:00:00. > :00:00.have been some clashes, water cannon fire, pepper spray fired as well.
:00:00. > :00:00.Migration, human dislocation is one of the dominating
:00:07. > :00:11.And it is the springboard for Neel Mukherjee in his new novel,
:00:12. > :00:16.Set in India, which portrays five different, but sometimes
:00:17. > :00:20.interlocking, lives that are in flux, on the move,
:00:21. > :00:24.looking for escape, or at least something better.
:00:25. > :00:43.On the frontispiece of the book, before the story begins,
:00:44. > :00:47.you quote a Syrian refugee on the Austrian border,
:00:48. > :00:50.saying: "Migrants, we're not migrants - we're ghosts.
:00:51. > :00:56.Now, the ghost is sort of suspended between this world and the next.
:00:57. > :01:01.Yes, that is exactly the soul of my book.
:01:02. > :01:06.I wanted to look at migration, which is the thing that most
:01:07. > :01:13.People moving, mass movement of people from one place to another.
:01:14. > :01:16.And I wanted to sort of splice their history by thinking
:01:17. > :01:24.A ghost is something, a ghost is a creature that has not
:01:25. > :01:32.And the unhappy history of migration in the 20th and the 21st century.
:01:33. > :01:35.And I wanted to look at the history of people moving.
:01:36. > :01:39.But not in the form of the immigrant novel,
:01:40. > :01:41.which has become sclerotic, I think.
:01:42. > :01:45.But I wanted to look at the movements of people,
:01:46. > :01:48.whether voluntarily to look for a better life or enforced
:01:49. > :02:00.Your country of origin, obviously, where you were born
:02:01. > :02:04.We're just about 70 years since the partition of India.
:02:05. > :02:06.So that must be very heavily on your mind at the moment.
:02:07. > :02:09.It wasn't in my mind when I wrote the book.
:02:10. > :02:12.But now that you mention it, I think, you know,
:02:13. > :02:14.when you think of partition, what is it that...
:02:15. > :02:16.What is the first thing that you think of when
:02:17. > :02:21.You think of migration, of people, you think of the movement of people,
:02:22. > :02:22.and the very unhappy movement of people.
:02:23. > :02:26.People are being cut off, carnage, violence, destruction.
:02:27. > :02:32.We now have to look at 70 years of partition, we have
:02:33. > :02:34.to focus on that kind of migration, too.
:02:35. > :02:37.The book is structured in five sections, really.
:02:38. > :02:43.But we discover as we go through that there are links,
:02:44. > :02:45.slightly elusive links, very slightly.
:02:46. > :02:48.Again, this is touching a new sort of ghostlike theme.
:02:49. > :02:52.And of course in India, I think people who go
:02:53. > :02:55.there for the first time often find that the closeness, the gritty
:02:56. > :02:59.reality around them, and the world of the imagination
:03:00. > :03:03.and the spiritual, I mean, there's a very, very small gap
:03:04. > :03:10.And I wanted to do something like that with the book,
:03:11. > :03:13.to sort of, you know, bend realism within, if you will.
:03:14. > :03:18.To have that surface of nitty-gritty realism, as you call it,
:03:19. > :03:22.and not to blink while I was sort of detecting that on the page.
:03:23. > :03:26.And at the same time, to push that realism
:03:27. > :03:29.into its anti-form, if you will, by thinking about ghost stories,
:03:30. > :03:33.by thinking about migration, and by also letting the coherence
:03:34. > :03:37.brought to the book by the reader in the way with those elusive links.
:03:38. > :03:39.Of course, there's an irony in the title.
:03:40. > :03:44.You call it A State Of Freedom, but it's a strange kind of freedom.
:03:45. > :03:47.Well, when you think of freedom, the first thing you think
:03:48. > :03:55.And I also wanted to play on the notion of state, you know.
:03:56. > :04:00.Not just a mental state or a state of being,
:04:01. > :04:05.And I am trying to say something about India now.
:04:06. > :04:07.And I was also trying to allude to Nehru's great speech
:04:08. > :04:14.And I wanted to have, the title to have all
:04:15. > :04:18.But the destiny that you implied that awaits us
:04:19. > :04:23.Yes, at this moment in my life I do not feel very
:04:24. > :04:29.I mean, you can't get blunter than that.
