Ambassador's Zafarnama

Diplomat-author Navtej Sarna tells SANGEETA BAROOAH PISHAROTY that the English translation of “Zafarnama” is an extension of his interest in Sikh heritage

PROLIFIC Navtej Sarna hopes to bring out a collection of short stories

A book of gleaming 18th Century poetry in Persian; a celebration of valour, probity and rejection of despotism; a journey into a sliver of Sikh history, and, of course, an example to take lessons from “when all has been tried, yet justice is not in sight….”

Depending on what a reader is seeking, Sikh Guru Gobind Singh's 111-canto, “Zafarnama”, has peels and peels of denotation and understanding to it. The Guru's valiant voice trussed with poetic brilliance can equally hold the interest of a bard with a throbbing heart and a soldier living only by the strength of his word and the sword. So it is to be expected that the book by the 10th Guru of the Sikhs has been much feted by litterateurs over generations for its sheer versatility.

Author-diplomat Navtej Sarna joins this coterie by dint of his recent English translation of “Zafarnama” (Penguin India). So did his father, writer Mohinder Singh Sarna, many moons ago, into Punjabi. Navtej's fascination, however, travels further. His is the hunger of a product of a largely anglicised education to discern his heritage, to hook up to the roots. In this e-mail interview from Tel Aviv, Sarna, Indian ambassador to Israel, throws light on his third book on Sikh history. Edited excerpts:

When one looks at the subjects of your books, the dominant pattern is of Sikh history. Is it a way of discovering your roots?

It is true that three of my books have drawn from Sikh history. You could ascribe it to an abiding interest in one's own heritage and the fact that the relatively short history has a wealth of drama, struggle and adventure.

In your introduction, you have talked about the challenges of translating an 18th Century Persian text to present-day English. How did you tackle it finally? I was fortunate that I did a course in Persian when I was posted in Tehran, and though that knowledge may be rusty today I would not have been able to dream of attempting this project without that background. It helped me know at least that I was on the right track.

Coming to the challenge of the text, one has to counter the distortions that can creep in when a Persian text is transcribed into Gurmukhi script. The historical bias of the copyists or the commentators adds further confusion. Then, of course, the divergence of Indo-Persian from classical Persian, of which I had to be particularly careful when depicting the Farsi version as well as the English transliteration in the book.

“Zafarnama” has been studied by litterateurs for generations. Did you take help from any of those works?

For the Introduction, I have relied largely on Harbans Singh's “Guru Gobind Singh”, J.D. Cunningham's “A History of the Sikhs”, Khushwant Singh's “A History of the Sikhs” and Patwant Singh's “The Sikhs”. For the translation of the book, I relied on the Gurmukhi translation by Bhai Vir Singh and also consulted non-traditional translations of Christopher Shackle and Arvind-Pal Singh Mandair in their “Teachings of the Sikh Gurus”. When lost, I would turn for guidance to the free translation of it by my father as part of his epic poem in Punjabi, “Chamkaur”.

“Zafarnama” stresses on morality against the backdrop of war and mindless murders. How do you interpret this dichotomy?

The immediate context of the “Zafarnama” is the betrayal of an oath sworn on the holy book by the Mughal commanders. This is symptomatic of the lack of moral fibre not only in the conduct of war but also at the heart of governance in the Mughal Empire at that time. “Zafarnama” holds up an uncompromising mirror to Aurangzeb and at the same time spells out Guru Gobind Singh's vision of true God, eternal values, qualities of leadership, valour, honour and so on. It is written from a moral high. That is why it is called “Zafarnama”, the epistle of victory, even when the Guru had lost men, family, home and hearth — everything of temporal value.

Besides being a work of verse, “Zafarnama” is also a celebration of fearlessness. What impression has this exercise of translation left on you?

It has been an exhilarating experience. I have revelled in the rhyme and cadence of its verses and the challenge of trying to find the equivalent in English. Its fearless tone is uplifting. The moral strength behind this fearlessness symbolises the spirit that brought about a major spiritual renaissance, enabling ordinary men to die like heroes for freedom, for equality, for dignity.

