Celina Baljeet Basra’s debut novel, Happy, at once fulfills and tragically subverts the promise of its title. Happy Singh Soni, the titular protagonist, struggles to hold on to his optimism and imagination while laboring under appalling conditions as an undocumented migrant worker in Europe.
Young, upbeat Happy—an ebullient admirer of new wave French cinema from rural Punjab—goes to Europe in pursuit of riches that are artistic as well as material: he hopes to become an actor in European cinema (he is compared in looks to Sami Frey, the actor in Bande à part, Jean Luc-Godard’s 1964 film, who makes constant reappearances in the novel). Accordingly, Happy saves his wages as an amusement park worker, and pays mysterious “coordinators” to travel to Europe. Once in Europe, however, he is placed in a series of menial, low-paying jobs, in the futile attempt to repay immense debts to the “coordinators”—initially as a restaurant worker in Rome, and then as a laborer on a radish farm—even as his cinematic dream recedes out of reach.
Throughout the novel, Happy’s life attests to the sundering and coming together of nations—from the Partition of India in 1947 (during which his parents had to flee from newly created Pakistan to India) to the current migration crisis and the far-right reactions across Europe and the U.S. Yet the novel’s ambitious form—fragmented into many voices, which nevertheless knit together into a kaleidoscopic view of consciousness—at once records and seeks to mend the sundering it describes.
Celina Basra brings to the novel the intense care and attention to arrangement that has characterised her work as an art curator. Based in Berlin, she has worked with Berlin Biennale, Academy of the Arts Berlin, Arts Night London, and Nature Morte Delhi, among other institutions, and is a co-founder of the curatorial collective The Department of Love, which explores love as a mode of resistance and collaboration, and which has held exhibitions in China and the U.K.
I spoke with Celina Basra on Zoom about fragmented forms and narratives, the complicated and ambiguous trajectories of 21st-century immigration and labor, and recognizing the inner lives of marginalized characters as well as inanimate objects.
Pritika Pradhan: Happy, the name of the novel’s titular protagonist, is loaded with significance—at once indicative of his upbeat nature and at the core of the novel’s tragic irony, where he struggles to maintain his cheerful narration amid terrible events. Could you tell us what inspired you to choose this name, and how did it influence your envisioning of the novel’s narrative and protagonist?
Celina Baljeet Basra: There is this dissonance and this allusion to humankind’s eternal search for happiness and Paradise, which becomes more pronounced if it involves emigrating. But at the same time, it is not an uncommon nickname and abbreviation for Harpreet, in my extended family, or at least in Punjab. So Happy is a name I was familiar with, and I realized that there’s something there to work with. This is how the character came to me. While the character is entirely fictional, the underlying facts and experiences are very real. And it evolved organically from there: the name played a role in building the character in his world.
PP: The form of the novel is fascinating, consisting of segments narrated from different points of view. Could you please tell us more about your choice of this specific, fragmented form for this novel?
CBB: The basic story had been percolating for a long time before I could finally sit down and move beyond, as Happy called them, the hopeful beginnings that I had stored away in my old hard drive over many years. When I found the voice of Happy, it was through the prologue—the cover letter, or letter of application—which he writes to an employee in Italy, while working on a farm. From then on, the structure of the novel, with its many different fragments, its short chapters, its different voices, and its polyphonic nature, sort of came together and it really then poured and was written fast and furious. It was the only way I knew how to write the novel.
After struggling for some time to find this voice, I also grappled with the question of how to write this story, which is not my own. There are touching points in my family history maybe, and of course a lot of research and interest over many years. But still, this was the way I knew how to write it, because I feel some stories—especially those of flight or migration—can best be told in a scattered way. To me, at least, the idea of a novel that is written in one sitting, with a big chunk of time, and in a linear way—that’s not how I feel about the novel. When you have to take care of people—your kid or your family—or when you have to work other jobs, life is not linear. It is a bit like opening Happy’s bag of documents and stories, half-written and unfinished, and of objects that were close to him, the objects he touched that formed his life and that he used to build his world.
PP: In the segment “The Accidental Library,” Happy describes a miscellaneous and indiscriminate collection of objects: “The Library doesn’t hierarchize, nor does it discriminate.” While reading this novel, I felt this anti-hierarchical vision is realized in the proliferation of voices in the novel, which ranges from the titular protagonist to a necklace from Mohenjo-daro, or a pigment from a Pietà. What is the significance of giving voice to persons, animals as well as inanimate objects?
CBB: What I found interesting in relation to Happy’s obsession with the films of Jean-Luc Godard, or the stuff he finds in The Accidental Library, is how accidental these obsessions are when you were a teenager. The time when I first sort of thought of this novel [was in terms of] books falling in your lap. For me, it was like the process of going to my German grandmother’s attic, where there was a big box of Françoise Sagan’s work. So I read all of Sagan—Bonjour Tristesse and so on, but without really a deep understanding. I was only thinking, Oh, this is a cool character. I want to be like her. But Happy couldn’t be more different from this cool French girl. So I went back to that time of building imaginaries or ideas of what is cool or desirable, and how accidental it can be if you don’t have everything at your fingertips—all the museums and the libraries.
