An Intrusive Culture of Care

Aruni Kashyap discusses his new novel, a portrayal of the small pleasures of everyday life that a group of friends tries to safeguard against the violence of the Indian state.

By Torsa GhosalAugust 1, 2026

• Fiction

I READ ARUNI KASHYAP’S new novel How to Date a Fanatic over a couple of days this spring just as West Bengal, the state in India where I was raised, voted for a political regime change. The Hindu Far Right, campaigning on a platform of religious exclusion and anti-immigration policies, was elected to power by a resounding majority for the first time in the state’s history. Assam, Aruni’s home province in India, underwent a similar shift in 2016. With the Indian nation-state continuing to stray from its constitutional values of secularism and fraternity, Aruni’s novel reflects on the friendships people from marginalized backgrounds form and the communities they build to survive in a hostile society.

The novel’s narrator, Rohit, is a bisexual, thirtysomething man from an oppressed caste who grew up in a small village in Assam and studied in Delhi and New York City before returning to teach English literature in Delhi. He is employed by the publicly funded Delhi University and the private University of Naalanda. Rohit’s relationships with his friends in Delhi—the parties and gatherings of academics, activists, and creatives—constitute the plot. Among his closest friends is Minti, a queer activist and therapist working at Naalanda, who also grew up in Assam. Sarfaraz, a model turned academic, shares their childhood history, and their love of strong black tea, what this group fondly calls “poisonous tea.” Dhruv, a gay Punjabi academic, is a newer addition to their circle, and Rohit is in love with him. The communal tensions stoked by the Hindu Right on and off campus infiltrate their lives and alter their destinies.

Aruni depicts the violence the Indian state unleashed on college campuses in Delhi during the 2016 protests. He also deftly portrays the small pleasures of everyday life that a group of friends tries to safeguard against the politics of hatred surrounding them.

Aruni is an associate professor and the director of creative writing at the University of Georgia, Athens. He and I are both international students turned academics working in the United States, as well as friends who often discuss craft and share gossip. We corresponded over email about his novel.

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TORSA GHOSAL: Tell me how this novel came about. I read the section that appeared as a short story in the Boston Review some years ago. Did you decide to expand on that story?

ARUNI KASHYAP: Well, it was already an almost-done novel without an ending when the first chapter was published as a short story in the Boston Review. The prologue was added after the first draft was done. This novel is based on my experience of living in India between 2014 and 2018, when the Right came to power, precipitating social unrest and religious polarization, and started a coordinated attack on its universities, which have been bastions of student resistance for decades. Along with my colleagues and students, I participated in protests in Delhi against the many decisions of the government. Students were charged with outlandish laws such as sedition.

As someone who grew up under the insurgency in Assam in the 1990s, I have seen the ugliest profile of the Indian state that launched brutal counterinsurgency measures to quell the insurgency; extrajudicial killings, collective punishment, forced disappearances, and torture camps were the norm. So many of us never trusted the state forces, but this was a new kind of low. It was as if what was practiced on the margins of the Indian society had now taken center stage. The fire that the state had been burning to suppress the aspirations of minorities and the vulnerable was now used against anyone who disagreed with their policies. Female journalists questioning the government were trolled as “presstitutes,” and anyone who disagreed was branded “anti-national” and asked to go to Pakistan—as if Pakistan was waiting for millions of Indians who didn’t agree with their government, with fresh passports and open arms. I needed to make sense of all of that. That’s why I wrote this novel.

Your narrator functions as a witness to both the rise of the Hindu Far Right and a new political consciousness among the young people across Delhi’s campuses. He stands slightly apart from his friends who become more politically active. Rohit’s position reminded me of writers like James Baldwin who conceived of the position of the writer as a witness. Were you consciously molding your narrator to connect with a literary tradition that approaches writing as witnessing?

