back to my day job with a sense of relief.
Ashima Sood: OK, the million-dollar question: who is the ideal reader for Above Average?
Amitabha Bagchi: Hard question. I like to think that different kinds of readers will get different things out of it. There are certain things people in college can take out of it and certain other things older people can take out of it
Ashima Sood: What about IITians in particular?
Amitabha Bagchi: Current IITians will hopefully find some things which will make their experience easier. Future IITians will perhaps be wiser before they enter.
Ashima Sood: And non-IITians who do not plan to enter?
Amitabha Bagchi: ... will hopefully stop goading their children to study for IIT JEE against their will.