Diplomat’s muse-Shyam Bhatia

Home is where the heart is for Navtej Sarna, joint secretary in charge of the publicity division at India’s ministry of external affairs in New Delhi and the ministry spokesman. Judging from his first novel We Weren’t Lovers Like That, most of his heart lies somewhere on the railroad between Dehradun and Delhi, with a few shreds left behind in Jalandhar, Mumbai and Washington, DC where he served with distinction as press counselor at the Indian embassy.

For his friends who watched the elegant diplomat as he paced the corridors of power in Washington, Sarna’s foray into novels is no surprise. He has been writing newspaper articles and short stories since he was 20. He started with The Hindustan Times and Evening News in the Indian capital before moving on to the BBC World Service and London Magazine.

Such was his growing reputation before he moved to Washington that there were some in the US capital who looked forward to the arrival of The Times Literary Supplement to see if it carried a vintage Sarna review.

His novel evokes surprise with its romantic theme and largely Indian backdrop to the plot. In Sarna’s words, it is a love story etched with nostalgia. What the reader gathers between the lines is the author’s love affairs with his native country.

Before being assigned to DC, Sarna and his doctor wife Avina were posted to Warsaw, Poland, where they experienced the aftereffects of the radioactive fallout from the doomed Chernobyl reactor. While his wife returned to India, Sarna stayed on long enough to see how a Geiger counter reacted to the radioactive dust picked up from the streets of Warsaw and caked on to the soles of his shoes.

Some would expect the Warsaw experience to provide ideal material for a writer with Sarna’s eclectic tastes and perhaps it will all come out one day in a subsequent novel but so far that has not been the case.

He chooses instead to concentrate on the twists and turns of human relationships, the vagaries attached to them and the knock – on effects later in life.

The novel has been on Sarna’s mind for some time. The onset of the millennium pushed him into writing the first few paragraphs. He finished a first draft while still in DC and then, during a three- month break back in Delhi, he sent his second and final draft to his publishers.

The millennium’ provides the metaphor for the 40th birthday of Sarna’s principal character, who is at a turning point- a moment when life is slipping away from his hands and events seem to be out of control. The resulting yearning for a different sort of relationships and friendships', the nostalgia for a lost worlds, including the lost world of a remembered childhoods is integral to the novel’s magic.

Jalandhar- born Sarna, 46, says friends and colleagues have been supportive of his writing. Penning book reviews, travel pieces and short stories has been part of his life since his university days at the Shri Ram College of Commerce and Delhi’s Law Faculty.

He admits the DC posting was helpful in developing his writing craft. The contacts he made assisted him with the analysis of writing his book, how to move characters from place to place and how to move his story across time zones.

“I picked up a lot by reading and I talked to a lot of people, that was very helpful,” explains Sarna. “ I met a lot of writers and you talked about these things, there were shared questions facing you. You could ask people,’ can I do this sort of thing? Can I put in a scene where the protagonist has not been?’

“These are the questions a first time novelist wrestles with between what is done and not done. That way, being in Washington and being in touch with people like Amitav Ghosh, Shashi Tharoor and Vikram Chandra was an immense help. 

“We had gatherings and dos, reading sessions where people asked these questions. Where I had been struggling on my own, I found there were others who had similar problems and faced them in their own writing.”

All told it took Sarna between six to eight months to write his first draft. He found the actual writing process to be a pleasurable experience, although he says he encountered some initial problems with structure.

Fans waiting for his next novel will have to hold their breath. Sarna is wedded to his job and says he would not give it up for anything.

In other words he may have to wait for another gap between jobs to harness his creative juices. Sadly, this means the Indian Foreign Service’s gain will be the literary world’s loss. At least for the time being.