The Changing Scenario

To write a book like ‘Blood River’ one needs the courage of an epic proportion. What according to you was the most difficult part of this process?

The process was like a steeplechase race; obstacle after obstacle, each difficult in their own right but followed by another one just as difficult. The war was my first concern – how to get through terrain where the world’s bloodiest war is being fought. Then came the logistics – how to get across a country without any roads. Then there was the issue of health – how to keep healthy in a country which incubates many of the world’s worst diseases. And then there came the issue of being brave enough to do it – that required digging deep to places I did not know existed. And then after the journey there was the entire process of producing a book – another series of challenges from winning an agent, to persuading a publisher to take on the project to actually writing the manuscript. There was no single part of this entire process that was the most difficult. It was all a challenge.

 

As a seasoned journalist you have covered Bosnia, Iraq War and Israel’s invasion of Lebanon in 2006 among other events. But Africa, especially, The Congo is a different ball-game altogether. As a writer, do you allow events at times to overwhelm you as you might not have as a journalist?

To raise your writing up from the level of straight reportage I think it is important to put a bit of you the person into the writing. If this means taking on events that overwhelm, that cause a malfunction in the mechanical process of reporting, then I think that is proper. I see it less as overwhelming and more as connecting with you, the author. As a writer one must expose one’s inner, real self rather than the cold, objective journalist.

 

Correct me if I am wrong but the book suggests that when you took up this journey, you were not sure you would document this experience as a book. One can easily sense that unpreparedness. In a way, it adds to its freshness. How easy or difficult it is then to turn it into a book?

I had no firm plan for a book. Indeed I had no firm idea that the journey would be possible. But when I emerged on the western side of Africa having crossed the Congo, I felt there was enough material for me to write a great book. The challenge was how to go about producing a book. I remember sitting down beside my computer on my return from the Congo. After a few days’ rest and several long baths, I googled ‘How to publish a book’. I was totally ignorant of the process. In fact, I had to start from Ground Zero.

 

Journalism gives a person a sense of personal bravado. I mean even if you have been scared during the war at times, there is no way your reportage would reflect that. But book is a different platform. In Blood River, you appear scared for your life almost perpetually. Does it mean that a book has more potential to humanise an experience than reportage?

I am in danger of repeating my answer to the question No.2 above but I felt that for a book to work it must have more than just straight reportage. You must be prepared to put your emotional DNA into the book, for better or for worse. One must be brave enough to strip away the camouflage and put yourself out there for the reader to engage with.

 

Countries like Liberia seldom feature on the media radar, unless of course something devastating happens there. May be, as a journalist, you would have never covered the country yourself. Did this compel you to write ‘Chasing the Devil’?

It was more a sense of the limitations of journalism that compelled me to write Chasing the Devil. I did a good job reporting on Liberia but reporting does not allow one to contextualise a society properly. It also does not allow to take on the full loom of its cultural history and identity. It is my search for cultural history and identity that compelled me to write my books.