Vaseem Khan: Writing The Wrongs Of Colonialism

Am I about to be murdered? I am wondering if Vaseem Khan, the first British Asian Chair of the Theakston Old Peculier Crime Writing Festival, could be plotting his next novel - using me as a guinea pig.

He has eyed me up. Surely, I want something stronger than a large glass of water, he asks. “A vodka instead? Oh, by the way,” he nonchalantly says sniffing his shirt, “don’t worry about the smell.” Well, now you come to mention it . . . “I’ve been at the Theakston’s Brewery learning the craft of cooperage (making barrels) and it was very smoky!”

Don’t worry, I nervously reply, I won’t. I am conscious that as a Caucasian male I fit the bill for one of his (literary) victims . . . My only saving grace is that we are in the leafy spa town of Harrogate and not India where Khan’s novels are set.

We have a lot in common, a love of crime novels and, as we discover, India, but first I want to hear how he plans to leave his mark via his curatorship of the “most prestigious crime writing festival in the world”.

“It is important to me individually, as a British Asian and as someone who has been writing crime for nearly a decade, to chair this amazing festival.

“It also expresses how the industry, and crime fiction, has developed over the past ten years. Crime fiction has led the way in opening the door to new voices and stories, something which is reflected in this year’s programme.”

Khan was born in Britain, but lived in India for a decade. He is proud of his dual heritage, and I suggest he has put together a more diverse programme than in previous years. He concurs with the observation.
“We have voices not just from diverse backgrounds in terms of race but people from all over the world who are coming to Harrogate to talk about the kind of crime fiction they write.

“For instance, I am delighted that S.A. Cosby, the African-American writer from the rural south who writes powerful crime narratives about race relations in America, is coming. There is a real punch to Shawn’s fiction that goes beyond just the crime plots.

“When I was curating the festival, I really wanted to attract writers who, through their work, express something about the world in which we live.”

row[]Anyone who has read Khan’s novels will understand the point. It is similar to his own style; he writes a crime series set in 1950s Bombay, just after Indian Independence, which gives him the opportunity to explore the post-colonial era in India and how the relationship between the British and Indians changed after three hundred years of British presence on the subcontinent.

It’s at this point we uncover that we both have a love of his parent’s homeland. When I was younger, I backpacked with a friend across this large, diverse country. Mentioning my first impressions of Calcutta leads Khan to tell me about his latest novel Death of a Lesser God, featuring a white tiger on a bold red cover. The book is the fourth in his Crime Writers’ Assocation Historical Dagger-winning Malabar House series.

“The book ends up just outside Calcutta in the Sunderbans National Park, a tiger reserve. Half of the book is set in 1950s Calcutta which, back then, was the capital of British India, before it was moved to Delhi.

“I use my Malabar House series as a voice for my heritage. My parents came from the subcontinent, but I was born and grew up in London. I got the chance to go out to India when I was twenty-three, and ended up living and working there as a management consultant for 10 years.

“I absorbed the local culture and history and this made me think about what we are not taught in Britain despite our long relationship with India. With the Malabar House novels I try and wrap my murders around that history. Thankfully, the books have been successful and people around the world enjoy learning things they probably should have been taught but weren’t.”

I am struck by these comments. It is yet another interview with a leading individual from the arts that points to a lack of a balanced curriculum that, if addressed, might help us solve some of our societal problems.

Khan says: “I am not one of these people all for pulling down statues. I think providing historical context is a far better approach. The best way is to educate people and allow them to make up their own minds about what is right and wrong.”

cq[As Chair I have to balance the expectations of a very broad church of readers who read every type of crime fiction imaginable.
]
I could not agree more. We live in a world devoid of debating skills. It is more of a shouting match now. However, I am conscious we need to discuss the festival, and I am interested in how diversity is forming his thinking.

“I don’t like the word diversity because it is bandied around too often. I am all for allowing more voices to speak across the spectrum. It is not just about race.

“I come from a working class background, and it took me 23 years to get published. The doors have been opened and Harrogate is showcasing this evolution.

“The crime genre is popular because it cuts across all societies at all levels. Rich or poor, India or Harrogate, we all understand crime and its consequences.

