Interviews

In Conversation: Devika Rege on her Phenomenal Debut ‘Quarterlife’

Devika Rege’s stellar debut novel, Quarterlife engages with the contemporary political strains of India in a narrative that stretches the limits of storytelling.

In conversation with HarperBroadcast, Rege talks about her literary journey as a debut author.

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Q. Tell us about your journey as a writer. What are some of your favourite books and how did they influence your debut novel?

DR: My father’s copy of The Brothers Karamazov was an early read that gave me a sense of the novel’s possibilities with its conflicting perspectives, ethical dilemmas, and allegorical resonance despite an almost parochial setting. These interests were concretized through the literature I read in my twenties. Post-colonial novelists offered endless examples of how allegorical elements and social realism can come together in a non-Western context. Exploring the modernists furthered my interest in narrative form and perspective. It is hard to single out authors while discussing a debut work because there are many, but these were some of the broader influences on Quarterlife.

Q. The novel begins in 2014 as the fictional Bharat Party comes to power in India. A revealing portrait of the current socio-political fabric of the country, Quarterlife has been appropriately described as a political bildungsroman wherein characters from different backgrounds attempt to find their voice and place. How has your story benefited from real instances of political, and ideological conflicts that we have witnessed?

DR: The past decade has seen a massive shift towards right-wing politics and conservative thinking in different forms across the world. In India, 2014 brought home this shift with an election that divided my friends and family in a way I hadn’t witnessed before. I started by exploring characters that helped me comprehend how we had arrived at this moment. Then the moment itself evolved and the story expanded. Many of the novel’s scenes were drafted outdoors – standing in a protest or a religious parade or getting home after a party on a curfewed night. The story didn’t ‘benefit’ from such instances so much as emerge out of a long and sleepless attempt to make sense of them.

Q. The episodes in Quarterlife are narrated via the interconnected perspectives of the characters. The structure of the novel is modernist and often uses the stream-of-consciousness method. The punctuation is also interesting-dashes and colons often replace periods. How and why did you decide on these techniques to tell the story?

DR: I simply started working with the forms I had inherited. For instance, this mode you mention, where a novel unfolds in chapters that map onto character perspectives, has been around at least since Faulkner. But it is hard to employ it in a novel about contemporary politics without thinking about who doesn’t get a perspective. Would giving an additional character one change the plot? And would it change it for the better? I did not know, but I wanted to explore how such anxieties might shape the narrative rather than march on with a story. The result, I slowly recognized, was a structure guided by an evolving political consciousness. And why not? All around us, shifts in who gets a voice, however incremental, are bending the course of history. At times, people’s voices call about a change in form; at other times, a change in form gives people a voice: the two go back and forth in bringing each other into being. What finer example is there of this than the experiment of democracy in India?

Q. One of the most brilliant episodes in the novel is a long conversation between characters wherein they argue about their political opinions and leanings. Why and how do you think these conversations about politics are important, especially among the “apolitical elite”? Can we divorce the personal from the political?

DR: In recent years, we have seen a transformation in the way people relate to politics. Political identities are far more encompassing of how we experience ourselves and others than in my parents’ quarterlives. The novel is ambivalent about the extent to which this is a healthy change. It merely attests to how pervasive a certain kind of perception and dialogue has become, especially among the educated classes. And while free speech and political debates are the lifeblood of a democracy, as Rohit comes to recognize in one of the later chapters, there are also costs to arguments conducted in bad faith and to endless talk when the clock is ticking for those more vulnerable.

Q. Rohit’s character arc and his project to make a documentary in the novel exposes the collusion between artists and the regime. How do you think artists can be more sensitive and resistant to these demands from art?

DR: This is difficult to answer at the level of individual resistance, because art is being co-opted in so many ways, and the pressures vary depending on an artist’s social position, politics and medium. In Rohit’s case, he is neither in line for a national award nor a bullet. He is an aspiring producer, and he is tempted to make films that capitalize on a zeitgeist that is turning jingoistic. He is not without a conscience, yet he subconsciously gravitates towards moral arguments that justify his choices. To narrow the question: in a time when algorithms determine what we know and the room is full of dissenting voices, how can a young man like him retain his clarity? And assuming he does, at what point has he gone too far in supporting art that sanitizes a political project or panders to a certain cultural elite? And how can Omkar, the artist in the novel, keep his art ‘pure’ not only in terms of what he considers its truth but also the means of its production and patronage? It is hard. And the novel offers no answers. It is merely interested in uncovering how the widgets of an Omkar or Rohit’s mind work.

Q. Can fiction be a medium to document and register truth at a time when “truth” is manipulated for the purpose of politicking? How have you attempted to do so in your debut?

DR: No matter how well-researched a novel or a movie is, it is dangerous for people to cite them as sources of historical or scientific fact. The kind of “truth” that fiction like Quarterlife pursues is of a different order. This pursuit, at least for me, begins with the study of events or images in the real world, and an attempt to craft a composite (whether it is a plot or a character) that cuts away whatever parts of these that do not hold for the rest, in the hope of arriving at something fundamental about reality. This ‘something’ is not in the form of a statement, but rather, a true-to-life simulation that allows the writer to nuance the questions that haunt her work. While I am wary of viewing art in utilitarian terms, at a time when what constitutes reality itself is under threat – and not from a diversity of arguments in good faith, but a constant manipulation of facts – I would say that there is some value in such an exercise.

Q. What was your biggest challenge as a debut author?

DR: The difficulty, I think, of integrating a range of political identities and ideological positions into a single work. How to balance empathy and judgement while crafting characters who hurt each other? How to hold space for plurality and ambiguity without descending into moral relativism or paralysis? In response, I tried to educate and sensitize myself. I caught up on the political philosophy I hadn’t studied in college. I spent time among people of different persuasions and from the communities I was writing about. But there is no grand summit at the end of such challenges. You just work with as much energy and integrity as you can until the book goes to print, and you try not to get too sure of yourself after.

Q. How do you feel about Quarterlife being touted as THE literary novel of the year?

DR: I feel grateful to my editor and publishers for taking a chance on a debut novel that follows its own structural logic and is interested in political complexity. Their support for Quarterlife, which has received its share of rejections, makes me hopeful that, as a writer, I can stay true to my vision for a work and still find an audience. I use the word ‘hopeful’ because it is too early to say how readers will receive the book.

Q. What would be your advice to aspiring authors?

DR: When you are focused on a writing project for even a few years, no one piece of advice is going to hold. You have to keep finding new inspirations, new routines around what your life or health permits, and new rules that allow you to express what you alone can. So, stay open to that wide and unruly journey. Trust yourself. And keep going even when you don’t.

In conversation with Kartik Chauhan for HarperBroadcast

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