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Scroll.in
07-06-2025
- Entertainment
- Scroll.in
‘To be an artist or a writer, you have to be in the business of serious noticing': Amitava Kumar
Amitava Kumar writes (and paints and draws) every day. It is an 'important' part of his identity, says the writer. The author of several works of nonfiction and four novels, Kumar creates work that is a testament to the value of consistency and the symbiotic relationship between all forms of the creative arts. His latest novel, My Beloved Life, is a moving portrait of the hardships that the common Indian overcame – and succumbed to – during the COVID-19 pandemic. Kumar also pondered the devastating effects of the pandemic in The Yellow Book. The second in a series of three books, in which Kumar responds to the world around him through drawings, writings, and memories. In The Blue Book, Kumar tries to see beauty in a world where fake news reigns supreme and everything appears to be on the verge of collapse. In the final book in the series, The Green Book, Kumar gives us an insight into the mind of a writer who observes closely and attempts to capture in images and words what is happening to the world around us. In a conversation with Scroll, the writer talked about how the series came to be, why he doesn't want to have 'the cosmopolitan ease of someone at ease everywhere', and how you can put your iPad to good use. Excerpts from the conversation: How did you sort your thoughts into three colours, that is, blue, yellow, and green? It started with the blue. And that was almost by chance. Just a string of associations and a painting I had made with a blue book in it. At that time, I had no thought of doing other books. And then the idea of the next book came. This time, particularly during the long period I was in London, I was looking for the colour yellow. By the time I was working on the green book, the coherent idea of the books in a series, had formed in my mind. Green now meant in my mind the search for nature and for rebirth but also for what was young and perhaps unripe like a first love. A traveller, observer, writer – are these the three words that best describe you? On a good day, what do you feel most like? And on gloomier days? Your middle term – observer – is the link that unites the other two. If you are to be an artist or a writer, you have to be in the business of serious noticing. On a good day, I feel the easy unity between all my pursuits. There is a sense of creating something more than what one was given. On gloomier days, I feel like I'm taking notes, in one form or another, on events unfolding beyond one's control in the world at large. There is in that instance less of creativity and more of a kind of desperate, maybe even silent, urgency. While all three are true for you, I wouldn't hesitate to think of you as an artist–painter too. Do you see yourself as one? Thank you. You are very kind. Now and then, I allow myself to imagine that I'm an artist–painter. Actually, I make sure I do at least one drawing or painting each day. On the other hand, I want to insist on the viability and the dignity of being an amateur. In a world where democracy is shrinking, billionaires and crony capitalism and politicians blessing the billionaire's beta-bahu, we have to at least keep the arts democratic. Everyone can write or paint every day. It is not necessary to be brilliant at it; instead, it can be a small, nourishing practice that enriches our lives. In The Green Book, you write about observing the Ganga and those who live along its banks. As someone who divides their time between New York and India, what baffles you, enrages you, and gladdens you each time you come back to the river? The Ganga has been receding from my hometown, Patna. So it is as if she is leaving us. What gladdens me is simply the sight of the river, and then to stand beside it and sense how the river has flown along those banks for millennia. What is enraging is the filth. In The Yellow Book, you confront the devastation of COVID-19. This is a theme you revisit in My Beloved Life. Life as we know it came to a standstill for each of us. Still, we see that you drew through it, wrote wherever you could. What is the value of art and creation in such exceptional circumstances? Did it ever feel futile, or powerless? I don't know. I mean, that's the honest answer. Your art, your writing, can't make the dead come back. I remember reading about the metal in the crematoriums melting from the unending fires. And our political leaders boasting about the size of their election rallies. When I received news of an uncle's death near Bhagalpur from COVID, I remember painting one of the pandemic postcards. 