Finally, are you planning any other book?

Planning certainly. And I hope it will be pure fiction, perhaps a collection of short stories.

As the city prepares for Pravasi Bharatiya Divas, which starts on January 7, the story of the Indian diaspora in colonial Britain finds aplace of its own in a spate of new books

THE PAST never ceases to be present in the world of books. As the New Year unfolds, it has resurfaced with its many tantalising possibilities in the much-anticipated first big book of 2010. It's the story of the tender relationship between Queen Victoria, who has forever been a source of salacious tattle for historians, and her Urdu tutor, Abdul Karim.

It has been a mystery waiting to be unravelled. London- based journalist Shrabani Basu got drawn into the unlikely love story while writing about the history of curry in Britain. "I learnt that Abdul cooked curries for the Queen, had been chosen to be her Indian secretary and even taught her Urdu. I realised then how much he meant to the Queen and how much she loved India," Basu says.

Her book, Victoria and Abdul: The True Story of the Queen's Closest Confidante (Rupa), will be released on January 11. Her characters are compelling: Here was the Empress of India with Abdul Karim, who had come to London to wait tables during her Golden Jubilee celebrations as a 24-year-old. Abdul had earlier served as an assistant clerk at the Agra Central Jail. Within a year, he had been catapulted to the position of the Queen's munshi — and became the object of jealousy in the royal household. The love story was catalysed by the fact that the Queen was a widow, had lost her favourite Scottish 'ghillie' (John Brown), and was too old to travel to India — which she loved. "Abdul, in a way, was India to her," says Basu.

Poring over the Queen's letters, Basu found that she wrote to Abdul every day, and would mark the letters with three Xs on occasions. "She was friend, mother and companion to him," says Basu. Close on the heels of Basu's book comes another Rupa title — based on a relationship that never was, despite the Queen conspiring with a battery of aides to make it happen. Victoria Gowramma: The Lost Princess of Coorg by coffee planter and engineering college administrator CP Belliappa is the story of two blue-blooded Indians in London who had embraced Christianity. The tale of an unknown Coorgi princess adopted by the Queen and the exiled and effete Maharaja Duleep Singh has rescued an unplumbed world from history's footnotes in a decade when everyone's obsessed with vision of what lies ahead.

Last year, it was Navtej Sarna, India's ambassador to Israel, who was in the news because of his book, In Exile: A Novel Based on the Life of Maharaja Duleep Singh ( Penguin).

Says Sarna, " Duleep Singh and Gowramma were seen as exotic showpieces — which demonstrated the victory of the Empire, not only in political terms, but also in spiritual terms." So swayed was Gowramma by the British, says Belliappa, that she didn't regret the fact that her godmother, the Queen's matchmaking efforts didn't result in anything.

" She wanted a blue- eyed lover — who she got in Colonel John Campbell, three decades her senior," according to Belliappa.

Sarna, Basu and Bellippa's books aren't without precedence.

Other members of colonial Britain's colourful Indian community are steadily being extricated from the woodwork and the passage of time.

Indians, who arrived in Britain on the wings of circumstance, have appeared in paintings — like the favoured Bengali maid of Edward Holden Cruttendon, an East India Company nabob who had returned home from Calcutta in 1759. She appears in a painting by the acclaimed artist of his time, Sir Joshua Reynolds. Then there was Sake Dean Mahomed, who opened Britain's earliest curry restaurant ( Hindostanee Coffee House) in 1810, and became a part of his adopted country's folklore. And there were others — like Yusuf Khan, a high- ranking army official from Awadh, or the writer- adventurer Mohan Lal Kashmiri — who left behind lively accounts of their interlude in a nation that had colonised their homeland.

