Watch the full interview: https://www.newslaundry.com/2025/08/2...
In his new book Return to Self, British-American author Aatish Taseer turns his gaze outward, exploring histories and cultures across the world.
Speaking to Abhinandan Sekhri, Taseer explains that writing about his travels to places like Mexico, Sri Lanka, Morocco, or Iraq was a way of refracting India through other societies that “have experienced similar kinds of shakeups, similar kinds of historical controversy”.
Though exiled from India after his Overseas Citizen of India card was revoked, Taseer tells Abhinandan that the country lingers like a ghost ”in the background of this book”.
Talking about the experience of not being able to attend the last rites of his grandmother due to his exile, Taseer says, “My mother said to me, ‘Oh, it’s no big deal. You’re not missing anything. It’s just cousins gathering, drinking whiskey, remembering Nani.’ And I was thinking, it’s such a small thing if you have it, and it’s such a big thing if you’re dispossessed of it because it creates a kind of absurdity in your life…I grew up in her house, and suddenly, for her to pass without a single right of closure for me, creates a world in which you feel like nothing matters.”
The book, structured as a collection of travel essays, was part of a collaboration with Hanya Yanagihara, editor of The New York Times Style Magazine, Taseer says. She would propose themes, and Taseer would pursue them through his own sensibility.
One such instance was Spain. “She was aware that somebody from India, who came from a hybrid society, who had grown up with a plural society, would have a special feeling for entering Spain where that hybridity had been undone,” says Taseer.
In Sri Lanka, what began as an essay on flowers deepened when Yanagihara suggested the lotus. “That’s not just a flower that goes out of culture into stone, into politics. It’s the symbol of the BJP, it’s the symbol of Rajapaksa’s party in Sri Lanka,” Taseer says.
Speaking about the title essay on India, Taseer says, “Every modern nation is really an imperfect articulation of a culture, of a civilisation. In founding India, there was great sensitivity to the different peoples and communities that became part of an Indian ethos, a kind of Indian multiplicity. The name ‘India’ is almost a metaphor for the country seen through the gaze of outsiders. Its etymology travels from Iran to Greek to Latin, becoming a symbol of the outside gaze. That is part of its beauty but also its tension. It’s easy to weaponise that word because it speaks to Indian plurality, but also to the experience of being seen by outsiders. In a country like India, with a history of invasion, the word is charged.”
Watch.
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