You grew up in a literary household in a joint family where your mother and uncle were writers, and your father a poet. You published your first story at nine. How did this early environment shape you as a reader and writer?

In my childhood, before I became a reader or writer, I was a listener. My father and grandmother used to read me the novels of Asrar Ahmad (Ibne Safi) and the stories of Amir Hamza when I was four or five and could not yet read. It was as if a dose of stories was given to me every day. When I learned to read and write, that environment had already taken root in me.

Everyone in our joint family loved to read. Intizar Hussain’s books were read; other authors were discussed. I wrote a story that was published when I was nine. But I wouldn’t be too proud of that—it was largely circumstantial, a gift of the environment.

What writers and books most influenced you during your years in Bareilly, and how did your reading tastes evolve?

There is not one single writer who inspired me; it was literature itself that did. The distinction between simple writing and literary writing, this sense of taste, came much later. As a teenager, I had read everything available in Urdu. Reading Ibne Safi inspired me the most in those early years. At 13, I attempted writing a semi-espionage, semi-romantic novel. After that, I moved to Dostoevsky and Flaubert, whom I read in good Hindi and Urdu translations. I also read Krishan Chander, Rajinder Singh Bedi, Abdullah Hussain, and the Hindi writer Nirmal Verma.

I was always restless, always searching for good fiction. Poetry never drew me as much; I was inclined towards the novel and the short story from the beginning.

Your academic journey moved from science to philosophy and then to literature. How did these different fields feed into your fiction?

I believe no insight can be truly compartmentalised. We are the ones who have created separate disciplines. Broadly, I have studied philosophy and science, including geography and history; I have also done an MBA—not for a job, but because I learned a great deal about human behaviour from it. Philosophy is not something imposed from outside; it is part of the totality of human life. Abstract ideas are always present in literature, poetry, and art.

To write quality fiction, a writer should be touched by many fields. And I believe fiction cannot answer questions—it can only raise them. A fiction writer should never take a moral position. A political position, perhaps, but quietly. There is no need to make a slogan of it.

The Book of Death, first published in Urdu as Maut Ki Kitab, explores mortality and the human condition. | Photo Credit: By Special Arrangement

In your JCB Prize-winning novel Nemat Khana (The Paradise of Food), the kitchen becomes a site of power and violence rather than nourishment. What draws you to these ordinary, everyday spaces?

Food is not the only fundamental element in that novel; it also explores human hunger, bad intentions, and gluttony. I could have named it Bawarchi Khana (The Kitchen), but I didn’t want the kitchen to be the only theme. The kitchen is just a coincidence in the setting. Fundamentally, I explore human hunger, and the fact that our speech organs and eating organs are the same. The universal language of this world might just be hunger.

In South Asia, houses were often divided based on possession of the kitchen. Brothers might live together in the same house but maintain separate kitchens. It is like carrying a small piece of land inside your home—a space that can become a battleground. People think of the kitchen as a sacred, clean place. But sacred places can also be dangerous; they have taboos and a hidden darkness.

A writer’s job is to see what is not immediately visible. If a painting has hung on a wall for years, I want to see the stain it leaves behind when it is removed. That stain is as important as the painting itself.

The most meaningful part of Nemat Khana is where the crime seeks its punishment. This is different from Dostoevsky’s Crime and Punishment, where punishment finds the crime. In my novel, the character Guddu Mian is haunted by the guilt of two murders committed in his youth. There is no evidence against him, but his conscience seeks punishment.

The seeds of the novel were already in a story I wrote in 2000, Aakhri Daawat (The Last Supper). Published in the prestigious Urdu literary magazine Shabkhoon, edited by Shamsur Rahman Faruqi, it depicts the selfishness of people with full stomachs at a feast, even as a woman is dying. The story is now taught at Princeton University’s South Asian Studies department. Nemat Khana is taught in its original Urdu at the Institut National des Langues et Civilisations Orientales (INALCO) in Paris as part of the M.A. curriculum. I always advise anyone planning to read the novel to read Aakhri Daawat first.

You have spoken of death as a “comma” rather than a “full stop” in the sentence of life. Your novel Maut Ki Kitab (The Book of Death) explores this idea at length. How is death central to understanding life in your fiction?

I explore a stream of consciousness, a continuous state of awareness. I have long felt that there is a cosmic consciousness implanted within each individual. In existentialism, it is said that you cannot stand on the “slope of consciousness”—it is a steep, slippery gradient, very tangible but impossible to hold your footing on. It is a continuous force not necessarily tied to the physical body or its eventual decay.

