Sagar Kamath’s ‘Chronux’ – Weaving History with Fiction

March 28, 2017

Through the course of time, humans have always been on the quest for absolute power to quench their thirst for more knowledge. As history often repeats itself, the hunger for more never died. Teaching numerous students about this human tendency, Sagar Kamath, a History and International Affairs professor, penned Chronux, his first book that attempts to answer crucial questions about humanity through fictional characters in historical events.

He speaks to Pune 365 about writing the book, mixing the historical elements with fiction and his eternal love for history.

Tell us a bit about yourself and how history became your main subject and passion…

I studied history and philosophy for my Masters’. I’ve always been fascinated by the subject, but I never really thought that I’d go on to make a career of it, or end up teaching history. Growing up, one of the things that appealed to me most about this subject was that, you have great potential to understand human behaviour if you study it properly. I’ve always felt, that you can learn a lot about contemporary society through history. Even subjects to do with international affairs, religion and politics are very fascinating to me. Teaching history came about quite accidentally and I’m glad it worked out.

Once you conceived the idea for the book, how did you go about merging historical events with fiction?

The way I approached it, I felt that the reader shouldn’t feel a great disconnect. It’s shouldn’t read like a textbook. So the challenge really was how to integrate the fictional aspect of the story into what has really happened. I found that the way you could actually do this was to have fictional characters that interact with people who existed. One of my characters is a Nazi, so having him interact with Adolf Hitler and Heinrich Himmler and integrate that with real events was the challenge.

You mentioned that the main part of the book is the ending when the reader realises that he or she has been a part of the whole journey set by time. How did you go about this?

I thought such a book couldn’t have a mainstream ending. The concept of the book is unusual, where time is the main protagonist. Time is a constant so the story has to be eternal. There is no ‘I’ or a ‘You’ element. There are characters with a third person’s narrative.

What sources did you refer to while describing actual events to make the book as realistic as possible?

I had to refer to a lot of sources that were not fictional. If I were putting together a narrative of the Hiroshima bombing, which is a part of the book, it is an event that actually happened and affected so many people. I tried to keep that aspect as factual as possible but created a character and narrated the incident through him. I looked up how the landscape of Hiroshima was before the bombing and interweaved a fictional narrative with that. I already had the story in mind but I needed to search for places that would fit right into it. There are Christian elements in the book and within the story so I had to figure out which kind of cities (during WWII) had certain cathedrals.

You said that history is a way for you to understand human behaviour. With regard to that, what questions have you tried to ask, or answer in the book?

I’ve tried to ask really fundamental questions like why is it that the quest for more power or ultimate authority has always motivated human civilisation, regardless of the time period. In a limited world view, people have always tried to outreach themselves. So in a way, I have attempted to answer these questions through a neutral observer who has looked at all humanity and that observer is time. We may have progressed technologically but the basic human behaviour has remained the same and I don’t know anyone else, who would be more surprised to see this, than time. How would time react to us? We often repeat mistakes and history repeats itself. The book speaks of a trap that time sets, because humans are extremely gullible.

If you had the chance to be a part of any historical event, which would it be and why?

I’ve discussed the events around World War II and at that time, the Nazis were searching for greater meaning even before the war started. I think that would have been a great time intellectually.

Do you have another book coming up?

Interestingly, I had a story in mind before I started working on Chronux. This book has the background of oriental martial arts and follows the exploration of the idea of reincarnation.

Chronux is now available online and at bookstores.