“I like to joke that criminals are the most diversity conscious people on earth because they will happily murder, rob, cheat, and steal from whoever comes across their path. It’s a wonderful prism to examine society, one that connects us.”

Khan tells me that every incoming chair has the privilege to highlight the kind of crime fiction they like to read - for him it’s Golden Age crime. Another of the panel discussions he has chosen is for those who love cosy crime, recently reinvented with the success of Richard Osman and others. He also loves legal thrillers à la John Grisham, an author Khan grew up reading. Psychological noir is also huge.

“As Chair I have to balance the expectations of a very broad church of readers who read every type of crime fiction imaginable.”

“The festival really has that X factor, a combination of having the biggest, most famous writers in the world congregating together with newer writers and those learning their trade. It’s USP? Harrogate has a single strand with no competing sessions. The entire audience is focused on one panel at a time. Coupled with its collegiate nature, this is what makes Harrogate so successful.

He has a personal connection to the festival in a “loose sense”. When he was younger, he and his family loved to watch David Suchet portray Agatha Christie’s Poirot, which for a British Asian family was quite unusual.

“Thirty years later here I am chairing a festival with a strong connection to Christie. If my dad were still alive, he would probably chuckle at the connection.”

Khan has been reading Christie since falling in love with the Poirot series and last year spoke at the International Agatha Christie Festival in her home town of Torquay.

An emotional moment for him was standing next to her typewriter. Like Christie, Khan uses cryptic clues together with strong characters who we engage with beyond the superficial level.

As we are coming to the end of our interview Khan tells me that Terry Pratchett’s Discworld series instilled his initial creative spark. As a teenager he fell in love with the Discworld books, prompting him to write his first novel, a comic fantasy. Thank goodness he didn’t give up after receiving his first set of rejection letters!

Later, he was influenced by Alexander McCall Smith’s The No 1 Ladies Detective Agency. He also cites Salman Rushdie’s Midnight’s Children - which explores India’s road to independence and what happened afterwards - and Vikram Seth’s A Suitable Boy, as “two cornerstone books for me investigating an era that I now write about in my Malabar House novels.”

Khan’s first published novel was The Unexpected Inheritance of Inspector Chopra, about a retired Mumbai policeman who must solve a murder, but also happens to inherit a baby elephant. The book was translated into 17 languages and was named by the Sunday Times as one of the 40 best crime novels written between 2015-2020. That was his first series, set in modern Mumbai. His second series, the Malabar House books, are set in 1950s India, and this is where he makes his revelation about how he chooses his victims.

cq[It is important to me individually, as a British Asian and as someone who has been writing crime for nearly a decade, to chair this amazing festival.]

“I normally start by killing off a white person," he says, with a twinkle in his eye, "which I think is fair trade for 300 years of colonialism. I do that because it allows me a way in to talk about the changing relationship between India and Britain. My readers don’t seem to mind!"

Midnight at Malabar House, the first in the series, sees the murder of a senior English diplomat working in Bombay in 1950 and looks at crimes that happened during the Partition riots.

“I love exploring these themes. I introduce the first Indian female policewoman, operating in the 1950s, who is posted to Bombay’s smallest police station - Malabar House - where all the misfits and rejects are sent. She ends up working with an English forensic scientist named Archie Blackfinch who is in Bombay helping the police set up a forensic science lab. Persis, my female lead, represents the India that has come through the Independence struggle, and Blackfinch is the Englishman representing the remnants of the Raj.

"The books have a kind of Christie-esque sensibility seeping through them. Christie was brilliant at depicting society in a way that made it fun. An odd thing to say about murder! But what I mean is that Christie sets the reader an intellectual challenge with the cryptic nature of her clues, which you had to put together before she told you the answer.”

For now, he is looking forward to interviewing one of his best friends, Ann Cleeves, the author who brought us DCI Vera Stanhope. They became friends in the back of a taxi nearly a decade ago. Arriving at a literary festival Khan didn’t quite know where to go and, spying Ann Cleeves, asked if she would mind sharing a cab. He’ll be interviewing her onstage at the Theakston Old Peculier Crime Writing Festival.

As I leave, I heave a sigh of relief once outside, not for any sinister reason - Khan is someone easy to get on with, funny, intelligent, and personable. No, I’m only glad I am not to be slaughtered as an experimental subject for his next book.