Understanding life requires understanding death. Existential thinkers—Camus, Sartre, Heidegger, Merleau-Ponty, Gabriel Marcel, Karl Jaspers—engaged deeply with this after the World Wars. But go further back to Søren Kierkegaard and his Fear and Trembling, and you find the concept of “being-towards-death”: we are not meant to stay here forever. Death is, essentially, the vanishing of one’s memories.

Even during life, our memories begin to decay—through injury, trauma, old age. Brain cells decay, leading to dementia, amnesia, Alzheimer’s. Conditions like illusions and hallucinations are themselves a form of death one can encounter while still living. This is why I call death a comma—a pause where things become chaotic or scattered. You cannot fully understand the meaning of being alive without the idea of death.

No art can truly flourish without the idea of death. In ancient Egypt, the tradition of mummification during the time of the pharaohs was rooted in this: the body was preserved because they believed the soul might return, and without a body it would have nowhere to go. This gave birth to the art of sculpture. Statues were built as physical replacements for the body, since you cannot make a statue of a soul.

Khalid Jawed says if he hadn’t written Aakhri Daawat (The Last Supper), he wouldn’t have written Nemat Khana. In Aakhri Daawat, he observed the selfishness of people with full stomachs at a feast, even as a woman was dying. | Photo Credit: By Special Arrangement

Has the modern Urdu novel broken away from traditional realism and narrative convention to find a truly contemporary, experimental voice?

Unfortunately, no. There have been a few isolated attempts, but they remain just that. The problem lies not only with the writers but with the readers. Historically, the Urdu and Hindi reader has been “easy-going”—prioritising story over narrative structure.

Most Urdu readers are primarily consumers of poetry. When a poetry enthusiast turns to fiction, they often struggle. In our culture, literary criticism has historically focused on poetry, leaving the novel and other prose forms neglected. When we look for great Urdu novels, we are largely limited to a handful of works from the late 19th or early 20th centuries—Mirza Hadi Ruswa, Premchand. Premchand is undoubtedly our greatest fiction writer, but measured against Gorky, Dostoevsky, Turgenev, or Tolstoy, the scale is different.

There is a misconception around certain “experimental” novels. Qurratulain Hyder’s Aag Ka Darya (River of Fire) is often labelled “stream of consciousness”, but it is closer to internal monologue or free association. Comparing it to Virginia Woolf or James Joyce is not entirely accurate—their narratives are far more formally robust. Pakistani novelist Abdullah Hussain wrote a novel titled Baagh (Garden) that remains largely unknown. Anwar Sajjad’s Khushiyon Ka Baagh is another example of modernism that has likely been read by fewer than 150 people. In our culture, fiction has largely remained a source of entertainment—something to read on a train to kill boredom—rather than a source of deep insight. Until we embrace experimentation, our literature will remain stagnant water rather than a flowing river.

Can you name a few Urdu novelists you think are successfully pushing the boundaries of the form today?

Few writers are truly pushing boundaries, largely because many are intimidated by their readership. Traditional concepts of plot, narrative, and character development still dominate. That said, several outstanding novels have emerged in the past two decades. Syed Muhammad Ashraf, a senior writer who began in the 1990s, recently published Aakhri Sawariyan; its English translation, The Last Ride, was done by Mushirul Hasan. It masterfully interweaves history with the socio-political nuances of the Urdu-speaking community.

Siddique Alam, based in Kolkata, is a gifted storyteller. His novel Saal-ha-Saal stands out for its innovative techniques, incorporating elements of fantasy and magical realism. Rizwan-ul-Haq’s Khud-Kushi Nama is an insightful exploration of the current socio-political moment, depicting the friction between the individual and society.

Shaista Yusuf, a poet and writer, has written the substantial novel Sadiyon Ka Raqs (The Dance of Centuries), which engages with technology, artificial intelligence, and consumerism. I would also recommend Ashar Najmi’s 2019 novel Uss Ne Kaha Tha (He Had Said It).

From Pakistan, Naina Adil’s Muqaddas Gunaah (Sacred Sin) is an extraordinary work that has received significant acclaim. Her novels are notable for their “neutral gender” perspective—moving beyond the lens often associated with feminism to view characters simply as human beings. She captures a society in decline and weaves history and culture in a completely fresh way.

