Young and gifted with a natural flair for writing, Rahul Bhattacharya recently bagged the coveted Ondaatje?Prize for 2012 for his debut novel?The Sly Company of People Who Care. The novel, set in the Caribbean, brings alive an array of characters and geographies, taking a ringside view of the unique society the colonial era gave to the region, with a population comprising the descendants of those enslaved and indentured. Also, cricket is Bhattacharya?s first love and his first book Pundits from Pakistan, based on the historic India?s tour of Pakistan in 2003-04, which he?covered as a journalist, is considered one of the 10 finest cricket books of all time by The?Wisden Cricketer. In the process of clearing his desk before he can chalk out his future plans, he chats with Sukalp?Sharma on his evocative writing, motivations, the award, and of course, a lot of cricket. Excerpts:

The Ondaatje Prize shortlist included the likes of Teju Cole and Olivia Laing. Must be quite a feeling to have won it.

It feels pretty great. It?s a welcome surprise. Prizes are helpful for writers, especially young writers. Prizes mean financial support, they make people aware of the book, and to receive one gives you some sort of confidence that what you?re doing is alright. A writer can?t plan for an award and he can?t covet or expect one. But if it happens, it feels like a stroke of good fortune.

In both Pundits from Pakistan and The Sly Company of People Who Care, you have displayed an ability to take a physical space and give it life. Right from Karachi and Lahore to Guyana. Does it come naturally or is it a very conscious input?

For me it is an artistic impulse to try and render a physical sensation. The feel of sound and light and colour and movement?to render these is, I believe, a basic function of writing. In The Sly Company of People Who Care in particular, I wanted to submerge the reader in that world, in Guyana. That?s how it is when you encounter an unfamiliar land, you are surrounded by physical perceptions. One of the themes of this book is people dealing with unfamiliar worlds. Even in interior books, I like the physical. If you take Satyajit Ray?s films for example, I admire how beautifully they capture the physical world. And with that he conveys insight, understanding, sensitivity. The act of rendering powerfully and accurately usually requires something more than description.

How much of The Sly Company of People Who Care is autobiographical, given that you yourself did stay in Guyana for a year? And was Jan (narrator?s love interest) for real?

All the characters, including Jan, are fictional. Some minor characters may be modified or developed from something observed. The characters who are real in the book are those whose real names have been taken, like the drug don Roger Khan or the jail escapee Andrew Douglas. I?m tempted to give the answer that I recently read. The writer Elisabeth Robinson always says: ?17%!? Which is to say, there?s no clear answer, and it does not matter. It?s not a writer?s concern and most writers feel that it shouldn?t be a reader?s concern either. Your fidelity is towards the text and the world that you?re trying to create. You may or may not borrow from your life. When you create characters and movements, there is work that goes into building that. When you write in first person, and in the case of this book where the narrator has a background like mine, people assume that it?s autobiographical. It?s something I used as a device, to have that immediacy and intimacy with the reader. But when you do that, I now realise, you also risk confusing people. Some of the backdrops and the historical and geographical contexts are of course real.

You were doing well as a cricket journalist. So how and when did you decide to become a writer?

I wrote Pundits from Pakistan because it felt like a natural progression. I had been working with Wisden Asia Cricket magazine and had been writing long 2,000-3,000 word features. I wanted to write something on a bigger scale. I had the vague idea for the book before the 2004 Pakistan tour, and when I came back I started working on it and somehow ended up going through with it. At that point I felt somewhat satiated with cricket correspondence. When I started out I never thought of myself as a cricket writer or a correspondent. It felt like the right and the only thing I wanted to do when I came out of college. I never thought of myself as someone who would have a career in journalism and who?ll then write a novel. Both were circumstantial things.

People talk of you in the league of Amitav Ghosh and VS Naipaul. Does that put any sort of pressure on you as a writer?

Not really, no, because I wasn?t and am not trying to emulate them. I am honoured to be considered as being part of that company. But for a writer, it?s presumptuous to think he can do something that others have done. Once you start involving yourself with your text and your material, you forge a direct relationship with it. Of course, the influences and voices in your head will be represented in some form. These influences come from so many different places, and in my case they came from music and the newspapers as much as books. You can?t be writing a novel thinking you?re someone else. It?s only something that I?ve read in reviews. While writing I don?t think about these comparisons.

Displacement and migration have emerged as major themes for Indian writers over the years. The Sly Company of People Who Care, too, can be counted in that league. What?s your take on it?

