“I think the different sides of myself feed into each other”
Edition 16: An interview with author and technologist Jai Chakrabarti
Jai Chakrabarti (image credit: Peter Dressel)
The struggle to choose between different potentials in life is perhaps one of the most pervasive causes of angst for us humans. “What would have happened if?” Movies and books abound where creators get to play out their fantasies of how life could be different depending on decisions made in a few crucial minutes — from sliding doors moments outside of our control, to dramatic impulses like running out of your own wedding onto a bus with the boy next door. Many a mid-life crisis I’m sure has hinged on the desire to go back in time and take the other path. I, for one, have often wondered what life would have looked like had I chosen art school over law school.
Of course, the truth is it’s rarely productive to regret what is done — you can’t unpick one piece of your past that nags at you without negating all the other things you’d rather die than lose. Instead, it pays to use that itch to push you forward. I have deep admiration for people who are not willing to accept a single path or one definition of themselves. Because, in a world (and particularly in this country) that doesn’t give you any breaks before you prove your success, it takes not just skill but real strength of will to keep trying to be excellent at new things.
Jai Chakrabarti is an inspiration for anyone wondering ‘what if?’ Having taught himself to code at a young age, Jai is now an experienced technologist who currently leads an international team at a global music streaming business. But that is not the whole of Jai — he was also the kid who loved to read Dickens, and he has pursued his urge to write with equal passion as his tech career. As Jai put it when we spoke: “I struggle with hyper-specialization — this idea that if you’re a technologist, you can’t be this other thing.”
For years, Jai has been waking up early to craft beautiful short stories which have been published in prestigious literary magazines including A Public Space and anthologized in The Best American Short Stories. Jai wrote recently in Lit Hub magazine about how, in the blur of exhaustion when his son was first born, he still exercised his literary muscle by translating works by Bengali polymath Rabindranath Tagore “a dozen different ways to suit whatever spectrum of joyous or defeated state of parenthood I was living through.”
While living in Israel with his wife before their son was born, Jai came across a real life story that is stranger than fiction: In 1942, a group of orphans in a Warsaw Ghetto put on a production of Tagore’s play Dak Ghar before being shipped off to the Nazi camps in Treblinka. This unbelievable act of art in the face of horror inspired Jai to embark on the next frontier as a writer — the novel. A Play For the End of the World, Jai’s debut novel, was published this Fall by Knopf. It is an emotional, wide-reaching tale, tracking characters across Poland, America and India, and exploring essential human themes of love and guilt. Oprah Daily said of the book: “Chakrabarti’s searing debut is a paean to art that transcends even the atrocities of genocide.”
Jai and his wife and son moved to High Falls, NY in 2020 and have settled into the rhythm of life upstate. Here is more from my conversation with Jai.
Jai’s debut novel ‘A Play for the End of the World’ (image courtesy of AJ Lee)
AJL: Jai, welcome to the Catskill Culture Club. Let’s start at the beginning: Have you always wanted to be a writer?
JC: I remember in third grade, I would fill up books with stories of science fiction, and I embarked on novel writing in middle school. But, I am a first generation immigrant, so pursuing writing would have been the equivalent of jumping off a bridge for my parents so I had to have another field that I was pursuing. Around the same time I had taught myself to code — it was something I enjoyed doing because it allowed me to world-build. I was also influenced by something that Ezra Pound said about traveling on merchant ships to experience the world; so, this career in writing code became my way of seeing the world.
AJL: Your first novel just came out into the world — huge congratulations, it is such a huge achievement, and such an incredible story. How does it feel and what led you to exploring these themes?
JC: Having the novel come out feels like climbing a mountain then realizing it’s a sub peak, which is to say that while it’s wonderful to have my work out in the world and to connect with readers, I’m also realizing that it’s a different practice altogether to be out there, to promote and share your own work widely.
As to the origin story that led me to this novel, it all began when we were living in Israel more than ten years ago. It was our last day in Jerusalem, and my wife Elana and I went to visit Yad Vashem together. It was there that I found an exhibit called “Art in the Ghettos,” which included the story of how Janusz Korczak had staged a Rabindranath Tagore play in his orphanage in the Warsaw Ghetto. I wanted to know why Korczak would turn to art in such dark times and why he would incorporate a play that was written in a village in India. I was compelled by these questions to begin a long period of research.
