Latitudes of Longing
Everything is shifting
Why do you read? I read to forget, to escape, and sometimes to learn (only involuntarily). To my surprise, Swarup unlocked my other senses while reading, something I associate with a hike or a yoga class. I could smell, see more, and experience multiple sensations, like a Mughal garden. Her four stories, interlinked by characters, bleed into each other. They walk onto the stage with a particular theatrical quality and then sideline when done. Each of them brings along their caravan of geographies and characters, both human and non-human species, that illuminate the page.
Swarup is eccentric, both in her writing and in life. When I met her in Nairobi at the Macondo Literary Festival in September 2024, I did what most die-hard readers do at literary festivals: I tried to uncover the source of magic that writers carry within them. And, like her book, I could not easily sum her up. She is simple and comfortable being peculiar. I found her endearing.
Her book Latitudes of Longing is an eclectic concoction of lyrical prose and boundless imagination. It links intimate stories of loss, love, and longing to the expansive, far-reaching territories of the Indian subcontinent: Islands, Faultline, Valley, and Snow Desert—the names of the four novellas are telling. Her characters invite us in, and we become committed to their lives, but the true gift is that she never lets the readers forget that the Earth, the ground, our surroundings, and everything around us are palpitating and alive. She is fascinated by humans but equally, if not more, by ghosts and geckos, centipedes and mushrooms, glaciers and yetis, gently unfurling our senses like flower buds.
But this is also where the limits of the narrative lie. Numerous small and big things demanded my attention, and I did not know which thread to follow. Was I unable to fully live in her rich universe due to my limited attention span (and Instagram, let’s just admit it), or a potential area where her experimental style fails, uninterested as Swarup is in seeking a resolution? Or do new storytelling structures require readers with new ears and new eyes?
Swarup is brave; her writing follows her beat. Genres of magical realism, science fiction, and nature writing come to mind, but none of the categories fit. Thankfully so, because categorization and naming are exercises of control. In Swarup’s universe, there are no distinctions between the material, metaphysical, human, and animal worlds, they all co-habit. Tacitly suggesting how it was meant to be. We created this artificial order of species; there are other ways of listening to the rhythms of the natural world.
I read because sometimes I want to be astonished. I want someone to show me something I cannot see for myself right now. Everything is not perfect in the book, but Latitudes is peppered with magic. You, why do you read?
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