:04:30. > :04:37.Well, you know, climate change is one very obvious reason why
:04:38. > :04:50.I think politically, the whole world is headed
:04:51. > :04:53.towards a certain way that is leaning on perhaps
:04:54. > :05:00.But there is also the best in ourselves.
:05:01. > :05:02.And even in this book, where people are lost, adrift,
:05:03. > :05:05.there are glimpses of humanity, and you must believe
:05:06. > :05:09.I do believe it on the individual scale, yes, of course.
:05:10. > :05:10.But aggregated, something happens, we become something
:05:11. > :05:15.No, of course, I give you that there are hopeful
:05:16. > :05:17.things in the world, there are good people
:05:18. > :05:21.But I think good is losing at the moment, I feel.
:05:22. > :05:24.In that case, where do you think these people in the book
:05:25. > :05:32.I think perhaps the children of one of the characters in section...
:05:33. > :05:35.The central character of Section Four, they are going
:05:36. > :05:38.to end up in a better place than their parents.
:05:39. > :05:40.This is something I find very effecting about India, actually.
:05:41. > :05:44.The fact that education in the country is aspirational,
:05:45. > :05:50.it's a key to a better life, which is what migration is all
:05:51. > :05:54.And I think she will give, her name is Millie, she will give
:05:55. > :05:58.And I hope that beyond the page you can imagine a better
:05:59. > :06:04.Do you find yourself becoming more depressed about the world around?
:06:05. > :06:07.I mean, you say that you need to look at the world
:06:08. > :06:09.as a writer and not blink, because all of your instincts
:06:10. > :06:12.are that you want to turn away and close your eyes.
:06:13. > :06:15.But that is the only trick a writer needs to know, actually.
:06:16. > :06:18.You know, I keep saying that great writers don't
:06:19. > :06:23.Like older writers I look up to, older writers who are considered
:06:24. > :06:26.the masters, they don't teach you how to write, they teach you how
:06:27. > :06:31.And I think one of the ways to look at the world
:06:32. > :06:37.And I think this is what I want to do, this is what I attempt to do,
:06:38. > :06:40.actually try and look at the world without blinking.
:06:41. > :06:43.When you say that great writers have inspired you and taught you how
:06:44. > :06:46.to look at the world rather than how to write in some mechanical way,
:06:47. > :06:49.who are the great writers who've most influenced you in that regard?
:06:50. > :06:52.I think VS Naipaul has been a very great influence on me.
:06:53. > :06:55.And also I read a lot of speculative and science fiction
:06:56. > :06:58.A very underrated writer called M John Harrison, who thinks very
:06:59. > :07:03.So, M John Harrison once said in an interview that always think
:07:04. > :07:07.of what it is that a genre cannot do, and then push it
:07:08. > :07:18.I think it's current in my heart, that's a great lesson.
:07:19. > :07:19.And science-fiction writers can imagine things,
:07:20. > :07:21.or they want to imagine things, that others don't.
:07:22. > :07:23.On a cosmic scale, it goes without saying.
:07:24. > :07:26.And that appeals to you, because you seem to believe
:07:27. > :07:32.that the planet would do a lot better without any of us around.
:07:33. > :07:34.Yes, this is a central theme of a lot of speculative
:07:35. > :07:40.Saying actually, you know, if you take out the humans
:07:41. > :07:43.as a species, maybe very peacefully and quickly so that there is no
:07:44. > :07:46.pain, I think that the planet would be doing a lot better.
:07:47. > :07:49.So, when you finished the book, does that mean there
:07:50. > :07:52.was no sense of elation, that you still felt trapped
:07:53. > :07:59.Well, I don't normally feel elation when I finished the book.
:08:00. > :08:04.But I felt, you know, the book does not end hopefully.
:08:05. > :08:07.And it ends with a kind of freedom for a particular character,
:08:08. > :08:10.but it's a very radical kind of freedom, a liberation
:08:11. > :08:23.And I thought I'd written a more hopeful book than my previous one,
:08:24. > :08:27.But, you know, as I said, not to blink when you're
:08:28. > :08:30.Neel Mukherjee, author of A State Of Freedom,
:08:31. > :08:48.What a day and we're not done quite yet, another three hours yet! At its
:08:49. > :08:51.best, glorious across the southern half of the British Isles, 32
:08:52. > :08:55.Celsius down the road in Twickenham.