One of the reasons I wrote this book was to confront my own ignorance. When I was young and I had gone to Guyana, I didn?t know much about the history that had led to the formation of a society like it. I returned there to follow my own curiosities. When you?re looking at societies where migration has been forced, you realise how the world was an epic game for the colonising powers who went and planted their flags wherever they could. They could move populations and continents to serve their purpose. The scale of this was frightening. So for anyone who is a traveller and who comes from a history of colonisation, this topic feels close to the bone. It is terribly moving. It is an essential part of our modern history.

In terms of writing on sports, particularly cricket, do you think we are lacking in terms of good literature?

In the mainstream media, in national newspapers, you don?t often find excellent sportswriting?though sometimes you do. But there have been several brilliant sports books out of India in the last decade. Ram Guha?s colossal history, Mukul Kesavan?s brilliant book of essays, John Wright?s wonderful memoir with Sharda Ugra, Abhinav Bindra?s book with Rohit Brijnath, which is a superb, forensic examination of obsession. There must be more. Sport is a very literary thing, to the extent that I sometimes find it more satisfying to read about sports than actually watching. It comes with such a great range of human experience and you can tell many stories through it. In our dailies, weeklies and periodicals, we may not find the sports writing one does in, say, a British newspaper. But it?s out there, on websites and blogs.

You still talk quite passionately about reporting and writing on cricket. Do you still get those impulses to probably go back and cover a tour, do cricket reporting again for a while?

I?ve been writing on cricket on and off and I still do essays. My favourite form of cricket writing is reporting from the match. There?s a great variety of relationships and personalities in a cricket team. Think of the different functions players perform, think of the subtle tensions between the individual and the team?which, as CLR James said, is the stuff of any great drama. A match provides you the context and the opportunity to explore this, and to bring alive people?s characters, habits, failures, triumphs. I miss that. At some point, it may be nice to do a Test tour again: if Test tours are still around!

There must be a few cricketers whose personalities make them interesting characters. Which ones have you enjoyed writing about?

You want to write about cricketers whom you love watching on the field, people like Brian Lara, for example, or (VVS) Laxman, or Wasim Akram. Then there are other cricketers who are a little more angular, who have more edges, who simply have more personality than others. In that category, there would be cricketers like Sourav Ganguly, Shoaib Akhtar, Inzamam-ul-Haq. These are people who give you plenty of material. It?s fun to write about someone who is a little mischievous, or a bit mad, or someone who has many shades to him. They are characters almost straight out of a novel.

And what about Sachin Tendulkar? Is it difficult to write about him?

Yes and no. Yes, because there?s not much new to say about him. He leads a very guarded life and his cricket has been commented upon so much by so many. On the other hand, because he represents so much and he means so many things to so many people, you feel that when you write about Sachin, you are writing about more than Sachin. You?re writing a little bit about India and Indians and their attitudes and aspirations, and you are almost examining a social phenomenon. When you write about him, you?re sort of taking a sidelong look at Indian society. That makes it interesting.

Excerpt

?Indiaman,? Uncle Lance had said to me on the first day. ?Nobody could imitate like Guyanese, you know . . .? For a moment I suspected he was making a stinging criticism. ?. . . Tha?is why Guyanese could succeed anywhere. We go New York, Canada, Flarida, we could become jus like them. But they can?t become like we! I know you mussee hear all kind of t?ing about here. But we?s good people, eh. Good people. I ah tell you the problem. Too much politricks. Politricks, you hear.

Ha! G?lang bai, but you must come down fuh gyaff.?

As Uncle Lance was always on the bench by the staircase, this was unavoidable.

?So, how?s India?? he would ask. I was still not versed in gyaffin?the key was to make a joke, preferably obscene, denounce something strongly, share a rumour or at the very least discuss somebody?s plight?so I would earnestly reply, ?What do you mean, Uncle Lance? Like politically, economically??

?Economically. Growth, bai, is ten per cent they be aimin for.? ?That?s right??

?How about Bombay? Flimstars! They callin it Mombay now.?

?Yes.?

?How about Delhi? Is a rape there every one minute, rass. Rape capital of the world.?

It was true that Uncle Lance could make talk out of anything. He was armed with nuff nuff conspiracy theories, many of them involving Americans. Like he knew that Hurricane Katrina was put out to disperse Haitian immigrants.

From The Sly Company of People Who Care by Rahul Bhattacharya, published by Penguin India