Espionage fluid identity and an atheist fascinated with faith Stephen Alter on his many worlds

New Delhi, Jul 21 (PTI) “Do I really belong here or there? And where is here and where is there?” It’s a question author Stephen Alter often finds himself returning to.
     His grandparents came from the US more than 100 years ago, he grew up between languages and different cultures in the hills of Mussoorie and now shuffles between Landour and Goa. Not surprisingly, identity and belonging run like a thread through most of Alter’s writings, including 20 books, some fiction, others non-fiction touching on themes of environment, travel and India’s natural wealth.
     In his new book "The Greatest Game", the author reimagines Kimball O’Hara or Kim, the boy-spy of Rudyard Kipling's 1901 novel "Kim", as a 60-year-old navigating the chaos of Partition-era India.
     He found the spy protagonist to be too "archaic and complicated" when he first read it as a teenager but went back to it later in life.
     "And the adventure, the espionage during the British Raj, the characters came to life in a way that they hadn't when I first tried to read it.
     "I kept thinking that it was published in 1901. And Kim, at that point, was about 12-13 years old. I said to myself, what would have happened to him in 1947? And how old would he have been? He would have been about 60-61," Alter told PTI during a visit to the news agency’s headquarters.
     Borrowing from Kipling’s idea of the “Great Game”, the 19th-century geopolitical rivalry between Britain and Russia, Alter calls his new book a literal and metaphorical expansion of the same theme.
     "The dilemma that he faces in 1947, with the cast of villains that he's up against, who are in a sense, trying to forestall independence and make Partition worse than it even was... He is really up against his greatest opponents in that way. But I play with it."
     In Kipling’s novel, Kim is white and of Irish-British descent but raised as an orphan on the streets of Lahore. Immersed in Indian culture, he speaks local languages fluently and defies colonial categories of race and class.
     His mixed identity, however, helps in his espionage, allowing him to move between different worlds in the colonial setting of the novel.
     Alter takes this forward in “The Greatest Game” with his reimagining of Kim.
     "He is not only living between two worlds, but also able to put on disguises of very different characters, from a 'sanyasi' to a Sikh barrister to a Punjabi merchant. He's constantly changing his identity in that way.
     "And that fluid sense of identity is something that I think interests me because I think all of us, whether it's me or the man on the street, we're all putting one mask on and then putting another mask on throughout our lives, whether we would admit it or not."
     Alter’s fascination with the spy genre stems from this very ambiguity.
     "I like to write espionage because they are all about identity. 'Who is the spy? Who does he work for or she work for? When the mask comes off, who is it going to be?' And espionage novels have a wonderful sense of fluid identity, uncertain identities,” he said, citing Graham Greene, John le Carre and Eric Ambler as key influences.
     And Alter perhaps personifies the very same fluid identity.
     "People have asked me, 'do you have an identity crisis?' And I'm not sure. There are moments at which I sort of ask myself, do I really belong here or do I belong there? And where is here and where is there? It's always a question," Alter said.
     “My grandparents came to India in 1916. So, it’s been more than 100 years. My father was born in Srinagar, Kashmir, and spent most of his life here,” Alter said.
     The 68-year-old and the late actor Tom Alter were cousins.
     He grew up watching Hindi movies in theatres across Mussoorie and singing songs like "Ye Dosti Hum Na Chodenge" from "Sholay". And somewhere through all that Alter knew that writing was what he wanted to pursue in life.
     So what language would it be in?
     "At home with my parents, I was speaking English. But most of the day I was out of the house with my friends. So Hindustani or Hindi, whatever it was that we were speaking, was really my first language. It was only when I went to school and had to sort of put my nose in books that English really took precedence over Hindi," said the author of “Becoming a Mountain” and “Wild Himalaya”.
     His writing often carries the vivid memories of his childhood when he would play many popular games with his friends.
     "We played kabaddi, we played guli danda... For example, when we used to play kabaddi, we wouldn't just say 'kabaddi, kabaddi, kabaddi'. We would say 'choo kabaddi, aal taal, tere muchche, lal lal.' So as a child, you absorb the language, dialect and rhythms from whichever part of India you grew up in," Alter said, recalling his early years in Etah in Uttar Pradesh and later in Mussoorie.
     His parents and grandparents were devout Christians but Alter identifies himself as an atheist fascinated with "gestures of faith".
     “Whether it's pilgrimage, whether it is mythology, whether it is folklore, all of these things, which in a sense try to explain something larger than ourselves… So, that to me is something very profound. I always say I approach it not through faith, but through doubt.”
     Kipling's Kim is not the only fictional historical character that gets a new life through Alter's pen. In his 2016 book "In the Jungles of the Night", Alter fleshes out conservationist Jim Corbett in a fictional setting.
     Now dividing his time between Goa and Landour (near Mussoorie), writing continues to anchor his life.
     “I haven't stopped yet. I live mostly in Goa. I haven't left it yet, but most of the time we live in Goa. At this age, it's a little too cold in Landour. So we run away to Goa. And my wife is also much happier in Goa. So people ask me, 'are you happy in Goa?' I say, 'my wife is happy in Goa, so I am also happy," he quipped.

(This story has not been edited by THE WEEK and is auto-generated from PTI)