This is a cross-cultural story — Elana is the granddaughter of Holocaust survivors, but I don’t share that lineage, so I wrestled with the question of whether I could tell this story. Her grandmother, who was liberated from Auschwitz, was still alive while I was writing the novel — I spoke with her and other survivors, I studied Holocaust Literature in a graduate seminar, traveled to Poland, met with Korczak scholars, and ultimately felt my way into this important moment of history.
Still, it was daunting to try and embody another time period; I had this impression about historical fiction as fusty and not a real art form. Of course that’s not true, as was so well articulated in Jonathan Lee’s article in the New York Times recently.
Jai’s short story ‘A Small Sacrifice for an Enormous Happiness’ published in A Public Space (image courtesy of AJ Lee)
AJL: As a writer of both novels and short stories, how do the two disciplines compare and do you have a preference?
JC: The way I think about novels is like fractals (if you’ll forgive the math term) —which is to say that novels tend to have an expanding symmetry, with subplots building upon each other in support of thematic concerns, whereas short stories tend to have a more discrete shape.
I love the short story format, and I love writers who dare to explore it at its edges, working within constraints but complicating them. Alix Ohlin creates diagrams for her short stories— I do this too, so I can see how the elements converge back on each other. I’ve learnt a lot from writers like Chekhov, finding well structured sets of patterns and partitions.
With novels I’m drawn to explore larger questions. For instance, in my new novel I am digging into how our reliance on technology is reshaping us, and there isn’t space in a short story to do that.
AJL: It is impressive and inspiring that you can be so good two significant jobs, or roles — technologist and writer. How do you feel about balancing those two sides of yourself?
JC: From a practical perspective, I write early in the mornings, typically 5-7.30am, and then I switch over to my job as a technologist. In ways that I don’t entirely understand, I think these sides of myself feed into each other. For generative writing I try to enter the mysterious possibilities of the blank page and avoid thinking of structure or the logic of a story, but when I’m revising the part of my brain that searches for connections in code is perhaps the same part that’s working to hold a story together.
AJL: You moved from India to America as a kid, and India features heavily in your fiction. How has having that mix of cultural influences impacted your writing?
JC: I first came to America when I was 8 years old, and we went back to India for 3 months over the summer every year — I would go to school in Kolkata, where I learnt how to read and write Bengali. Having access to Bengali writers in Bengali was as formative to me as reading Charles Dickens for the first time.
After becoming a new parent I struggled to write, and it was then that I did a number of translations from Bengali — it was a wonderful way to reconnect with language, and every time I did that I felt I understood my native language a little more. There are poetry translators — like Daniel Ladinsky, Coleman Barks — who are at times controversial because they’ve departed from formal translations of poetry, becoming in effect conscious culture creators themselves, and while translation for me is still a private practice I could still relate to that idea.
Jai at the creek near his house in High Falls, NY
AJL: Like me, you and your family moved to the Hudson Valley last year. What drew you to the area and what keeps you here?
JC: I’d lived in Brooklyn with my wife for most of my adult life, but last year we craved more space, access to nature, and we were also looking for a progressive kindergarten for our son. We found all of this in the Hudson Valley. I love that I can take a walk during the day, be in nature, and have a complete reset — I feel I’m on land that has been beautifully cared for and I feel it nourishing me back.
AJL: Lastly, I have to say, you write beautiful, lyrical titles! Your novel and your stories, like A Small Sacrifice for Enormous Happiness. Titles are notoriously hard to come up with — how do you do it?
JC: I usually find my titles in the text of the story/novel itself, and when I read a phrase there’s usually a kind of “aha moment” because I’m looking for something that extends the conversation with the reader after the piece is finished, and the titles that I love tend to enrich this dialogue.
Thank you Jai, for your writing and insights. See you at a nearby playground soon!
You can buy Jai’s novel ‘A Play For the End of the World’ in all the usual places, but I encourage you to support your local bookstores by literally going to one (two of my local independent favorites are Postmark Books in Rosendale and Rough Draft in Kingston) or ordering online via Bookshop. More interviews with creative geniuses tucked away in the Hudson Valley coming soon. Stay tuned.