Author Rajat Chaudhuri discusses the backstories and inspiration for his most recent book, Spellcasters, and how they connect to the plot of this novel, which is part psychological thriller, part climate adventure with a twist of the occult.
1,470 words: estimated reading time = 6 minutes.
The most common question that authors get asked at literary events is the genesis question. Where did you begin a particular work, what was your inspiration or some variations of the same. I find coming up with a response difficult, because there is obviously no single starting point and beginnings are also part of a flow.
The writing of Spellcasters, which is my most recent climate novel, had been in a large part influenced by the opening up of the Indian economy to global economic forces and the rising tide of conspicuous consumption it unleashed, aggravating the climate crisis, driving resource exploitation, and affecting the environment. In this book, my attempt has been to weave together elements of fantasy and magic with a story of mental illness to portray the impact of this opening up on individuals and society.
A flavour of these changes brought on by globalisation and the human costs of unfettered growth can be found in this description near the beginning of the book, when the scientist Vincent Dutta drives to his lab outside the city of Aukatabad, where he is conducting secret experiments with psychedelics under orders of a shadowy corporate entity:
‘The Dark Side of the Moon’ pulsated through the car speakers, as the first of the flyovers zipped by. Glassy shopping malls, the steel and chrome geometries of mega corporations flashed past, shimmering in the heat. The burning air echoed the howls of farm labourers whose bones were turning into buttery dust under the newly-sprung city of glass. In hoc signio vinces!
Psychedelics in certain ways are quaint and old-world, but think of our social media addiction, which is mediated through a dopamine rush, and how this can affect mental-well being. So the story can be considered to be an allegory of such modern addictions (consumerism being another) that is driving people crazy.
Later on, as we are introduced to the main character, business reporter Chanchal Mitra, who gradually gets affected unpredictably by these changes, his transformation, much of which drives the narrative, is echoed in the ways the cities of Anantanagar and Aukatabad, partly modelled on Calcutta and Delhi, are transforming because of the onslaught of globalisation:
It is around this time of the attack on the Chief Minister that it begins. We grow feet, more and more feet, like centipedes. Jet engines thunder above us in droves, desire kisses the stratosphere, dirt’s swept away, miasma vacuumed. They even demolish the hovel where Akbar lived near the river bank, but I manage to get him a place in an abandoned warehouse belonging to the rail company.
Frenzy, feverish frenzy overtakes us all. We move at a dizzying pace. Steel, concrete, cement, stock market pulse beats, exotic vacations, infotech gurus and aerodrome-sized establishments to lose freedom, win it back again.
Within the storyworld, this unbridled growth impacts the planet as the burden of aspirations also begins to have an effect on minds. In Chanchal’s city, Anantanagar:
The immense heat of the afternoon is an attack on civilisation. This year, it is worse than the last. The avenues of Anantanagar shimmer in the fiery blaze, tar melts like liquid nightmares, the art-deco mansions hiss and crack while hulking SUVs climb mirror-clad avenues swooping up into jannats of petroleum dreams. Unnoticed in the mountains, the glaciers melt away, drop by drop—like the terminally ill shuffling along till the end, glioblastomas growing, the teardrops of a future waiting in the wings. Sorcerers crouch at every corner, casting spells, selling hope and tricks.
Here onwards it is a story of how globalisation and limitless growth not only changes the familiar and impacts the environment, but also affects the mind of Chanchal.
Spellcasters – a shadowy realm
While researching mental illness, I was lucky to be granted extended interviews with the well-known psychiatrist Anurag Mishra who also happens to be a student of the great psychoanalyst-author Sudhir Kakar, who recently passed away. And the fact of my character’s mental afflictions is also nuanced by my readings of Kakar, especially where he compares Indian and Western healing traditions in Shamans, Mystics and Doctors. Which is perhaps how the element of occult and secret societies enter the story, invoking a shadowy realm where the uncanny and the improbable dance in step with the real.