'Why are we (the educated liberals) so ineffective in our dissent?,' you write in The Blue Book. Have you found an answer to this yet? It's an old question. People find different answers that work for a while, and we see signs of effective dissent. Wasn't that true of the Arab Spring? Or, for that matter, the anti-CAA protests? I don't have an answer for myself that is permanent or necessarily potent. I can only respond in my writing. For instance, faced with the deluge of fake news, I wrote a novel called A Time Outside This Time. You also mourn the loss of your language, Hindi to be precise. And you consider yourself to be in 'exile' in the US. But when I read My Beloved Life, I couldn't recall a novel that was so Bihari in its mood. So Indian. How do you slip into this Indian–Bihari identity in your fiction while travelling so widely around the world? Does the travel in some way distill what it means to be Indian or a Bihari? That's very nice to hear. I love that. And can't thank you enough for the compliment. Don't know what to say in response to your question. I see people all the time who only two months, or maybe only two weeks, after leaving Delhi for New York, begin to sound different in their speech. I have never left my roots. Whenever I speak in Hindi, people will always ask me, Aap Bihar se hain? I don't want to have the cosmopolitan ease of someone at ease everywhere; I'd rather embrace something more difficult, of being at home nowhere. (I think I stole that from Edward Said.) In all three books you hark back to the writers whose works have inspired you. There's also a moving chapter on Shaunak Sen's film. We rarely read about how other forms of media apart from literature inspires a writer. Would you say that, in a way, these three books are also a way for you to reflect on your own growth as an artist and an audience? Sometimes we forget that it is equally important for an artist to be a refined consumer of the arts… An important part of my identity, something that I do daily, is read literature and look at art or watch films, and I cannot imagine doing writing where those parts of me aren't reflected. The other thing I want to tell you is that I was a provincial boy when growing up, quite ignorant not only of the world at large but the cultural riches that surrounded me. It has been a wonderful journey, this life, learning about what is created in complex and beautiful ways by the people I admire. And that is also the story I'm continually sharing with my audience of readers and others. Many of your sketches look like they were done on the move. Is that true? Do you carry your pens, pencils, and colours everywhere you go or do you like to come back, reflect on what you saw, and transpose it on paper? Yes, yes, I carry many of these materials with me. But, you know, it is easy when what you are carrying materials for watercolours. I've never painted oils in the open air like many wonderful artists that one reads about. In some cases, however, I've made a quick sketch on the move and then worked on another version back in my study. Also, photographs. I have taken a photo on my phone and then come back home and painted that scene. I forgot to mention the iPad! I have taken it with me on my travels and drawn on the iPad too. When did it feel like the right time to introduce your reader to your artworks? Would you consider lending your artworks to an exhibition? I didn't start doing these paintings in earnest until the start of the pandemic. People were dying – I'm talking of March and April of 2020 – and after the snow melted here flowers were blooming. I started painting those flowers on the obituaries I cut out from the New York Times. When I posted them on social media, Hemali Sodhi asked me if she could use them on the website for the new literary agency she was starting, A Suitable Agency. And then, a few weeks later, when I kept up posting more work, she wrote to me and said that she thought there was a book to be put together. One thing led to another, and now I draw or paint every day. Just as I write every day, even if it is only a few words.
Forbes
06-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Forbes
Let Elin Hilderbrand—the Queen Of The Beach Read And The De Facto Queen Of Nantucket—Introduce You To The Island She Loves
Elin Hilderbrand Beowulf Sheehan The island of Nantucket—located off of Cape Cod, Massachusetts—has been home to novelist Elin Hilderbrand for 32 years. To pay homage to the place she says she owes everything to, Hilderbrand has written a love letter to the island in the form of The Blue Book: A Must-See, Can't-Miss, Won't-Forget Guide to Nantucket , a guidebook that introduces (or, in some cases, reintroduces) the world to the place she holds so dear. 'I owe everything I have—my entire career, all of my success—I owe to this island,' she tells me about a week before the book's publication on May 6. 'And anytime I get a chance to give back, I take it.' This includes giving back monetarily—donating to various Nantucket-based charities and nonprofits—and serving as the de facto ambassador for the island, or, in my words, the Queen of Nantucket (a label she eschews). 'I mean, I'm a champion for Nantucket,' she modestly tells me. 