Their world comes alive, despite the academese, in Counterflows to Colonialism ( Permanent Black), a seminal work by Michael H. Fisher, a professor of history at Oberlin College, Ohio. The period Fisher covers extends from 1600 to 1857, much before the time when the wellknown stories of Dadabhai Naoroji, Mahatma Gandhi and Jawaharlal Nehru unfolded. Nevertheless, his tapestry is crowded with servants, sailors, scholars and sojourners whose passages through Britain had blurred into obscurity.

FISHER'S CAST of characters includes sailor- servant- gentleman Joseph Emin, who had befriended Edmund Burke much before the Englishman became the famous parliamentarian and writer.

Or the obese and somewhat mad son of Begum Samru, David Ochterlony Dyce Sombre ( 1808- 51), whose life oscillated between " shagging" women and a stormy marriage, a parliamentary career that lasted all of nine months, bouts of lunacy, and an unlamented end in Boulogne, France.

Sombre's story is no less riveting than that of the social reformer Raja Rammohan Roy's son, Rajaram, who socialised with London's elite but then spent his last days in Calcutta living in debt, managing to keep his body and soul together by skimming off money from a fund collected in the memory of his father's patron, Sir David Hare. Then there was one of Tipu Sultan's younger sons, Mahomed Jamh ood- Deen ( c.

1792- 1842), whose life in London was spent schmoozing with the high and mighty ( including King William IV and Queen Victoria) and lobbying for a higher pension from the East India Company.

Duleep Singh was also bargaining hard with the East India Company and the Government of India for a higher pension in accordance with the Treaty of Lahore.

" He was given the impression that everything Christian was fair. But living in Victorian England, he realised the extent of his loss, and the hypocrisy and cheating around him," says Sarna. This, despite enjoying the confidence of Queen Victoria. The new generation of English civil servants saw him as an irritant. " Punch magazine carried cartoons depicting him as a buffoon," says Sarna.

Yusuf Khan, the Awadhi adventurer, may not have had a royal lineage, but he had an eye for observation, which puts his travel account, Tarikh- i- Yusufi, in a league of its own.

Khan evaded the Royal Customs by hiring a small boat that took him, for £ 5, to a small seaside village. He had his first physical contact with an Englishwoman who was " fatter than a mountain," but thereafter he had better experiences — some with amusing results.

On one such occasion, Khan offered to share a coffee with a " beautifullooking woman," but when she declined, saying " another time," he said: " What confidence is there that we will meet again?" Our continuing national obsession with gori chitti women clearly goes back to those days when English women unfailingly drew the Indian male gaze. I&#149 their Journal of a Residence of Two Years and a Half in Great Britain ( 1844), the Parsi cousins Hirjibhoy Merwanjee and Jehangir Nowrojee wrote sanctimoniously about the " swarms of well- dressed, highly painted but unhappy females, who, having lost their virtue, resort as a means of maintenance to the saloons of the theatres, and with much wantonness draw young men into the snares of vice and misery of which they themselves have been the victims." For expatriate Indians, the exposure to contemporary English society also helped remove the cultural baggage with which they had come. More than anything else, they realised how women back home were being denied their fair access to the world. " Every man constantly thinks this purda bound life appropriate for the chastity of his wife," wrote Yusuf Khan. " In truth, they restrain them from knowledge and science." But something about the expats remained intrinsically Indian. When Gowramma moved into England, her father's entourage sprinkled the house with water drawn from the Ganges. Duleep Singh tried to recreate the chambers of his Lahore fort in his Elveden estate. " His drawing room was modelled to look like Sheesh Mahal in the Lahore Fort. This, despite his outwardly English lifestyle of hunting pheasants and partridges, smoking cigars, and becoming a member of British conservative clubs," says Sarna. For the itinerant Indian, life in 19th- century England was an interesting mélange of cultures — and it continues to fascinate us, two centuries on.

sourish. bhattacharyya@ mailtoday. in neha. mehta@ mailtoday.in

Navtej Sarna explains why his novel about Duleep Singh is not a straightforward biography