Just as growth picks up, so do emissions and other environmental impacts, many borrowed from reality, and we have unnatural rains in a desert, blinding smog blanketing Aukatabad, landslides in the Himalayas, all of which in turn advance the plot of the novel. In this process, the settings and the environment of Spellcasters almost become characters, or actants, shaping the story in particular ways.
All along, climate change and an altered environment play important roles in driving the narrative as the fortunes of the simple man Chanchal and a powerful business tycoon are affected by the planetary forces. The city of Aukatabad, much like the real city of Delhi, remains blanketed in smog:
Morning tastes like a scrapyard. Morning smells like a farm fire. The yellow-grey walls of smog had grown darker. For days and weeks the dust of the desert, swept by freak and untimely storms, had thickened the haze and now the city was suddenly engulfed in coarse dust. It holds the streets in a stranglehold, blurring the borderland between night and day.
We know very well that the pursuit of limitless growth, in the absence of environmental justice and social safeguards, can have devastating effects. The weak and the vulnerable without proper state intervention get left out of the growth story while also suffering the most from climate impacts. When Chanchal loses all his money and has to skip meals he thinks:
I imagine heaps of rice on banana leaf plates and the aroma of fish frying in the wok. Mustard oil, that’s what we prefer. But now I could even do with a dal fry, but it is not for me. Food is not for me tonight. I am not for food tonight. I slide the menu below the carpet. There will be thousands all over this unhappy land who will go without food tonight, and many more nights. I will join their ranks, this last night in the city of kings.
Elsewhere, in Chanchal’s hometown:
The poor of Anantanagar, who had set up small shops everywhere—and those from the villages whose lands had been snatched by the smart cities and tech academies—creep and crawl all over, overflowing into the shopping malls, fighting with the uniforms, snatching careless cappuccino cups of dreamy-eyed duos sitting in sidewalk cafés on the boulevard that heads towards the river.
Limitless growth, planetary illness
Spellcasters is really about the spells cast by powerful ideas like limitless growth, our material aspirations and the indulgence in conspicuous consumption which together are not only ‘infecting’ the living planet, one of its symptoms being climate change, but also affecting our minds. The mirroring and interactions between this planetary illness and individual illness, portrayed through mental affliction, forms the conceptual background of the novel.
In between there is the business tycoon, who goes by the name JRK, with a world domination plan fuelled by the power of psychedelics. As the story progresses, conflicts arise between Chanchal and this tycoon, which put both their lives in great danger. Besides, there is also the ever present possibility of a secret society of occultists who may or may not be working to save humanity from the wicked designs of the businessman. If we look around us, we will find how the plot of Spellcasters often seem to mirror realities of our times.
Having been a climate activist for many years it was natural for me to create the character of JRK presiding over a global business empire, as a personification of the ambitions that drive resource exploitation and endless growth. But JRK has many shades, and a very dark past, all of which propel this story of planetary crisis towards its denouement.
Will it be magic and the occult that is decisive in the story or is it the planet itself that will strike back at human ambition, and restore some balance, symbolic or otherwise? Read the book to find out!
Find more
Spellcasters is published Olive Turtle an imprint of Niyogi Books and is available from bookstores and online.
A review by Kousik Guhathakurta for Scroll (January 2024) described Spellcasters as “a modern saga blending climate fiction with a sardonic take on city-bred consumerism.” And author Amitav Ghosh calls the novel “a phantasmagoric journey through an alternative reality of collapsed time, hallucinatory visions and spectral visitations: an unexpected and unsettling rollercoaster ride.”
You can find more of Rajat’s work at his website, and his new middle-grade work of climate fiction will be published in June 2025: Wonder Tales for a Warming Planet.
Rajat featured as part of the ClimateCultures Quarantine Connection series in 2020. We shared his piece, Heat or the Iceberg Chill – a translation of a poem by Novera Hossain, and part of Rajat’s project to translate 100 Bengali poems by non-mainstream poets – on Day 23 of our 40-day series.
Rajat Chaudhuri