A GLOBAL CITIZEN WRITING AVANT-GARDE STORIES

Author Interview: Kiran Bhat

Kiran Bhat is a global citizen formed in a suburb of Atlanta, Georgia, to parents from Southern Karnataka, India. He currently lives in Melbourne, and though his list of homes is vast, he considers Mumbai the only place of the moment worth settling down in. An avid world traveller, polyglot, and digital nomad, he has currently travelled to over 130 countries, lived in 18 different places, and speaks 12 languages. He has recently come out with the book “We of the Forsaken World...”, for which he had book launches in Chennai, Bangalore, Pondicherry, Delhi, Jaipur, Mumbai, Pune and Goa. He is now conducting reading sessions for the book in different cities of USA. In a candid chat with Chirdeep Malhotra, he talks about his book, how the idea of the book originated, and the research that went into writing it. Read on!



Please tell us more about Kiran Bhat as a person.

Well, Kiran Bhat is a mix of cultures, Kiran Bhat is a global nomad, Kiran Bhat is a person of the world, but Kiran Bhat is also a person of people, who likes to connect with people, no matter what their background happens to be.



Has writing always been a part of your life? Or did you chance upon it later on and then instantly fell in love with it?

I would say I turned to writing after some really harsh experiences I had with my parents once they found out about my sexuality. I had to write poetry for myself in order to emotionally survive, and then people told me I was quite good at it, and I continued to write. I then went on to write stories. I was at NYU at the time, and my professors there were very encouraging. I would even get handwritten letters from places like The New Yorker or The Paris Review, telling me that I needed to keep writing. I then went to Spain, where I had an epiphany that I wanted to write fiction for a globalizing epoch. That is where I am now. So, writing has defined me as an adult, but no, it hasn’t been with me for the entire journey.



Can you tell us more about your book “We of the Forsaken World...”?

“We of the forsaken world...” is about the unconnected stories of sixteen individual lives, managing said lives in four countries at the verge of falling apart. In the same way that we as random citizens of the world live singularly, unconscious of the greater world outside of our families and societies, the narrators are simply telling their own individual stories, without any awareness of the greater consequence of their worlds. But, there is a language, a web of poetry, that blurs a narrative as it begins into a narrative that is ending. These poetic interludes mimic the effect of globalization; that, despite living completely unrelated lives, we as humans are connected through the space of the Internet, and indirectly affect the lives of others, often thousands of kilometres away, in another strand of the world. The stories happen to take place in parts of the world which are humbler, usually seen as backwards in the narrative of Western globalisation. In making them unbridledly human, I have used this book as a space of protest, to say that people from the poorer parts of the world live lives just as three-dimensional as anywhere else, and are equally part of our globalising narrative.



How did the idea of writing this book emerge?

“We of the forsaken world...” came to me in 2011, when I was on a bus between Dubrovnik and Zagreb. A tall, brunette woman with a lingering stare sat down next to me on one of the stops. We began to talk about a host of things I can’t remember now, but the one thing that she told me which did remain in my head was the following: Croatia is one of the poorest countries in the world. Something about that sentence inspired my imagination. After we reached the bus station, I had to sit on one of the metal benches for a few hours, and write. I was starting to imagine different countries, completely imagined in my head. One was a half-rich half-poor megalopolis, the sort found in most third-world countries. Then, there was a town that wasn’t so different looking from my grandmother’s place, the southern Indian city of Mysore. There was a tribe in the middle of nowhere, not to mention a town of great touristic importance, destroyed by an industrial spill. I also imagined hundreds of voices. Though, over the course of time, those two hundred-so voices became around sixteen; the most distinct and boisterous of the lot.



What type of research went into writing this book?

My life has been a research of sorts. I’ve lived all over the world, and I’ve spent all that time observing people who are very different from me, and yet who make the world. It was these experiences which made me create these places, and lend them a sort of universal truth. I did have to go out of my way to write about the uncontacted tribe. In order to imagine an uncontacted tribe properly, I bummed around with some Machiguenga tribals in Manu Jungle, Peru, and I interviewed people who were Luo, Kikuyu, and Maasai in Kenya. Their narratives really helped me get a lot of the specifics of my story down.



You have recently launched your book in many cities of India and are now also conducting reading sessions in different cities in the USA. How has the experience been like?

Exhausting. I’ve been touring around the world, and it’s a lot of stress just to get people to come. But, I’m also extremely grateful. I’ve been yearning for the day when people would see me as a writer, so I’m glad that finally, that day has come.



The author blurb mentions that you are a polyglot and speak 12 languages. Which languages are you fluent in?

I am best in English, by far, but am relatively fluent in Kannada, and Spanish, and Portuguese. My Mandarin is fairly decent but I wouldn’t call myself fluent. I think I could become more conversationally fluent in Turkish, if I were to return to speaking it, as I used to be quite good at it, but have lost it due to lack of practice.



What are your favourite books? Can you share with our esteemed readers about the genres that you like and your favourite authors?

I’m generally a snob. I read literary fiction, the work that is most profound, and the work that is most psychological, most complex, and most universal. I take a lot of my inspirations from the great tales of my childhood (The Mahabharat, Ramayan), as well as the best writers of Sanskrit (Kalidas, Bana), and modern Indian languages (Manto, Tagore, etc). I am also heavily influenced by modernism and some pre-modern writers in English (Woolf, Faulkner, Joyce, and Melville), and the Russian Golden Age (Tolstoy, Dostoevsky, Pushkin).



What are your other interests apart from writing?

I guess I mostly travel, play the occasional video game, meet my friends in whatever city I live in, go around, and have fun.



Are there any other literary projects in the pipeline?

I’m writing a giant global book that will be – literally – the entire world collapsed in one novel, over the space of a decade. It will start in 2021 and end in 2030, and it will be told in every major culture I find inspiring of the planet. It will also be written through a digital serialised platform. So, keep your digital ears open for the world’s first weldgeist, Girar.



Can you share with our readers a motivational quote that keeps you going?

I don’t have anything from any other writer, but I will use something I just wrote in someone else’s book as a signature:
“Do not forget those who have loved you, given you everything, beseeched you the earth for the sake of your growth.
Also, live, travel, observe widely, and learn.”