Not at all, but if it aligns with a longer literary tradition, I will take that as a compliment! It would have been very boring to write a character who was too committed to doing the right thing, and I would have been ventriloquizing through the character my ideas of right and wrong. Such a character would be predictable, and artistically less beneficial for me to write. Someone like Rohit, who is detached, not so committed to student politics, and is an academic who doesn’t like writing research papers, is a more attractive creative obstacle for me to overcome (mainly because he is so unlike me). He is a good human being, but is not interested in performing his goodness, nor in being self-righteous. Now, that’s a fecund space for me as a fiction writer because I would have to create unique situations to make Rohit react and make decisions. His disinterest in doing the right thing, but also not doing anything wrong, creates a sense of suspense in the narrative, which irrigates the plot.

Rohit’s disinterest in “performing” certain roles extends to his love life as well and has interesting consequences. I am thinking of how one of his boyfriends asks for his permission before a modeling assignment, and Rohit refuses to give or withhold it, recognizing that his boyfriend wants him to express “ownership.” Rohit connects possessiveness with Indian masculinity and doesn’t want to perform this brand of masculinity. Would you agree that Rohit sometimes, somewhat paradoxically, enacts his “goodness” through inaction?

It is definitely true that he enacts his goodness unintentionally in some situations. In this case, Rohit is in a situationship with someone who works as a model. They have an arrangement to keep the setup open, never get into a relationship—be like friends with benefits. This is the main reason he doesn’t give or withhold permission. It is a different thing that he is puzzled by toxic masculinity percolating into the queer situationship. He likes his singlehood. He worries that giving or not giving permission to this model character to pose for this underwear brand would take them to the next level of the situationship and violate the initial terms on which they started dating each other. At this point in the novel, Rohit is very clear about remaining single. He doesn’t want drama and complications in his life. He just wants to teach, date, read books, find someone to love, and so on, but oddly, he makes many stupid decisions that lead to dramatic moments in the book.

I am curious about your process of creating a character. In American and European storytelling, there’s a lot of focus on characterizing through demonstrable action. How do you go about fleshing out your characters?

I think a lot about the character until they become like real people in my mind, and when, in deep sessions of writing, things don’t go according to my plan because the character has come alive on the page, I know something is working. I allow them to thrive, giving them situations that would further build up who they are. I don’t disagree with the American and European discourse on how to build character. Such a discourse about craft and technique is rare to find in India; at least, I haven’t found it, probably because there is little conversation about craft in regional-language writing. And some of the writers whom I admire have written gorgeous novels using the same technique. The Bengali writer Ashapurna Debi comes to mind. Arun Sarma, the Assamese writer, is another one. We also see that in the short stories of Nirupama Borgohain. Homen Borgohain’s and Indira Goswami’s immortal characters constantly surprise us but never lose the hue of plausibility.

Rohit is disconcerted by the lack of compassion on both the left and the right—the former unsettles him with their self-righteousness and the latter with their instrumentalization of hatred. Do you have any thoughts about what a politics centering compassion would look like? Are there any social or cultural examples you have in mind?

Rohit is more perturbed by the lack of compassion on the left because he understands that anyone who uses religious and divisive forces in society is not running for a peace prize: hatred and maximum pain infliction is their goal. He is hurt and disappointed by the lack of compassion on the left when some of the people he knows in the novel, in their hatred for those on the right, in the process of performing goodness publicly on social media and elsewhere, have turned into the very people they claim to hate.

Rohit’s attitude toward the Left is an undercurrent of commentary on neoliberal politics of all kinds when the collective is cast aside, and the self is centered, and goodness is a commodity of exchange. I do think a politics that centers compassion exists in large joint families and grassroots activism that I have seen in rural Assam. In both of these contexts, they may squabble with each other, or severely disagree, but they stand together against all common enemies and challenges. Such a politics is possible in our group—the progressives. But broadly speaking, we remain divided for a variety of reasons. This leaves us fractured, and hence the Right wins. My first novel, The House with a Thousand Stories, which tells the story of an Indian joint family, is about this kind of politics.

How to Date a Fanatic is structured around addas (hangout sessions) among friends. There’s an implicit social contract wherein we understand that rumors, gossip, and banter need not be “true” to be enjoyable, but the novel is also depicting a world where the mainstream media serves as a mouthpiece for the ruling government and peddles “fake news.” Do you think the role of gossip in social life shifts in such a historical moment?