Maharaja Duleep Singh became the last king of the Punjab at the age of five, and gave Queen Victoria the koh-i-noor diamond after the British annexed his kingdom. In The Exile, diplomat Navtej Sarna recreates Duleep’s turbulent and quixotic life as an English gentleman, including the time he tried to return home and lead a rebellion against the British. In an interview with ATUL CHATURVEDI, Sarna discusses why he felt compelled to write about Duleep Singh, his relationship with the British, and his historical importance

What made you write about Duleep Singh, a relatively obscure historical figure?
Historical obscurity by itself is not a disqualification. In fact, sometimes there is more of a need to tell the tale of obscure figures because history may not have done justice to their dilemmas. Duleep is one such figure; history has not been fair to his predicament.

Why a novel, and not a biography?
I am not a historian or a biographer. Besides, some journalistic histories and biographies have been written but I felt that they did not bring out the emotional or psychological dimensions of a life that was actually full of drama and tragedy. A novel, I felt, would allow the freedom to move behind the facts and explore these other dimensions.

How did you research the story?
I did a fair amount of reading — of the histories of the time, memoirs by British writers, the other books on Duleep, files in the archives, his private letters, visits to all the major places that he stayed: Lahore, Elveden in England, Paris, Moscow. Also, travelogues of 19th-century Europe, descriptions of old Aden...anything that could give authenticity to the voices and to the story.

It isn’t only Duleep who tells his story. Why did you resort to multi-narrators?
Telling the story only in his own voice may once again have resulted in a unidimensional picture. Besides, I wanted it told by narrators who would convincingly know the part of the story that they were talking about. For instance, Mangla the maid tells the story of when Duleep was a very young child and had no idea what was happening to him. Similarly, Carol Tevis the spy tells the story from his own point of view, of which of course Duleep was blissfully unaware.

Duleep comes through as a very conflicted person, at home nowhere.
If indeed he does, then I am glad because that was the facet that I was trying to portray, the dilemma of a man who was in exile and could simply not belong.

What about his relationship with Queen Victoria? It comes across as one between a mother and child.
In the initial years in England, he was very close to the royal family before the bitterness and regrets had set in. Victoria was, indeed, very fond of him. He never really turned against her even in the worst years of disagreement. Also, we must remember that he was separated from his own mother for 14 years.

How well-known was Duleep’s reconversion to Sikhism and attempt to reach India at that time? Did it evoke any reaction at all?
His supporters in India helped him to baptise as a Sikh again so they obviously knew. He issued public proclamations of his intentions, so his plans to come back and his appeals for support to other Indian princes were also wellknown. And the British knew everything as it happened.

How easy was it to write a novel on a historical character? What about the usual charges of distortion etc that are levelled?

I set out clear guidelines for myself when I started by avoiding any distortion of history. The facts in the book are all common knowledge. I have only added the human element to these facts. What I have put is the sense of loss, regret, bitterness, anger — and even these are not purely out of my mind. There was a fair amount of material available — correspondence, private letters, memoirs of Lady Login, under whose husband’s charge Duleep was in England. The main characters already have enough known about them, but it was characters like Mangla or Arur who have been amplified.

Why did you choose Duleep and not his father Ranjit Singh as your subject?

A lot has already been written on Ranjit Singh. For my novel, I was looking for colour. Here’s a character who is weak, has foibles, and is fractured by events. For me as a novelist, that was far more tempting. My only concern was not to anger historians. I had to decide how far back to go back in telling this story. Going back 10 years was needed, for without this the events of the book would not have made sense. The challenge was to avoid doing it as history.

You give far more space to his mother, Jind Kaur?

She is closer to him. She is with him for the...

first decade of his life, before he is taken away by the British. And, therefore in the novel too, she is more of character for that period. She was separated from her son for 14 years. Duleep did send a letter to her, and there is evidence that it did reach her. It is only after the mutiny that the thinking changed, and he was allowed to meet her, for which he travelled to Calcutta.

