nothing more real than fiction

For my grandfather, there was nothing more real than fiction.

His geography was never static, his genre, never fixed, his politics too mischievous to be monolithic, his language — a polyamorous medley of Persian, Urdu, Punjabi, Hindi, English, his friends scattered across continents: Ginsberg, Sontag, Verma, Sobti. Facing profound loss early on during Partition, he learned that while you can’t necessarily control the whims of the world, you can control your own word.

I remember, when I was a kid, how he used to sit with his glass of Johnny Walker Black Label, writing furiously with quill and ink. We weren’t to disturb him: the room became “Grandpa’s Study” as if his very presence redefined the space. I remember him learning how to type one key at a time. He would write these elegant long form emails to his friends in India, accidentally delete them, and then compose anew. His books were his greatest joys: when I brought friends over he would take them to the shelf and introduce them to his friends.

After my grandmother died he told me he was too depressed to write. Then, he got a stroke and lost the ability to read. As he aged, I saw him not only lose the people he loved, but the things he loved doing most. When he finally lost the ability to speak he would get so frustrated, shake the hospital bed.

One of the last things he said to me was that his last wish was that I would change the world. I asked for more clarification. He wrote me a letter with a shaky hand right there on the spot. He said he knew I would face many obstacles, but I knew what was to be done. During one of his final surgeries the doctor asked him what mattered most in his life (passing now or living in pain), my grandpa who had not spoken in days thought for a second and replied: “a writer’s integrity.”

In his final days he kept communicating with all he had left: that somber look of his luminous eyes, the tight vise-grip of his cold hands, that flash of a smile to every nurse. He told me once that his biggest fears was that he would be forgotten. But he published almost 50 works — no, 51 including me — to ensure that he never would. And in that way, his word, became my world.