'I would never in a million years call myself the Queen of Nantucket. I mean, that's—there are people far more important here.' Case in point? In Hilderbrand's words, the woman on the island who fixes everyone's computers, a service Hilderbrand herself employed when her own laptop broke the week before we spoke. ('If she hadn't been able to fix it, 150 pages of my new book would be gone, and I have to start over,' Hilderbrand says. Don't worry—the work was salvaged.) "The Blue Book" cover by Elin Hilderbrand Little, Brown and Company But , Hilderbrand admits, while she may balk at the Queen of Nantucket label, 'as far as promoting it nationwide, I just do the best that I can to make sure that—I mean, Nantucket itself never disappoints,' she says. 'The island itself is so charming, so beautiful, so friendly. I raised my three kids here.' In addition to giving back to Nantucket-based charitable organizations, Hilderbrand has become an economic driver for the place, promoting island businesses by putting scenes featuring the island in her novels. In 2022, she wrote the novel Hotel Nantucket , and had the idea that the hotel would give out a recommendation guide of the spots to see while visiting there—the restaurants to visit (and the restaurants to avoid), the beaches to hit up, the shops to patronize. But, while that recommendation guide was written from the hotel's perspective, there was still something missing—a book about what to do and see in Nantucket written in Hilderbrand's own voice. 'I need to be clear—this is not a comprehensive guidebook,' she tells me as birds chirp in the background on a late April day. 'It's my personalized, curated recommendations. And so what's not in it is as important as what is in it, because there are some tourist-y places on Nantucket that I might not feel are worth the time and money, but everywhere that I do mention is such a highlight.' A view of the Brant Point Lighthouse in Nantucket, Massachusetts on April 25, 2020. (Photo by Maddie ...) Getty Images Hilderbrand employed the services of Meredith Hanson to do The Blue Book 's illustrations, with the book named as such because a signature color of Nantucket interiors is hydrangea blue, with white as an accent color. The book, she said, is written for those planning to visit and those who hope to visit someday, 'or maybe they just want a piece of Nantucket to put on their coffee table or keep in their bedroom,' she says. It's meant to be a keepsake, she says. Wedding planners have been buying up copies of The Blue Book to give to their clients as they plan weddings here, as well as travel agents and 'people that are in the business of bringing people to Nantucket,' Hilderbrand tells me. In addition to The Blue Book 's release, Hilderbrand's so-called Queenship of Nantucket is further cemented by the Highline—the ferry company on the island—creating a specific Elin Hilderbrand tour based off of her recommendations in The Blue Book . Even sweeter? Hilderbrand's sister Heather will be running the tour three days a week for two hours beginning May 7, the day after the book's publication, all the way through October. ('She's so excited,' Hilderbrand says of Heather.) 'I feel it's going to be so popular because then, people can get the whole experience,' Hilderbrand says. 'They get on The Blue Book tour, and they can see all the places in person and then pick and choose where they want to spend more time.' Hilderbrand's love affair with Nantucket began in 1993, when she was living in New York City with her boyfriend. After they broke up, she told him he could have their apartment in the city for the summer, and 'I'm going to go away for the summer and I'm going to go to Nantucket,' she recalls to me, over three decades later. She arrived on the island, rented a room in a house 'and had just the best summer ever,' she tells me. She bought a 10-speed bike. She fell in love with her roommates, and the man who would eventually become her husband. 'It was a magical, out of a book summer,' Hilderbrand says. 'And I thought to myself, 'Okay, I never want to leave.' And I got home and my ex-boyfriend was in the apartment and he said, 'How was it?' And I started to cry. And he goes, 'Okay, I take it you had a good summer.'' Two guests sit in beach chairs on September 24, 2015 at Wauwinet Inn overlooking Nantucket Bay on ... More Nantucket Island, Massachusetts. (Photo by) Getty Images Once she got back to the city, all she could think about was going back. At this time, Hilderbrand was a teacher, so at the end of the school year, 'I sold all my furniture on the street in Manhattan and moved to Nantucket permanently in 1994.' She and Chip, the man she met that fateful summer of 1993 and later married, raised their kids on Nantucket. Though they're no longer together, both of them are still on the island and are good friends, Hilderbrand tells me, 'and each have our own little piece of Nantucket, and all my kids love it.' Hilderbrand grew up outside of Philadelphia, and, when all of her friends used to travel to the Jersey Shore for the summer, her father and stepmother took her to Cape Cod. 'And I loved it, loved it, loved it,' she tells me. Her father died in a plane crash when she was a junior in high school, and suddenly 'those summers came to an end,' she remembers. That summer—the summer she was 17—she got a job at a factory that made Halloween costumes instead of heading to the Cape. 