In her last few years, she instills a sense of legacy for all he has lost, all he should inherit as part of his private property, which has nothing to do with the treaty that he had been made to sign as a child when he was made to give away state property. It is this sense of loss that starts his correspondence for private properties, which remained his lifelong struggle.

What about the weakness and fragility that are so apparent in the ruling cliques of the time?

It is all accepted history. We know of the deceptions and treachery that took place.

How long did you take on research and writing? Did you rely on oral history as well?

About nine years totally. But I did do two books in between. I read everything that was there on him. Oral history was important and I tried to capture the huge form of oral traditions. I had been hearing elementary stuff from my childhood.

You have the first person in the voice of various characters. Was it easy to get under so many skins?

Maharaja musings
By: Soumya Mukerji
Date: 2008-10-10
Mid Day
October 10^th 2008

What is the book about?
The book tries to put in human terms the tragedy of Punjab's hero, Maharaja Duleep Singh. It aims to show a shade of our own history from a very normal point of view.
 
Punjab is a flourishing state, even after braving many losses and massacres. What is the cause of its undying spirit? 
This is true for all of India. It isn't the story of one prince, but of everyone who struggled for the country. It is ultimately a people whose spirit cannot be trampled upon, a spirit  derived from a search for our
identity, an invincible belief in our own roots. 

What inspired you to write about a maharaja of yore?
The dethroning of the Maharaja is a well known tale in Punjab. I've heard it since childhood. The story kept gnawing at me for a long time, because I wanted to know how the little boy felt at facing his tumultuous life. It became an obsession, so I started researching on it nine
years back.

A mix of fact and fiction... why? 
I have used fictional devices to add feelings and sentiments to the story, but no factual information has been distorted. Everything that is history is original, only minor characters with major narratives, like Mangla, the maid servant, is fiction, mainly to depict vividly and closely the maharaja's life. Even these characters are in tune with historical memoirs and writings, only with added dimensions not written in history. Other situations, like a snowstorm, have been creatively built upon to give colour. It is meant to be read as a novel, not as a book on history.

Sikh projects, even a harmless movie like Singh is Kinng, has attracted a lot of controversy. Are you apprehensive? 
My work isn't about bringing in politics of any religion. The politics in this book is that of a long bygone era, so the question doesn't arise.  

Don't diplomatic strings bind you from making comments on other civilisations, like your comment on British imperialism in the book?  
This has nothing to do with my life as a diplomat. Diplomats paint, make music, write. They can't be held responsible for what history says! 

The Exile
Author: Navtej Sarna
Publisher: Penguin  Viking
Price: Rs 450

Friday, 10 October 2008

IN CONVERSATION
Soliloquies Of An Exiled King
Interviewed by Sanjitha Rao Chaini

Maharaja Duleep Singh's life has been one of the most intriguing topics among historians. Navtej Sarna (50) has attempted to get into Duleep Singh's thought process, the emotions the prince went through in his "historical fiction" The Exile (Penguin India). The book talks about the life of the last Sikh kings, who changed his religion twice and who encountered deceptions and injustice at every stage of his life. Sarna, a former MEA spokesperson, will soon assume his new role as the Ambassador to Israel. He tells BW Online's Sanjitha Rao Chaini the reasons for writing this book and why it had to be in the fiction format.

What is the kind of research you took to write this book from different points of view? When did you get the idea of writing this book?
It has been on my mind for a long time and I have been actively working on it for nine years. I had to really struggle as to what I could do with the subject. We have had some non-fiction books on Maharaja Duleep Singh. But they were not purely by Indians. And they were restricted to whatever facts were available. I had to struggle with what is the sort of format to work on.

For instance, since I was trying to do a novel I had to capture the details. For instance, you knew that he stayed in Elveden, but what did it feel like when he stayed there? What did he see when he walked out of his house in the mornings? What was the weather like? What was the scenery like? So, it was a lot of very wide ranging research.

