I find it very difficult to relate to India's new middle class. This very patriotic and neoliberal group that mixes religion and economics together. I find them very irksome. Very difficult to like. They are privileged, but they don't want to talk about their privilege. It's difficult to find poetry amongst these people. Some sort of hidden spirit of beauty.
Sarnath BanerjeeWhat fiction does is bring you closer to the essence of truth, as opposed to simply giving you the truth. And there's no knowing truth. Truth seekers are all charlatans. You can only feel the truth of something.
Sarnath BanerjeeEverything you draw is influenced. It's like yogurt. You need a little bit to start the next batch.
Sarnath BanerjeeMy books serve as archives of thoughts and emotions, like a tonal history that captures how I felt at a certain time of my life. It's not very informational. You're not going to get comprehensive knowledge about the Han dynasty of China or about India's Emergency. But you might learn how one person felt about the Los Angeles Olympics.
Sarnath BanerjeeThe only way one can display learning is by playing with it. Because the truth is that there's something embarrassing about displaying heavy knowledge. You feel sort of annoying.
Sarnath BanerjeeI want to make sense of things, to understand the world, but my work is never really instructional. I have no wisdom to impart or give, so I think my dream readers would be people who just use the book as an excuse to get into their own cycle of thoughts. The book is just like a map. It's just a jotting-down of things that you can interpret in your own ways.
Sarnath BanerjeeI'm interested in history because it's a discipline that requires a lot of effort from the imagination. You need to put in a lot of imaginative effort to figure out how people lived in an era that is not yours. And in that understanding of people from a different era, I feel, is an important gateway into humanity. Because you understand human behavior. In order to understand humanity, history is important.
Sarnath Banerjee