Altaf Tyrewala, Jaishree Misra and Tabish Khair talk to Bhakti Bapat about why they left India, and why two of them came back.
Indian authors writing in English have always been an eclectic bunch. The one common, unifying thread maybe that most of them have travelled around the world. Some of them stayed put in foreign lands, while others came back. Why did they leave? What drew them back? Three authors, Tabish Khair, Jaishree Misra and Altaf Tyrewala, share their stories.
“I was brought up on the myth that migration is the panacea to all existential anxieties,” says Altaf Tyrewala, author of No God in Sight. “It didn’t help that I grew up in an Ismaili Khoja household. The Aga Khan lives in France. The Ismailis have always been the migrating sort. If you were not settled abroad by your early 20s, there was something terribly pathetic about you. I went to New York to study at the age of 18. The assumption was I would never return.”
He returned after getting his degree.
via Home and away | The Hindu.
Earlier: Author, Altaf Tyrewala
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