I walked around streets of Paris, into every house that he stayed in. The man, at that point of his life, was really obsessive about not staying in one place and also not telling people where he stayed. I found the address and the roads. Very often, I found the buildings were long gone. But you could imagine what it must have been like.

I went to Lahore and walked around the fort several times. To get what it is to look outside the fort, to see the river, to see the brickwork on the floor of the fort. And somewhere all these go into the descriptions. It has been a long research. Actually, I started reading about the book much before my previous book came out (2003). There were gaps. I was writing the other book and was completely off this. Then I picked it up again. There was a lot of reading to be done around the subject.

New Delhi, Oct 10 : Exile is the saddest thing that can happen to an individual, says diplomat Navtej Sarna, the author of a new novel on Punjab's last ruler Duleep Singh who died 'completely alone' in a cheap hotel room in Paris.

"When you lose your roots and identity, everything you are made of - your culture, history - it's a very sad happening in an individual's life," Sarna, who served as the external affairs ministry spokesperson for six long years and is set to take over as India's Ambassador to Israel, told IANS in an interview here.

Sarna confesses that his job as a diplomat has enriched his literary talents. His latest book, "The Exile", published by Penguin/Viking, hit the bookshops last month.
"Writing is a very essential part of my life and my living. Writing gives me an entire world in which to withdraw and in which to live in," said Sarna who now has four books behind him, including two novels.

But how does he find time to write amid the blithe chatter of cocktail parties and the serious business of diplomacy? "You do it once you want to do it badly enough," he said.

"There is a certain gypsy aspect to our life which is an extremely good catalyst for jogging your mind and opening your mind to new observations and ideas," said Sarna, who has travelled to more than 50 countries and represented India as a diplomat in places as far flung as Moscow, Washington, Warsaw and Thimphu.

Exile, with its emotional undertone of loss and homelessness, is not a state of mind one would associate with Sarna, the suave, decorous man who was the public face of the foreign office all these years.

But having consorted with the 19th century king Maharaja Duleep Singh and his cohorts in the privacy of his imagination for nine long years, the Punjab-born Sarna knows intimately "the loss of something left behind forever".

"The most tragic aspect of his life was that he was forced to stay away from home. The pathos of his exile was a very elemental part of his existence and of his appeal as a subject for a novelist," said Sarna.

"It's a story that had nagged at me since childhood. It came naturally to me," recalled the author when he first heard of Duleep Singh - "a child duped of his kingdom, a man who changed his religion twice, a king who yearned to come back to his people but never could" - from his mother 40 years ago.

The process of writing a novel based on a commanding historical figure was creatively challenging, but the author says he found a way out "to push available facts about Duleep Singh's story towards the realm of fiction, by pushing them gently, so as not to distort them."

"It involved a fair amount of research. Thoughts and emotions of Duleep Singh are based on what could be possible in different situations in which he found himself," recalls the author about his diligent efforts to forge "a fictional narrative that would fill the gaps left by history".
Did he hear the snarling hiss of historians warning him not to trespass into their turf as he set about reconstructing the life of Duleep Singh? "It's a novel that has tried to be true to history," is all Sarna would say, adding that the praise by celebrated writer Khushwant Singh, who has written "A History of the Sikhs", encouraged him to think he was on track.

"He (Duleep Singh) started off as a unidimensional cardboard box character, but as I wrote on, I discovered his fears, his loves, how he felt as a young man, problems in his personal life, his problems with the British government and games of colonial duplicity," he said. "In short, it helps me to understand him as a complete human being."

Wary of stereotyping, Sarna is not amused when asked about the "IFS school of writing" - a headline-grabbing tag that clubs together half a dozen Indian diplomats who have not allowed ponderous officialese to choke their literary talents. "If you are looking for a deeper connection, there isn't any," he said wryly.

For all his globe-trotting as a grey-suited diplomat, his favourite trip, he said, is always "that island of the soul where there is peace and writing can be a waking dream". 
--- IANS

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.