In such a state of the impermanent state, gossip and banter are replaced by rumors and news, in bits and pieces. Hence, in some of the early scenes of the parties and addas, there is banter, hookup, meaningless conversations, but as the novel progresses, the adda scenes have an escalating seriousness; people are no longer being self-righteous but are genuinely worried about what’s to come. So I think everything about the talk shifts in such a historical moment. Every major character in this novel is also queer, and thus these addas/parties hosted at their homes are their safe spaces in an increasingly unsafe world for queer people.

It’s notable how language with political resonance enters these safe spaces in your novel and seems to be transformed in the process. For example, Rohit observes that Dhruv says “offensive things” in such a way that people find it endearing. Rohit finds it appealing. But the idea of offense also carries a distinct political charge. Who gets offended and why, on both the left and the right, often sets the limits of discourse today. To what degree do you think personal and political expression share overlapping connotations? Or would you say that language functions differently in private and public contexts?

It is the latter: language functions differently in public and private contexts, especially because of the polarized, toxic atmosphere of internet cultures these days. Language also functions differently in different cultures. What might be deemed offensive in the United States, where I live now, may not be thought of as offensive in India. The novel depicts that in the way the characters give advice to each other, without preambulating with an apology for overstepping. The extra cautiousness in social conversations that I see here in the States, when people who care try to give advice, is rare back in India. People who care for you feel entitled to give you all sorts of advice and say all sorts of things. What might be read as toxic in the US context may be accepted with mild irritation elsewhere. This also varies from region to region in India, as you would know. This is most glaringly seen in the Indian mainlander’s inability to understand much of the political context in Northeast India. That’s why they read us incorrectly again and again, even when well-intentioned, and superimpose their frameworks of understanding, which perpetuates racist and colonialist violence of a unique kind.

I loved reading how much the characters interfered in each other’s lives, how porous their boundaries are, emotionally, socially, and even practically. This feels very different from a more American, or even therapeutic, emphasis on clear personal boundaries. What compelled you to present such an intrusive culture of care as a central element of your novel?

I present it this way because it is real, and I have personally benefited from it when I have lost family members and experienced heartbreak. This is what I sometimes miss in the United States. But there are two big reasons why such situations and scenes are included in the novel, even though it might confuse readers who are not from the Global South.

I love how you have phrased this: the “intrusive culture of care.” First, the language of care differs across cultures. In many cases, the therapy model of drawing boundaries is driven by a highly individualistic culture that cuts off engagement, making the lonely person lonelier and leaving the room more silent. The truth is, people need people to survive and live long. Modern therapy speak and connections based on such modalities may give us temporary peace, but our lives and societies are so much richer and more complex that they can’t hold space for such interactions because the problem is not just locational and social but also economic. For most Indian non-upper-class families, the only privacy one may get is at night, under their comforter. So, we have to coexist with a lot of people. The people in How to Date a Fanatic believe that the triumph of life is in sustaining long-term relationships instead of creating boundaries.

Second, the scenes in my novel where such an intrusive culture of care exists, to borrow your phrase, won’t survive an MFA workshop because they would be confusing for the Western reader. Many might read such intrusion as characters overstepping, being rude. But such experiences are rooted in our everyday context, and including these nuances was another way I could make the Indian English novel a bit more capacious, since the form has traditionally had to accommodate the discomfort and demands of the white/Western reader constantly, to be able to globe-trot. This manifests in two ways: first, overexplanation; second, erasure of granular realities that may be perplexing to a Western reader. While the Indian English novel often centers the Western reader in exchange for a peripatetic existence, my work, rooted in the vernacular and oral literary traditions of Assam, attempts to decenter that reader and yet aspires to travel widely. Such an artistic obstacle is more beneficial, more rigorous for me, and hence more enjoyable during the writing.

Can you say a bit more about specific elements of the vernacular and oral traditions you draw on? You are an accomplished and prolific translator as well, so I’m wondering: what are some traditions and practices that shape your idea of narrativity—that is, qualities you look for in a story?

