Writer, translator and an academic, Aruni Kashyap is the author of ‘The Way You Want To Be Loved’ and ‘The House with a Thousand Stories’ and along with that he has translated 4 novels from Assamese to English. His translations have been shortlisted for the 2023 and 2024 Armory Square Prize for South Asian Literature in Translation and VOW Book Awards 2024.

He has served as a visiting writer at Lander University, Minnesota State University, Converse University, The College of William & Mary, Valdosta State University, and delivered the Tagore Lecture in Modern Indian Literature at Cornell University. His short stories, poems, and essays have appeared in Catapult, Bitch Media, The Boston Review, Electric Literature, The Oxford Anthology of Writings from the Northeast, The Kenyon Review, The New York Times, The Guardian UK, and others.

He is currently an Associate Professor of English & Creative Writing and the Director of the Creative Writing Program at the University of Georgia, Athens. In the middle of a chaotic semester and harsh Delhi Summers he agreed to sit with us for a short interview over mail.

Being a translator, do you think that translations do justice to the original works? And how do you make sure of keeping the sanctity of the original work intact while translating?

Translators actually create an entirely new text in a new language. It demands as much creative labor and imagination as creating an original work of literary art. I don't think translations will ever do justice, if we sanctify them. I am more interested in retaining the core and exterior, the heart and the behaviour of the original, rather than its sanctity. We should not fetishize how close a translation is to its original language. We should think about how the translation will work in the target language, and also deliver the pleasures and joys of reading the original. Now, that transfer from the original may not be one hundred percent, and that's okay because the new text will engender new joys and pleasures.

We often speak of identity as something we possess, but so much of your work suggests it is also something that happens to us. How do you think about that relationship between the self and the forces that shape it?

I try to repel those outside forces as much as possible. We waste a lot of time in our younger days trying to prove morons wrong. Someone would say, Assamese people are like X, and we spend a lifetime trying to prove them wrong. It is a waste of time. We should register our protests in ways possible, always collectively, and mostly live the way we want to. I say collectively because the oppressive forces are way too big, and we should do things together to avoid burnout. We will win the marathon. That's the goal.

You have lived and taught in the United States for a significant period. How has physical and cultural distance from Assam changed — or sharpened — your understanding of Assamese identity? Does diaspora clarify or complicate belonging?

This question doesn't apply to me. Thankfully, I became a non-resident Indian at the time of technology. This means I have been living in two time zones ever since I moved abroad. As Priya Tendulkar's speaking photo hung on the wall in the comedy serial Hum Paanch, as I do my chores in the US, my iPad or phone is placed in a corner or the room and connected through a video call to a friend in Delhi or a relative in Assam, where I am collecting intel about friends and family. I go home twice a year, for long spells. Thanks again for the generous vacations that come with most university teaching jobs. Yes, this means I choose not to teach summer classes, and have to make some choices, such as travel thirty-six hours door to door four times a year, but I like those choices even if they are hard. As a result, I have never felt the diasporic distance. Hence, I have never felt the physical and cultural distance in a way that would change the way I perceive myself or process things. I am also intentional in keeping myself informed. I watch local news, read regularly, and my work as a translator and Assamese writer keeps me tied to the Assamese literary industry. This distance must have been quite visceral and acute for my earlier generations, but I am glad I didn't experience that.

Are there dimensions of your identity that are inseparable from Assamese as a language, and that lose meaning or nuance when translated?

Yes, of course. Each language, for example, has its own tone, and we can't replicate that. It is also hard to translate voice. Pablo couldn't have told the story in The House With a Thousand Stories in Assamese because the Assamese language doesn't have the parameters to hold his humour, candor, and style. In the same way, I couldn't write my Assamese novel Noikhon Etia Duroit in Assamese because Rajiv is addressing an Assamese reader and the things he notices and discusses are important for the Assamese people; hence, I can't write the novel from Rajiv's perspective in English. It would fail. But these failures are not something that I mourn. That's why writing is exciting, and I get to experience this every day as a bilingual writer.

The title itself is so evocative — a house holding a thousand stories. Where did that image come from, and what does the idea of a house mean to you as a symbol of identity and memory?

It came from a poem called "The House With a Thousand Novels," which is still available online. It is an almirah in my grandmother's house, in an abandoned guest room. Many novels—popular, unpopular, pulp, erotic, mystery—used to be kept there, stacked on top of each other. My original title for the novel was The House With A Thousand Novels, but my editor thought it was a bad idea.