'I was so miserable, Rachel,' she tells me. 'And I was like, 'Okay, the only thing that's going to make this better is I'm going to promise myself that, in the future, I'm going to create a life where I can spend every summer at the beach.' So it was always my goal to get back.' Elin Hilderbrand stands for a portrait in her home on September 27, 2024 in Nantucket, ... More Massachusetts. (Photo by Emily Mentes for The Washington Post via Getty Images) The Washington Post via Getty Images And so that's exactly what Hilderbrand did—she built a life for herself that allowed her to not just spend every summer at the beach, but every day of the year there, if she so chooses. 'Nantucket is unlike anywhere else in the world,' she says, noting that it's 30 miles out to sea, and only accessible by boat or plane. 'In the summertime, of course, it attracts a very wealthy clientele, and where you get a wealthy clientele, you get a lot of interesting stories—a lot of drama,' she says. (Perfect fodder for an Elin Hilderbrand beach read.) There is a historically preserved downtown, cobblestone streets, no chain stores—only independently-owned shops, restaurants and boutiques. Window boxes are full of flowers. Flags snap in the wind. There are old churches and 50 miles of undeveloped, pristine beach. And Hilderbrand felt compelled to share the place that has molded her into the woman she is today with the world. Hilderbrand's recommendations in The Blue Book are vast and wide, but how would she spend a perfect summer day in Nantucket? She's exercise first thing in the morning, she tells me—a run to the beach, or she'd take a barre class, which she does every day in the summer. For breakfast, she'd head to Lemon Press on Main Street ('there's always a line, but worth it,' she says). Then, she'd shop downtown—Mitchell's, Millie and Grace—and grab sandwiches from Something Natural and head to the beach (Steps Beach, to be more specific). For dinner, she'd go to the Sandbar, 'which is right down the beach from Steps,' she says. 'And it's like a feet in the sand—they often have music, and it's like fish sandwiches and burgers and fish tacos and fabulous drinks. And it's super fun.' After Sandbar, she'd head to the Club Car ('they have a piano bar and you can sing') or the Chicken Box ('the one sort of dive-y—I guess you'd call it a nightclub—but it's like a bar that always has live music and everybody goes, and it's just the greatest place to end the night'). Elin Hilderbrand attends the Los Angeles premiere of Netflix's "The Perfect Couple" at The Egyptian ... More Theatre Hollywood on September 4, 2024 in Los Angeles, California. (Photo by Araya Doheny/WireImage) WireImage It's no surprise that, after Hotel Nantucket came out in 2022, the island gave her the tourism award. As celebrated an ambassador as Hilderbrand is—the island is generally always the setting of her 30 novels, and in The Blue Book she calls Nantucket her muse—she isn't without detractors, she tells me. 'If you did a random selection of people, there would also be people who say that I'm ruining it because now all these people are coming,' she says. (This only intensified after Netflix adapted her 2018 novel The Perfect Couple into a miniseries starring Nicole Kidman and Liev Schreiber, released in 2024.) Liev Schreiber and Nicole Kidman attend the Los Angeles premiere of The Perfect Couple at The ... More Egyptian Theatre Hollywood on September 4, 2024 in Los Angeles, California. (Photo byfor Netflix) Getty Images for Netflix 'I would say that Elin and her books have increased the visitation to Nantucket, and also raised the general visibility of Nantucket across her readership and viewership of the adapted Netflix show,' said Peter Burke, executive director of the Nantucket Island Chamber of Commerce. Pointing to a specific example, Burke tells me about the Elin Hilderbrand Weekend, which 'ran for a few years every January,' he says. That time of year on the island is otherwise 'typically quiet,' he says, and those guests for that weekend not only patronized hotels but also retail and dining locations, which was only beneficial for the island during 'an otherwise quiet time of the year.' 'I can safely say that we receive multiple calls per week from individuals looking for information about Nantucket who are planning their first trip to the island after reading about it as the backdrop in many Hilderbrand novels,' Burke adds. 'One of the unique features of Elin's books is the integration of real island locations into her novels. Visiting readers can—for the most part and allowing room for creative freedom—go to businesses and beaches that their favorite characters have enjoyed.' Of all the projects Hilderbrand could have taken on for her next book, why write a guide to the place she lives and loves? She wants people to 'put Nantucket on their bucket list,' she says. 'And I can say to them, it will not disappoint. I'm not blowing it up. Every bit is great and even greater than I described, because there is no other place like it. Even in the rain, even in the fog, it is the most beautiful place—an American treasure, and everybody is welcome.'
