A River Remembers: Author Zeyaur Rahman on memory, identity, and the politics of belonging

Zeyaur Rahman's debut novel, <emphasis>A River Remembers</emphasis>, delves into the complexities of identity, belonging, and representation in a fractured society. The protagonist, Roshan, is an unplaceable individual who carries no caste, religious, or regional markers. Rahman chose to make Roshan rootless to challenge the notion that categories are the problem, but rather literature begins where classification stops being sufficient.

Roshan's missing caste marker serves as a literary device to encourage readers to meet the person before they encounter the category.

The novel culminates in a confluence of rivers, regions, and religions, symbolizing the meeting and coexistence of diverse elements. Rahman acknowledges the danger of assimilation and the need for synthesis without appropriation. He emphasizes that coexistence remains meaningful only when identities persist after synthetic encounters.

Rahman decided to set the story in the Northeast, carefully navigating the responsibility of portraying Tangkhul, Meitei, and Pangal lives without falling into empathy tourism. He stressed that research can reduce ignorance but cannot abolish otherness or distance. Roshan's journey in Manipur aimed to give these communities their histories, neither beginning with nor ending with him.

The Ganga river, both sacred and contested, served as the novel's spiritual anchor. Rahman stayed with the Ganga as the protagonist's spiritual tether, appreciating its role in sustaining India's civilizational memory. He explained that a river can embody both sacredness and ordinariness, devotion and labor, permanence and change.

Writing across marginalized histories posed challenges for Rahman, who aimed to avoid letting history dominate over the lived experiences of people. Literature must particularize, exploring the humanity within oppression. For Rahman, the opposite of dehumanization is not idealization but granting every life the freedom to transcend the history that shaped it.

Rahman's novel grapples with the complexities of global capital, the BPO industry, and the postcolonial intellectual. He highlighted how systems rarely enter lives as straightforward oppressors or liberators, leaving readers with ambiguity. The novel's expansiveness calls for sustained attention, a reminder that the novel's future remains relevant in an age of dwindling attention spans.