‘Encounter with Kiran’: Exchange between Kiran Nagarkar and Nayantara Sahgal, two of our angriest, coolest writers

Rajesh Sharma

THIS is a little, rich book about writing, politics, relationships, history. The first part is a selection of fragments from some emails written by Nayantara Sahgal and Kiran Nagarkar to each other mainly between 2014 and 2019. Sahgal’s crisp, economical narrative places the exchange in context. The second part is a supporting collection of articles, letters to political figures, an undelivered speech, a sensitive schoolboy’s political poem and a personal note on grief. Together, the two parts make the book a testimony to the times we live in. What can writers do in these times, Sahgal asks in the speech. They can write, she answers.

Nagarkar’s touchstone for our conscience is Kabir. “Would Kabir have managed to shake us awake and arise?” he wonders. In a world torn by sectarian self-assertions, he quietly and decisively concludes, in the last sentence of his last novel ‘The Arsonist’: “There is only one God. And Her name is life.”

The emails throb with life. After all, this is a personal exchange between two of the angriest, coolest writers of these times. The personal blazes again and again into the political, casting an unfavourable light on Bush and Blair, Trump and Obama. Nearer home, it is the fate of India both writers try to grasp and ponder over. That the world is sliding towards militant nationalism and post-truth cannot be a consolation for us, Sahgal says. We must stand out as an exception. That the book has been published without fear and is circulating unmolested should in itself suggest that disagreement and dissent are alive and respected. And that is a hard-earned fruit of courage and perseverance in the face of fear and organised hatred.

The dignified, restrained intimacy of the exchange reveals, without overexposure, a range of human emotions. There is pain, gratitude, rage, tenderness, anxious care, despair, humour — all evoked with astonishing ease, and naturalness. With sahaj, to use a word dear to the great Kabir. Beyond the exchange, it suffuses the framing narrative. And beyond the style, it shines in the things of the world chosen: great trees that are bodhisattvas, ordinary words that spell magic, mornings and birdsong.

For a discerning reader, this little book has more: quite a bit of laconic literary criticism of the writer’s kind. You get to see how a fine writer reads another writer. One remembers the letters Flaubert and George Sand exchanged. Here the scale is lesser, but the warmth and the kindness are as intense. A sweet, serious book.

Sahgal’s distinctive grace is best seen in the way she manages to keep the lights on Kiran. In an email, she says this about characters in a novel she is writing: “They don’t need me any more. They are doing their own thing.”

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