Nishanth Injam interview: ‘Art that doesn’t fully convince us of humanity is not really art’

How does it feel to be on the longlist for the 2024 PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction? What does this recognition mean to you?

I am thrilled and grateful for being seen, for being included alongside incredible writers. I feel fortunate. I am not seeking validation from awards; I want it to come from the writing itself, but this helps. It helps me believe that, if I pursue the right questions, if I stay the path, there will be light.

Tell us a bit about how your short story collection The Best Possible Experience came together. How long did it take?

I had been working on this collection since 2015. I wrote some of the stories during my MFA and revised them and put them all together in early 2022. It took me seven years. From the beginning, I didn’t want any ‘filler’ stories in the book. I wanted to write something original, no matter how long it took. I don’t usually write a story unless I know that it’s worth pursuing, that I can say something new. Luckily, the stories I wrote during those years ended up complementing each other. Compiling the collection was a straightforward process of putting them all together, fitting them into the larger narrative that I had conceived years ago.

How did the MFA program at the University of Michigan help you grow as a writer? Could you talk a bit about their pedagogical approach, and a few things in particular that worked for you?

I became more conscious of how every word choice contributes to the meaning of the story. More than anything, the MFA gave me the space to read and write. To see how my work was being perceived by others and the ways in which I was falling short. The community and the friendships I formed there have been invaluable. There was no pedagogical approach beyond workshops. You go to an MFA program, not to learn craft, but to get better at evaluating your own work.

In your story ‘The Math of Living’, the narrator says, ‘The distance between the place I live and the place that lives in me is more than eight thousand miles.’ Migration, loss, and a longing for home are significant themes in your work. As someone who grew up in Telangana and now lives in Chicago, how has writing helped you process this sense of distance?

I began writing as a way to reduce the distance. To keep my country next to me. But over time, it has morphed into a desire to eliminate all distances.

In another story called ‘The Protocol,’ a man named Gautham who moves to the US to pursue a PhD in biotechnology stereotypes American women as ‘loose’ because of the movies he has watched and fantasizes about having sex with a blond woman. Tell us about the thought process that went into creating this character. How common is it to encounter such views among Indian immigrants?

I think it is pretty common. There is a lot of ingrained racism and colourism within the Indian community. And certainly, an aspirational whiteness. I wanted to unpack that ugliness and write into a space of redemption.

Gautham is from Rohtak, described in your story as ‘a small city in Haryana with far fewer women than men, one of those places where masculinity ran like drain water on the streets’. Looking back, do you think that you might have ended up reinforcing stereotypes about Haryanvi men for your Indian readers and stereotypes about Indian men for your American readers?

I disagree with that reading. I could have chosen any Indian city; I chose a city in Haryana precisely because I know the stereotypes and I wanted a place that would sit adjacent to those stereotypes. To be loud and clear, I don’t believe Haryanvi men are this way or that Rohtak is “one of those places.” There are terrible men everywhere. The entire story, in some ways, is about stereotyping, about the boxes that people use for other people, about the difficulty in navigating past them.

If you look at the third-person voice, Gautham is held at a distance in the beginning, characterized like a stereotypical immigrant. By the end of the story, the voice merges with Gautham. There is no distance. The story mimics the character’s way of looking, and journeys towards a breaking of boxes. So, it was necessary to begin with stereotypical qualities/characterization, and let the reader discover that Gautham is not who he seemed to be at first glance.

Stereotypes are shortcuts, an excuse to not look closer. I dislike the very notion of perpetuating stereotypes through storytelling — art that doesn’t fully convince us of humanity is not really art. All along, I’m saying: Don’t look away from this ugliness. Move past it and find beauty.

How has your own understanding of and relationship with masculinity changed as you transitioned from living in India to living in the US?

My view of masculinity hasn’t changed much over the years. I had the same opinions in India, had a good understanding of intersectionality. What changed after I moved: perhaps a deeper understanding of the forces at play, the way capitalism uses masculinity.

What was it like to explore inter-caste relationships in the story ‘Sunday Evening with Ice Cream’? How differently does caste play out in dating contexts in India and the US?

It wasn’t difficult. I just tried to capture some of the ways in which society codifies caste in dating contexts. Caste is always present; maybe a little less so in the US but very much present. It is a filter that people use — consciously or subconsciously — to preserve societal structures from which they stand to benefit.

What made you open the book with an epigraph from Italo Calvino’s book Invisible Cities? What aspects of his writing captivate or inspire you?

Calvino is one of my favourite writers, and his writing has always been a north star. He is able to map out interior spaces in ways that I think are profound. The epigraph really points to the heart of my collection: the search for meaning, the journey that never ends, and the transformation of the past.

How does your training as a software engineer influence the way you approach the craft and discipline of writing fiction?

I don’t think that it has influenced me all that much. I am more intuitive than logical, and have always been.

What advice would you offer people who write short stories, and are looking to get published?

Develop a critical eye towards your own work, and keep writing. Submit to literary journals only when you think that a piece is done.