Aatish Taseer on love, longing, home and identity

In his most intimate work to date, "A Return to Self," celebrated author Aatish Taseer explores identity, belonging, and cultural intersections through travel and memory.

- SURYA S PILLAI

Written after the revocation of his Indian citizenship, he stresses on greater understanding in the face of both internal and external exile by contrasting his experiences in India with lessons learnt via travels to Turkey, Uzbekistan, and Mongolia.

In an e-mail interview with The Statesman, the British writer-journalist talked about the value of empathy and the never-ending search for a unified self in a fractured society.

1. You mentioned in your book, "To lose one's country is to know an intimate shame." Why do you call it a "shame" when the circumstances which led to this end were clearly not in your control and in fact were "politically motivated"?

The element of shame surpasses the workings of logic and reason. People have been known to feel shame after being the victims of sexual assault. Slavery, the Holocaust and Colonization have all elicited feelings of shame. I think the power of shame has to do with its ability to defy rationality. To be turned away from the place one has always considered home certainly produced shame in me. I felt it on behalf of other people.

And that is the other interesting thing about shame: it is a social emotion. I felt embarrassed on behalf of my grandmother, aunts, friends and family. People who could attest to my life in India; people had shown me affection; people who now had to contend with my being recast as an outsider, not to be admitted among their warmth and familiarity anymore. Someone suspect. Ostracized that true Greek sense of a man whose name has been written secretly on a potsherd (ostraka) and who must now be cast out from the community. I felt the government's action as a betrayal of the love I had received in India.