The Paradise of Food (Juggernaut Books), originally published as Nemat Khana (Arshia Publications), was awarded the prestigious JCB Prize for Literature in 2022. | Photo Credit: By Special Arrangement

What is missing in how Urdu language and literature is taught and promoted, and what would it take to keep it alive for the next generation?

I have always been reluctant to give a simple answer to this question. I held a somewhat utopian academic approach during my years as a professor; the practical reality is different. This question is ultimately one for governments and official institutions.

My personal belief is that we must treat Urdu education with the same consistency as religious education. Just as parents ensure their children learn religious duties without question, they should take responsibility for teaching Urdu at home. Adults should learn it themselves so they can pass it on. The new education policy offers flexibility for people of any age to learn the language.

We should move away from teaching Urdu literature in isolation. It should be integrated with social sciences, natural sciences, and comparative studies—studied alongside Hindi and other regional languages. If we teach Ghalib or Mir, we should include Tulsidas, Surdas, and Kabir in the same syllabus. Broadening the intellectual horizon through comparative study will deepen appreciation of the language and dispel any sense of inferiority.

A sobering fact is that a significant portion of India’s religious heritage—translations and interpretations of the Hadith, the Quran, Sufi teachings—is preserved in Urdu. Most people in India have accessed their religious knowledge through Urdu, not directly from Arabic. If Urdu is lost, this vast archive of religious and cultural knowledge will vanish with it. Ultimately, saving the language requires voluntary, personal effort. One can pursue any professional field—medicine, engineering, law, while still learning and maintaining Urdu as a living language.

Is Urdu suffering from an identity crisis in India, politically marginalised and ghettoised in today’s polarised environment?

The polarisation and ghettoisation of Urdu has long been discussed. While I am often critical of Mushairas, I must admit they have played a vital role in keeping the Urdu script and language alive. Yet because Mushairas are treated as a performing art, audiences often engage with poetry without a deep or serious connection to the experience.

There is a segment of the elite that uses Urdu as a fashion statement, listening to the ghazals of Mehdi Hassan, Ghulam Ali, Abida Parveen, or Farida Khanum primarily to project an image of refinement. This hollow display of culture is often credited with “saving” Urdu, much as the film industry and its songs are said to have kept the language alive. These are transient observations. I see no harm in changing or adapting the script if it makes Urdu more accessible. If someone cannot read the Urdu script but wishes to read Ghalib or Mir Taqi Mir in Devanagari, we should not stop them. We read Dostoevsky and Tolstoy without first learning the Russian script.

Imposing rigid conditions is a form of extremism that has no place in the literary world. We must adopt a strategic, rational approach rather than an emotional one. Many Urdu scholars, while advocating for the language, suffer from an inferiority complex and send their children to English-medium schools. There is no harm in learning English, but one should also learn one’s own language. A community forum is needed to determine the best strategies for the language’s future.

You often advise young writers to “play their own flute” quietly while the world plays loud DJ music. How can they preserve their artistic integrity in today’s age of mass distraction and social media?

When I speak to young writers, I emphasise staying true to their own experience. They must operate within the specific time and space in which they exist, mentally and physically. I don’t advise them to obsess over newspapers or critics. They must keep their eyes open to the world they are living in and find their own unique voice, regardless of the surrounding noise.

In our modern world, we become accustomed to constant noise—whether literal DJ music or the metaphorical noise of social media. For a writer, it is important not to simply imitate what is happening around them. They must listen to the “inner voice”—the creative, political, or moral “Other” within. These voices together form a creative personality. The ultimate task of a writer is to make the familiar unfamiliar and the unfamiliar familiar.

The current literary scene is dominated by a frantic race for self-exposure on social media. It feels as if everyone is standing in a marketplace, competing to sell themselves for the highest price. Even major publishers have turned writers into self-promoters. The old sense of modesty, where a writer would finish a book and let readers and critics decide its worth, is gone. Now a book is a “product”, and writers are expected to participate in its aggressive marketing through reels and promotional content.

The recent boom in novel-writing is partly because novels, when translated into English, can win substantial awards like the JCB Prize. This has led many to write novels who might have been better suited to travelogues, biographies, or poetry. A genuine writer should maintain their ego and integrity. While they may “sacrifice” that ego for their characters during the creative process, in life they must remember they are not salespeople for a product. Their work should have inherent value that draws the reader in, without knocking on doors.