I am indebted to the vernacular literary traditions of South Asia in a wide range of ways, and I can surely list a couple. This interaction stems mainly from my decision to reject the aesthetics of the Indian English novel, because I was convinced early on that the Indian English novel, with its quest to globe-trot, has had to shed quite a bit in the name of excess baggage. My experience of growing up as a writer from Northeast India, a region that consistently interrogated myths of the Indian nation through its many independentist insurgencies, was too deep and rich. The Indian English novel has not been capacious enough from any angle—caste, class, or stylistics—to accommodate this rich experience because it has remained preoccupied with the anxiety of performing Indianness for an imagined global reader and also in the mythologization of the Indian nation; for instance, the most garlanded Indian English novel is Salman Rushdie’s Midnight’s Children.

On the other hand, the communities in Northeast India, through cultural, political, and insurgent movements, have repeatedly questioned, and even rejected, Indianness. In the global Indian English novel, this manifests not only in the form of a desire to underline Indianness but also in the assumption that the default reader is Western, white, or at least someone who is intellectually shaped by a predominantly white institution. This is the white gaze the vernacular novel is not even aware of, or concerned with, or busy wrestling with; it doesn’t even acknowledge this gaze, and that is one aesthetic parameter I set for myself while writing my English fiction. This doesn’t mean I don’t want to be read widely. Even I would love to have my novels live a peripatetic life. I just want that to happen on my own terms, and I reject the terms dictated by the global novel.

The knowledge that the vernacular novel is not even aware of the white gaze was immensely liberating for me, mainly because I entered the tradition of Indian English fiction through systems of exclusion, where the state is experienced through surveillance, through disciplinary oppression of the people of Assam, denial of autonomy, and a quest for self-determination. This is not the case for a novel set in Mumbai, Delhi, or most of mainland India. I am also a literary artist who grew up in a climate saturated with conversations about Assam’s political sovereignty and the consequent violence surrounding it, which changed our lives irreparably. The anxiety of Indianness seen in the Indian English novel, manifesting in overexplanation and self-Orientalization, was off-putting, alien, and strange to me because my literary consciousness was shaped by the vernacular novel. Its focus on urban experience; its easygoing, borderless, cosmopolitan stories; and its repeated pivot to the experience of the diaspora ensured that the Indian English novel enjoyed a peripatetic life. But it has also led to self-Orientalization, the flatlining of localized experiences, which Pankaj Mishra’s beautiful piece on the “global novel” terms as “a consumable—rather than a challenging—cultural otherness.” If the gaze of the Indian English novel is that of a tourist, the gaze of the Assamese novel is that of a citizen. All of these concerns shape the narrative voice of the Bengali and Assamese novel, and I find that inspirational.

The truth is, I am not an Indian English writer, by which I don’t mean to say that I hate India’s global exports like the Bollywood star Shah Rukh Khan or celebrated writer Anita Desai, but rather that I reject the suffocating, homogenizing aesthetics of the Indian English novel. From 2001, when I was 17, to 2013, when I turned 29, I published in the Assamese language. That my first published novel, in 2013, was in English was a happy accident. While exploring the literary debates of Indian writing in English, I quickly realized that, while the vernacular novel is widely accepted by the Indian reader, the Indian English novel is the subject of derision and suspicion, and doesn’t enjoy the same relevance and centrality. Someone such as Sunil Gangopadhyay or Indira Goswami has a far bigger readership and following within India than a highly successful Indian English novelist. Naturally, remaining in the Assamese literary tradition was intellectually and artistically more attractive to me. Every novel I have written adamantly asserts this artistic sovereignty and clearly states the multilingual origins of my Anglophone projects.

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Aruni Kashyap is an acclaimed author and translator of several novels and poetry collections, and has received awards and fellowships from Harvard, the NEA, and more. His work has appeared in CNN, Elle, India Today, The New Indian Express, and other publications. He is an associate professor and director of the Creative Writing Program at the University of Georgia.

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Featured image: Photo of Aruni Kashyap by Jason Thrasher.