Both anthropologist And long distance They are deeply engaged in observation – in the act of observing others and, in a way, in observing themselves. What draws you to the idea of perception as both connection and distance?
I think one of the reasons many writers become writers in the first place is because they were observers as children. I also have a theory that many of us were shy – we spent most of our childhood on the periphery, watching others closely, deeply curious about what people were doing, but not able to jump in and be part of the action. And of course, we spent most of that time reading. This is another way to become a writer – to be immersed in imaginary scenarios, to the point where you feel like you are the hero yourself.
I think my childhood upbringing is based on the type of characters I write, because that’s how I’ve lived in the world, always observing others and having a different world going on inside my mind.
anthropologist Follows a narrator who returns home and begins studying his surroundings as if he were doing fieldwork. This is a fundamental view of belonging – how did this idea begin for you?
I wanted to write a book about daily life, but I thought you weren’t allowed to write about daily life alone – it might seem too boring. I can’t tell what people eat for breakfast, or what they do while hanging out with friends. I needed some kind of structure that would signal to the reader: This is a book about daily life.
Daily life is extremely important, and it’s something we often overlook in favor of bigger or more dramatic stories. The anthropological lens became useful because anthropology, at its core, is a way of looking closely at the lives of people. It is a study that breaks down habits, routines and behavior through a particular framework.
anthropologist It seems to ask whether we can ever truly see others without turning them into objects of study. Were you consciously engaged with the ethics of watching – especially as someone who has lived in different cultures?
More than the ethics of seeing, I was concerned with the ethics of belonging, and what gives us the right to ownership of a place. If we are not native to a place, can we ever really say that we belong there? And if we do not fully belong, then what is it that makes our lives valuable, especially when so much of the world now lives as foreigners.
Many of us no longer live in the cities where we were born or surrounded by our families. Therefore, we need to find new ways of fully engaging with the places we live in, without pretending to have deep knowledge about them – while respecting the fact that our lives are valuable, and we have the right to be where we are.
coming to long distanceIt collects stories about relationships that span time, geography and silence. What did the short story allow you to do that the novel didn’t?
My novels are often about a single place and the exploration of that place. And the process of writing a novel for me is really about exploring that whole place, and enjoying walking its streets and going into its rooms. Whereas a short story is about an event that changes something in the way we see ourselves, or that suddenly changes our certainties about the world and our own identity.
So, it’s very early. I think it can be much more impactful and much more powerful, because it’s about that moment of change, when the world no longer looks the same to us as it used to.
The stories often center on quiet moments – missed connections, unspoken thoughts, friendships that slowly dissolve. How do you decide what is left untold in the story?
I don’t really judge it. Even more so this is my authentic experience of how we are in the world, that we are not speaking our honest desires, we are not giving expression to what we truly want. And often, we don’t even know what we want or what we mean.
So, I really want to focus on that feeling of keeping information to yourself, or trying to process information without really knowing, with no certainty. And that’s why there are a lot of silences in my stories.
The title itself, long distanceFeels like both a spatial and emotional state. Did you see the stories engaging with that tension – between intimacy and remoteness?
Yes, it’s always about that. Often, stories begin with an intimacy, and that intimacy will manifest as an emotional absence. Or they start from an emotional absence – something we want to overcome.
By the end of the story, we discover that what we want to push away is actually at the root of our longing for the world.
Your prose is very subdued – spare but resonant. How conscious are you of rhythm and peace when you write?
I’m very conscious and not conscious at all, if that makes any sense. I believe concise prose is something that happens after several revisions. When I’m editing, I try to remove everything that isn’t necessary. And I try to describe that feeling in the clearest and simplest words I have available. This is very essential for me as a writer because many times you don’t really know what you are writing until you have started writing. As you progress, you discover your ideas. For me, that discovery process is making things rarer and rarer. The end goal is saying: Yes, this is something that feels true. There is no embellishment around it to distract you from the truth.
You write in English but often with a sensitivity that feels inherent in translation – as if the language itself is a foreign country. How do your multilingual experiences shape your fiction?
It’s something I think about often. That I am writing in a non-native language, and why I do not write in Turkish. It almost feels like a betrayal that I won’t write in my native language. But at the same time, I started speaking English at an early age. Many of the books I read as a child were in English. So, it’s almost a native language.
Writing in a non-native language gives you a certain distance to write about things that are intimate enough without feeling like you are betraying your family. And it allows you… allows me, at least, a certain level of honesty.
I also try to be careful not to write Turkish characters that sound like they’re translated. Or Turkish characters who are there to teach an English-speaking audience something. So, if I’m writing a Turkish character, I don’t try to explain things that an English speaker wouldn’t know about. Because this makes the characters fake. And perhaps it feels like this in translation because I try to leave the characters as they are without explaining much to the reader.
Are there writers or artists who have shaped your sense of calm and precision on the page?
Of course, there are many. Specifically in the context of peace, I would say Japanese author Yuko Tsushima and her book field of light Are very important to me. When I first started writing, the work of the German writer WG Sebald was very influential to me. He has a way of moving around topics without explicitly naming names, without even looking directly in the eyes. It creates both this meditation and this unbearable peace that I find so beautiful and emotional. I’m always inspired by writers who are able to say things as clearly as possible. That serves as a form of peace for me. In that sense, Natalia Ginzburg (small properties) is so simple in its language that everything else falls apart.
Every book has a stack of books that inspire it and that are special to that book. And then there are the authors you read in your early adulthood who have really determined who you are. To me, that’s Virginia Woolf.
You’ve said elsewhere that you like to “leave space” for the reader – not to resolve everything. Is this a kind of trust in the reader’s imagination?
For me, reading is not an act of patronizing. It is an act of sharing. I find it very ungrateful to teach a lesson – to say, “This is the way it is” and “This is the way it should be seen”. By creating space in a work, you are allowing interpretation. My experience of the world is that we don’t end our lives with five lessons. We end our lives in the middle of things, leaving emotions unresolved.
So, because life itself is not fixed in its meanings, I think books too cannot be fixed in their meanings. And every reader, depending on where they are in their life, will have a different experience of the book. I’m sure they’ll understand what I’m trying to say, and then fill in the gaps and make the book their own.
How has your relationship with writing changed from your earliest stories to now? Are you more thoughtful, or more spontaneous?
When I first started writing I was extremely impatient to fill my works with everything that seemed interesting to me. And as I continued writing, I relaxed a little bit and said, I have time to write other books. I don’t have to put everything in it.
I would say I’m more focused on my writing. And my books and stories now deal with a particular topic rather than trying to cover everything.
For you, does writing feel like establishing yourself in the larger world?
Absolutely. Writing is an incredible way to live a life where you are giving yourself permission to live many different lives. You give yourself permission to become things that you aspired to and perhaps weren’t able to for many different reasons. While writing you can live the world in different environments. I realize that every book I write is a house I build. And when the book is done you have to break it down, or as you say, let other people in. It is a very happy and very sad act of being in the world.
Rutvik Bhandari is a freelance writer. He lives in Pune. You can find him talking about books on Instagram and YouTube (@themindlessmess).
