Interviewed by V. Sudarshan

India’s suave spokesman at the ministry of external affairs on his debut novel, We Weren’t Lovers Like That

Q.Are you the first spokesperson at the MEA to write a novel while holding the post?
A. Probably not. And that's a comforting thought. 

Q. How long did you take to finish We Weren't Lovers...?
A. Three years and another ten to get to the point where I could do it in three. 

Q. Graham Greene did 400 words a day, Flaubert did eight. What's your average?
A. A daily word output is the enviable luxury of a professional writer. I write whenever I can. 

Q. When do you find time to write now?
A. Honestly, I don't. 

Q. Why a first person singular narrative?
A. It takes me deeper into the protagonist's mind, helps me sound more bitter, more lonely, reach for that last nuance. 

Q. Do you identify with the novel's hero?
A. Like him, I went to school in Dehradun, and like him, I once took the Shatabdi. But that's it. 

Q. Are you a compulsive re-writer?
A. Sometimes I do. At times, I don't want to remove a comma from what I wrote in the first go. But in writing, you learn to kill your darlings. 

Q. Do we see your short stories in print soon?
A. Just find me a publisher. 

Q. Is the art of writing short stories dying?
A. I hope not. A good short story is like a photograph: it captures forever where something changes forever. 

Q. What's your count of rejection slips?
A. I've not done too badly. I even have one from The New Yorker.  

Navtej Sarna's "We Weren't Lovers Like That" is not a shot of heady rum but tickling dash of soothing gin which doesn't give us a bad aftertaste. OM GUPTA speaks to the author to know the real taste of love and all that goes with it in this new publication... . 

IF NAVTEJ Sarna had not taken to writing, he might have ended up as a miniaturist. The graphic details with which he has filled his 214-page yet to be released debut novel, "We Weren't Lovers Like That" - published by Penguin India - speak volumes about his minute observations, sensitive portrayal, inner dimensions and above all how people around us behave and why. 

The novel is set in contemporary lives but it has a timeless universal flavour of places, persons and things. Time moves, life goes on but nothing changes. Wives like Mina with their infidelities were always there and will always be. There is Rajiv, for whom she deserted a 14-year marriage with the main protagonist (One won't call him the hero because there are no white heroes and black villains in the novel. All of them have been painted in different shades of grey like all of us). 

Aftab is incidental. He takes us to a train journey from Delhi to Dehra Dun via Saharanpur, Roorkee and Haridwar. And through this train ride he takes us to another journey - the one of his life. He narrates the events through people and places with microscopic precision without passing any judgment in the process. With him Navtej Sarna is able to put together a tale that keeps the reader interested all the way through. Here is a conversation with wordsmith: 

Q. It is said that all of us have a book in us. And those of us who choose to write are depleted after that. If they decide to write more then they repeat themselves. After writing your first novel are you feeling the same? 

A. I am only too well aware of what you are saying. There is natural tendency to rework, usually unconsciously, the same emotions, the same obsessions. At the moment though I feel that I have put so much into this book that there may be nothing left. My other books in the pipeline therefore belong to different genres. 

The second one is non-fiction and the novel in the planning stages is a historical novel. Both of them rely far more on research and fact than the present novel; they will be different. 

Q. Is there any co-relation between the stopovers of your train journey and different phases of life? 
A. Inevitably. As the protagonist passes through the train stations he relives, in the present, or the immediate past or in fact the distant past, aspects of his life. And one wouldn't reach a particular station if the train had not gone past the previous station. The past never leaves us, memory is always watching over our shoulder. 

Q. You have left the quest of Aftab at an ambivalent note. Can we call it a mirage or you didn't want your readers to feel sadder? 
A. I would imagine that when we leave Aftab he is moving towards a slim hope, fearfully, hesitatingly. It's never too late to hope, never too late to tell yourself that you should be doing what you really need to. 

Q. How would you like your readers to remember your hero, an escapist, a week-kneed, emotional wreck, daydreamer, drifter or something else? 
A. Perhaps he is all of what you say and yet he is something more. He is a man who has the courage, despite his obvious weaknesses, to face his own reality without flinching. His life in shambles, he can pick out his long held guilt and recognise it. He can understand that he no longer belongs to the world around him, his disconnection is complete and that he has to feel neither incompetent nor sorry. He has to simply state his own terms. 

Q. At places you have caricatured and lampooned certain characters like Jamshed in the mould of Gabriel Garcia Marquez. Is it because of an influence? 
A. Perhaps. Sometimes caricature is the best way of making all the edges stand out and lampooning some aspects of our life was the best way of expressing the disgust that Aftab feels. 

There is something about the Ministry of External Affairs and particularly about its spokesperson – many of them have known to have discovered or sharpened their creative skills while serving in the office. Either they have written books, like Pawan Verma or discovered their singing talent like Nirupama Rao. Navtej Sarna, the present spokesperson at MEA has also followed in his predecessors’ footsteps by writing his first novel but the only difference is that We Weren’t Lovers Like That (Penguin India) was completed much before he took up his new assignment.

“The book had been in my head for years but it was largely during my stint as a press officer at the Indian Embassy in Washington that I wrote this novel,” says the soft-spoken Sarna as he takes a break from his rather pressurised job at the MEA.

The novel is a story about a 40-year-old man, jilted by his wife and on his way to Dehradun trying to run away from his present problems with a distant hope of reclaiming his long-lost love. “It’s basically a story about the twists and turns of relationships,” is how the Shri Ram College of Commerce product sums up his novel.

Writing, incidentally, has been in his genes. Both his parents have been literary figures – his father, late M.S. Sarna, an Indian Audit and Account Service officer, was a respected name in Punjabi literature while his mother Surjit Sarna, has established herself as a reputed translator. So, for young Sarna, it was growing up in a house where volumes of Graham Greene, Somerset Maugham rubbed shoulders with the best of Punjabi literature. Naturally, Sarna took to writing early, beginning it with Hindustan Times when he reported on the Delhi University campus and later wrote serious feature stories for the newspaper. That was nearly 20 years back. Opting for the Civil Service didn’t stop his love for writing as he continued with short stories and articles for various newspapers. “The reason I chose the Indian Foreign Service was because it provides a rich bank of experience, from which one can draw later on for one’s writings,” explains Sarna, who is also an amateur photographer. “In fact, travel unloosens the creative spirit.”

Fiction is actually an escape from the drudgery of state politics and complex international affairs that form a large part of Sarna’s life. And even if his present job doesn’t leave him with much time, he has his next novel – a historical one this time – already worked out. And in between, he has already completed Book of Nanak for the Penguin series on saints. And that certainly wouldn’t be the last from Sarna, if one trusts his literary genes.