I am an art historian, and I did work, and still do work in the art world. Right now we are working [in the Talking Objects Club] with the idea of the retribution of colonial objects from former colonial contexts, and with African philosophy and artistic interventions that engage with the idea of what to do with these objects that should be given back, [and] how and when and why. And so as a curator, I do work with objects and works that can hang on a wall. So walking in around a room and seeing all these objects also played into the novel.
PP: So much of Happy’s world is composed of imaginary voices only he can hear: the seductive, and slippery voice of “Europe,” the outsiders of Bande à Part whom he hopes to follow. What role does the imagination play in his story? How does Happy’s imagination inspire him to identify with Europe initially, and support him through his ordeals there?
CBB: The border or the difference between imaginary and real becomes increasingly blurred as the novel continues. And definitely it is always a question with Happy, whether is what he hears is reliable, or does occasionally tell himself those stories and lies in order to cope? I think that’s definitely a thing for him.
Being born and raised in Europe, living in Europe, I often thought about the idea of Europe and what is it really? Following events like Brexit, we have the idea of Europe as something that wants to close off against whatever comes from outside, as is happening in the Mediterranean Sea. And I also read about Europe in literature and plays, as well as mythological paintings, such as of the abduction of Europe. A lot of the Europe chapters had to be cut in the end, because it was too much. And Europe is important in the novel, and I envisioned her as an interim manager for Europe in a way. I was playing around with a bureaucracy, and how opaque and discriminatory it can be when you want to move, but do not have a passport that enables you to do so. The experience of trying to get a visa differs wildly, depending on your passport, and is impossible in some cases – which is why other paths are being taken. So there is this humorous aspect, and a dark aspect to Europe.
At the same time, Europe she has aspects that are quite human. Sometimes you can feel that Europe is quite insecure – she isn’t really sure of what her image is, or what her role is anymore. She can’t really change the rules like Happy expects her to and is really quite powerless in the end. She is, as you say, this is slippery, seductive voice of Europe, who urges Happy to sign the agreement. For me, Europe in the novel is an imaginary character, who is quite vivid, although she might not really exist. However, I would also encourage other readings, if the readers are pleased to do so, such as reading Europe as a real character.
PP: Happy’s only romantic relationships are also lived in the imagination – an unexpressed desire for his male friend and nemesis, Kiran, and later for his fellow farm worker, Zhivago. Could you comment more on this unspoken yet haunting same-sex desire?
We all know that some ideas, desires, and romances that are entirely imaginary can be so intense—especially when you’re young or lonely.
CBB: It was clear to me from the beginning that Happy’s feeling of being different might be rooted in his sexuality, which needs to be repressed for obvious personal and political reasons related to the context he grows up in at that time. And that [repression] becomes so automatic that he doesn’t even question it anymore. He outsources it into his imagination, instead of sort of thinking of it as something that can be acted upon, that could be real, that could be fulfilled. And we all know that some ideas, desires, and romances that are entirely imaginary can be so intense—sometimes even more intense than the real ones, especially when you’re young or like someone who is very lonely or does not have a lot of touching points with the real world, where he can do real things and act in a way that other people find impressive. Instead, he has to be impressive in his own little world. And so [the imagined relationship with] Kiran, is this classic case of wanting to be with someone with certain aspects that you find dangerous or you are the total opposite of, and someone you want to be like but could never be.
With Zhivago, I think that idea is much more real and actually beautiful, but it’s still not reciprocated. Happy is also at that point setting out to realize his dream [of being an actor in European cinema], only to be increasingly disappointed on encountering this big reality check, where things are very different from what he imagined them to be. He doesn’t even open that door [with Zhivago]. However, it doesn’t mean that there isn’t a lot [happening]. There is this eroticism or desire that is expressed through other routes he finds, such as through voices from objects like the bag of flour. And not everything is spoken about; there might be even things that I’m not aware of. Even in a diary, there are things you won’t write down. As a child and a teenager, I tried to tell a good story, but I couldn’t even write about it because there were things happening that were very dark, and it was too much for me. So I tried to still, you know. So you try to tell a story to yourself in a way that you can process. And I think that’s what Happy does a lot of the time. At the same time, there is an increasing divide between reality and imagination, as the novel proceeds.
PP: Once in Italy, Happy is mysteriously but irrevocably affected by powerful, unnamed forces: moved from one job to another, and put down when he tries to agitate for better conditions. What is the reason for keeping these forces unnamed? What do they reveal about the world Happy inhabits?
CBB: When Happy enters Italy, he is moved around like an object and he doesn’t know the faces of the people who are moving him around. And that’s what it is. If you are in that situation, where you are migrating to Europe—not by the books, but without the documents, then you use travel agents who then are linked to other travel agents who then are linked to agents or smugglers, whatever you might call it, because they have many different names. If you research this, you will find a million different ways to do this [migrate], and a million different stories. Some may be half-legal, others entirely illegal, so a lot of power structures come in. If you look into the food industry, or the vegetable farming industry in Italy, or southern Europe, a lot of these migration trajectories end up pointing to the mafia. When I was researching [the novel], talking to activists and researchers, particularly in Italy, I realized that they had to be very careful due to personal security reasons.
