Short story writer and socio-political commentator Zeyaur Rahman’s debut novel A River Remembers articulates the anxieties of a fractured identity caught between caste, religion, and geography, and posits an insolent question: who gets to belong.The Indian Express spoke to Rahman about the politics of belonging, the weight of representation and sidestepping the dangers of empathy tourism. Edited excerpts:The protagonist Roshan carries no caste marker or religious identity, nor does he belong to any one region. In many ways, he is an outlier in a society that organises itself through categories. Why did you choose to make your protagonist unplaceable? Is his rootlessness something to mourn or to celebrate?Categories are not the problem as they enable administration, inheritance and recognition. But literature begins where classification stops being enough.I never thought of Roshan as rootless, only socially indeterminate. We often mistake identity for identification. The latter may help place a person, but does not tell us who they are, which is assembled through memory, loss, moral choices, relationships, and the places we leave behind that refuse to leave us.For instance, Odysseus is recognised by an old scar, not his titles. Recognition runs deeper than labelling. Roshan’s missing marker, therefore, was a literary choice, not an erasure. I wanted readers to meet the person before they met the category.The novel ends with the image of “confluence”: mainland and Northeast, Hindu and Muslim, the Ganga and the rivers of Manipur flowing together. Yet confluences are rarely equal. In a political landscape where the Northeast remains peripheral to the national imagination, did you worry that “confluence” might be read as assimilation?We celebrate confluences because they evoke meeting rather than separation. Yet in every confluence one constituent changes more than the other. The metaphor carries both harmony and hierarchy within it.Indian civilisational instinct has repeatedly sought synthesis rather than exclusion, but every synthesis deserves to be examined from the vantage point of its smallest constituent. At what point does synthesis become appropriation? Coexistence becomes meaningful only when identities remain recognisable after synthetic encounters. A River Remembers does not settle these questions. I hope it leaves the reader grappling with them.Story continues below this adWhat drew you to the Northeast, and how did you negotiate the responsibility of writing Tangkhul, Meitei and Pangal lives without slipping into what might be called “empathy tourism”?“Empathy tourism” is a genuine danger. Writers have to imagine lives beyond their own. But imagination, at its best, is an act of respecting an invitation, entering another world as a guest who should not go about rearranging the furniture.Research can reduce ignorance. It cannot abolish otherness, nor does empathy abolish distance. When Roshan enters Manipur, the narrative had to stay there long enough for Tangkhul, Meitei and Pangal lives to possess histories that neither began with him nor ended when he left.The Ganga is both India’s civilisational river and one of its most contested political symbols. Why did you choose it as the novel’s spiritual anchor? Did you ever imagine another river carrying that burden?I never thought of the Ganga as a symbol that could simply be exchanged for another river. A civilisation may inherit many rivers; the protagonist inherits one and asks it to carry the burden of his memory, a different protagonist might have chosen another.The Ganga as a civilisational symbol is much older than its life as a political one. In the Indian imagination, a river becomes a tirtha because generations keep depositing memory into them. I was interested in how one river can simultaneously sustain the sacred and the ordinary, devotion and labour, permanence and change.Story continues below this adWhat are the difficulties of writing across histories of marginalisation?It is difficult to resist the temptation to let history become more interesting than the people living it. History necessarily generalises, and literature necessarily particularises. While remaining historically faithful, literature explores what kind of person inhabited that history. These ordinary details are evidence that oppression never entirely exhausts personhood.For me, the opposite of dehumanisation is not idealisation. Fiction becomes morally serious only when it grants every life the freedom tobe larger than the history that shaped it.Also Read | Dead phone, phantom ‘Transcription’: Ben Lerner’s latest awakens ghosts haunting our always-on eraThe BPO industry exploits Roshan, yet frees him from poverty. Were you interested in how global capital absorbs the postcolonial intellectual’s idealism? Did you ever worry that Roshan’s peace at the end might be mistaken for surrender?Systems rarely enter our lives as pure oppressors or pure liberators. The 1991 liberalisation offered financial dignity, mobility and an escape from inherited constraints that earlier generations could scarcely imagine.From a distance, peace or surrender can look remarkably similar. I wanted the novel to leave that ambiguity intact, because literature, unlike ideology, is not obliged to rescue us from contradiction.Story continues below this adA River Remembers is an expansive novel that asks for sustained attention from its readers. At a time when attention spans are dwindling, what do you think about the future of the novel?Every generation has believed that a new medium has finally made sustained reading obsolete. The novel itself was once regarded as a disruptive new medium — too immersive, too emotionally absorbing, even morally suspect. The anxieties change; the novel persists.Aishwarya Khosla spearheads the digital strategy and execution for the Books & Literature and Puzzles & Games sections of The Indian Express. With over eight years of experience in journalism, Aishwarya specialises in literary criticism, cultural commentary, and long-form features, which explore the intersection of identity, politics, and social change. She was the recipient of the Nehru Fellowship in Politics and Elections, an intensive research fellowship in policy analysis and political communications, which informs her nuanced approach to cultural journalism, allowing her to provide readers with unique insights into how literature and media reflect broader political shifts. As a trusted voice for The Indian Express audience, she authors the popular newsletters, Meanwhile, Back Home and Books 'n' Bits, and hosts the podcast series, Casually Obsessed. Before her current role, Aishwarya spent several years at Hindustan Times, where she provided dedicated coverage of the Punjabi diaspora, theater, and national politics. Her career is defined by a commitment to intellectual rigor, making her a definitive authority on modern Indian culture and letters. Areas of Expertise Literary Criticism, Cultural Politics, Political Strategy, Long-form Investigative Features, and Newsletter Curation. Write to her You can reach her at aishwaryakhosla.ak@gmail.com or aishwarya.khosla@indianexpress.com. You can follow her on Instagram: @aishwarya.khosla, and X: @KhoslaAishwarya. Her stories can be read here. ... Read More