Karan Mahajan’s New Work Charts The Pull Of Home And The Price Of Power
India-West Staff Reporter
Karan Mahajan, currently an associate professor in Literary Arts at Brown University, has long been one of the most electrifying chroniclers of Indian family life, politics, and diaspora. His novel ‘The Association of Small Bombs’ was a finalist for the National Book Award, won the NYPL Young Lions Fiction Award, and was named one of the New York Times Book Review’s Ten Best Books of the Year. His debut ‘Family Planning’ has since been selected as one of Granta’s Best Young American Novelists.
In his new novel ‘The Complex,’ Mahajan turns his sharp, empathetic gaze to a sprawling Delhi family whose private fractures mirror the political upheavals reshaping India and the immigrant experience in America. The story follows Sachin Chopra, who leaves for the US in the early 80s, and his wife Gita, who remains tethered to Delhi even as she tries to build a life abroad. Laxman, Sachin’s ambitious and predatory uncle, rises through a burgeoning Hindu nationalist movement while his sister Vibha struggles to hold the family’s reputation together. As India convulses with violence, and buried family secrets come to light, the Chopras are forced to reckon with the weight of legacy, the cost of power, and the complicated loyalties that bind and betray them.
What follows is a conversation with Mahajan about ‘The Complex,’ its characters, its political and emotional terrain, and the questions that continue to shape his work:
Q. ‘Family Planning’ followed a father and son stumble through the New Delhi’s political landscape. ‘The Association of Small Bombs’ examined the aftermath of a terrorist attack. Your new book explores the immigrant experience between 1980s India and America. What would you say is a common thread throughout your work and are there themes you find yourself consistently drawn to?
Delhi is certainly a common thread. I have an intense almost cellular attachment to the city’s polluted dusty landscape and its bulbous Mughal monuments. It is the backdrop of what I write, and I am always trying to understand how people are formed and deformed by this environment. Growing up in a Punjabi bourgeois milieu in Delhi shaped my interest in the mores of a mercantile subculture where doing business was the primary ambition. More broadly my novels share the belief that people lack the means to speak to each other about the things that matter most such as desire, grief, and loss. So, they act out in self destructive ways: telling lies, planting bombs, running away, having affairs. This connects to another major theme: the shifting line between victim and perpetrator. ‘The Complex’ takes these ideas further by exploring not just India but also the US in the 1980s.
Q. What did portraying this era of Indian immigration through Gita allow you to explore?
Indians who arrived in the US in the 70s and 80s were among the first educated Indian immigrants to come, before that Asian immigration was restricted by racist quotas. I wanted to understand what it was like to immigrate to a country that barely knew who Indians were and where the community was so small that you would eagerly stop any South Asian on the street just to talk. How did people manage loneliness? Immigrants are often discussed in terms of gratitude, but many believe they will return and that their exile is temporary. I wanted to dramatize the mindset of a woman caught between two worlds. I was also interested in how immigrants remain connected to home not only through love but through trauma. Nothing draws you back like a wound.
Q. There is a memorable scene where Gita and Sachin visit another Indian couple in Michigan who seem to have assimilated far more than they have. Why do their American experiences diverge so sharply from the Malhotras?
The Malhotras have actively chosen assimilation, even shedding their Indian first names for American ones. Cindy has built a career in the US which gives her confidence, although that confidence can feel performative. Gita meanwhile drifts from one half formed job to another and is nourished by the memory of India. She also has her parents to return to and is close to them. Cindy seems estranged from hers. Sachin has shut down emotionally in his own way. He is disconnected from both India and the US and immerses himself in work to avoid confronting grief and trauma.
Q. Laxman Chopra rises within the Hindu nationalist BJP with the same domestic maneuvering he uses to cover up his personal transgressions. How do the domestic and political spheres intersect in this novel?
In my work the political and the domestic are intertwined. My characters constantly adjust their ideological positions. With Laxman I wanted to show someone who enters politics out of opportunism and then develops conviction much like figures such as Trump. His impulse is always to accrue power wherever he is. When he fails to achieve success in the west he seeks dominance in the family or turns to nationalist politics. The drive is the same.
Q. The Mandal Commission protests appear in the novel through the narrator Mohit who becomes involved in student demonstrations. Do you remember these events from your childhood and why did you choose to write about them now?
I was six years old when the protests erupted. What I remember is that school was closed for weeks and that an older family friend lay down in front of a bus during the protests. This disruption and that image stayed with me for decades. Many college students who are now staunch leftists took part in the protests against affirmative action without much thought. With Mohit I wanted to portray a decent person passionately on the wrong side of history and show how the protests flowed into the rise of Hindu nationalism, something literature has not fully captured.
Q. SP Chopra, the late patriarch, continues to influence the family long after his death. What role do legacy and patriarchy play in ‘The Complex’?
SP Chopra is a great man in the eyes of society. He was central to the freedom struggle and revered by his nine children. Strangely none of them have achieved his level of greatness. It is as if his shadow has stunted them. They are certain of their importance even as the country moves past them. Laxman resents this deeply. He believes he is entitled to everything his father had even though he is a boor and a failure.
Q. The novel shows extreme family loyalties dictating the characters’ actions which in turn mirror larger caste and nationalist loyalties. Why is loyalty so seductive and what do you hope readers take away?
Family loyalty is a vast topic and one I have not explored in depth before. Nothing matters more to many Indian families than the family name. Shame must not be brought upon it so transgressions are ignored and anyone who tries to break free of what I call the mafioso knot of the family is cast out. I wanted to show the ways in which we remain bound to our families even when we try to escape them.