That’s why it’s so hard to really uncover all the threads. And it’s impossible if you are Happy, if you don’t have a lot of resources and power on your side. If you are in that situation, this is how it feels—you really don’t know [who is moving you around]. There is this entity, this big, unnamed global corportation. I played around with the idea of bureaucracy and HR, so the [movers] are called the “coordinators.” For me, this was a kind of twist because in addition to being a curator, I often worked in situations where I was a project coordinator for cultural events—project coordinators can be many things in many different contexts. So I applied that idea to this context [of migration], because in the end it’s coordination. There is this basic bureaucracy involved, no matter how violent the external context might be.
PP: Some of the novel’s most heartening (and ultimately heartbreaking) scenes ensure from Happy’s relationships with fellow workers and migrants from different countries – the servers at the restaurant where he works, and his fellow radish pickers at the farm. Could you tell us more about the solidarity and togetherness among the migrant workers in the novel across national and ethnic lines, which co-exists with their intense loneliness and enforced isolation due to their immigration and class status?
CBB: I had this question in my mind [about] how certain areas and lines of work are entirely in some nationalities’ hands, and others not at all. In the U.K., who picks your strawberries? Who picks the asparagus in Germany? And then there are Malinese orange pickers in the south of Italy. So you look into it, and then you find that you have these communities that are also sometimes quite apart from each other. At the radish farm, it becomes apparent that the Sikh workers do some work and the Eastern European workers do other work, and then there’s talk of what happens with the Malinese in the south. Zhivago links these worlds because he is moving around, or has moved around quite a bit, but none of the others do or can.
First we idealize the place we want to move to. But then sometimes it doesn’t turn out as great, so you idealize the place you’ve left.
So for me, the novel was always about imagining what if? Because of course these relationships do exist, but they’re so private and so unique to each context that I just wanted to imagine: what would it feel like if Happy strikes up a friendship with a Polish and a Tibetan dishwasher in the Roman restaurant? The back of a restaurant kitchen is stressful, of course, as a working environment, and can be so ultimately unfriendly and hard to endure for any workforce, which is portrayed in popular series like The Bear. But for Happy it’s a little utopia. He will get this moment where he has friends, and becomes popular and strikes up relationships. And we know he practices his Italian because once you work with other workers from other nationalities, you will practice their language, which is quite fun to do. This is just to imagine what are the relationships like, what is the talk at the back of the back door, who shares a cigarette with whom?
I have traveled to Italy often, and have been interested in places affected by tourism and migration. I’ve always been interested in people who work in providing other people’s pleasure. Once you have worked in a service position or industry yourself, you realize that you could just as well be an umbrella—some guests or customers don’t really see you. So it’s more important what your colleagues mean to you, and how that can empower you. Happy always tries to strike up relationships, always tries to connect to people, to please people and entertain them. And that to me was a way to make the picture of the world richer.
PP: It is significant that the voices of Happy’s family in India (in particular his mother Gul and sister Ambika) continue even after Happy has left for Italy. How does the inclusion of the homeland and family change the depiction of immigration in the novel?
CBB: To me, this continuity was quite important, to let them speak and let us hear their voices making his absence felt. The family unit is scattered now. But it is also important to show that life at home goes on—it’s not an unmoving ideal. First we idealize the place we want to move to, even if it’s just moving to another town to study or find a new job. But then sometimes it doesn’t turn out as great, so you idealize the place you’ve left, and say, wow, that’s actually how we need to return. And then it becomes this idea where, okay, I will go abroad and I’ll make my luck and find prosperity, and then I’ll return. But then it’s not the same place that I left. You might not be able to return in that way because you’re not the same, the people you’ve left are not the same. And you can never recreate the past, because you might then in retrospect realize, oh, that was happiness. You might think, I will go back to that tree, that house, that meal, and then happiness will come. And it might, but it will always be fleeting because things are moving. To me, that was important in the depiction of places like India, which to so many people growing up here in Germany is this far off place of another imagination. A lot of people will just tell you their India story when you meet them and always the same clichés, you know? So it was important to just and try and attempt to make it complex. It is a place Happy has to leave, in order to try to realize himself. But it isn’t a place that’s entirely bleak. Though there are no prospects for him to evolve in that place in that village, there’s love.
This idea of a mother—Gul, and also [Happy’s sister] Ambika, who is also a mother—is very close to my heart. Shortly after the novel found a publisher, I gave birth to my first daughter. Then in the editing process, which was wonderful and intense and necessary for this very scattered book, a lot of these ideas [about motherhood] found their way in, and made the novel richer. We have the voices of Ambika and Gul in particular, but also the father, Babu, and Fatehpal [Happy’s elder brother] who emigrated as well, but is living his own life and is not very close to Happy, because he left when Happy was still young. They’re all scattered around now, and that’s something that I felt I could identify with. In my own family, everyone is never in one place, but there are always many. So I’m fond of these voices and how they evolve, allowing a space for absences and grief, but also hope and love.