‘There are only plateaus of learning & more questions’

Dave Besseling spots the absurd in everything. And so his debut book, The Liquid Refuses to Ignite, a collection of travel essays, is utterly irreverent, absolutely quirky and deeply funny. His reality, Besseling says, has always been “more ‘nyuk-nyuk’ than ‘hear hear’.” The writer talks to DNA about how he tried to be as honest about his experiences as possible in a literary format.

How did you come to write The Liquid Refuses to Ignite?
Like all good things in life, it materialised without me really knowing that it was doing so. It was one of those examples of how initial creative intent can come to fruition in unexpected ways. The illustrations throughout, for example, have mostly hung on gallery walls, I never thought they’d be so relevantly and easily inserted, after the fact, into a book about the years that I was creating them. Something kind of creepy about how it worked out like that.

What was most difficult about it?
Having something so personal and vulnerable be released, then having a few bell-ends that didn’t at all get what I was trying to do talk non-sense about it, in some cases offering critiques that were as facile, unaware and surface-skimming as they accused the book of being, and then have to sit and take it, pretending that my silence was taking the high road. First-book syndrome, isn’t it?

What did you most enjoy?
Living it. Even if I didn’t realise it at the time.

You are a keen observer. Are you also a constant recorder?
You know, I’ve always told myself that the two should somehow be inseparable, that any good artist or writer should have a room full of notebooks somewhere, and my lack of constantly jotting things down has been a source of artistic guilt. If I’m formulating a new idea, then yeah, there will be lots of post-it notes and napkin jots, but it’s not a constant thing. Thankfully, I’ve developed a pretty efficient mental-recall catalogue.

Non-fiction is rarely humorous. And yours is brimming with it. Why did you choose to use so much humour?
That’s just the way it came out. It’s just who I am and how I explain things to myself. My only conscious goal was to be as honest about my experiences as possible in a literary format—sure, let’s call it travel writing—that except a few shining exceptions, I’ve always found to be rather po-faced and self-elevating, and my reality has always been more “nyuk-nyuk” than “hear hear”.

You spot the absurd in everything. What is your definition of absurd?
Everything.

What are the thumb rules you followed “with all requisite exaggerations and omissions” in the book?
There are no rules, there are perhaps no thumbs, but I’m glad you mentioned that line. I felt that if the book could be seen as a kind of self-referential roman-a-clef —a kind of joke in itself —that this bit of dialogue you mentioned was an essential key to a reader unlocking the intent and the admission of the entire thing: that our memories aren’t entirely to be trusted, that we can never be truly objective about ourselves, that our self-regard is always selective, etc, etc, and yet this, I found while writing the book, is something independent of, something apart from the truth. .

Your tone is highly irreverent, at times self-deprecating. How did you develop that style?
I don’t think I had many inhibitions or hang-ups about how I wanted to write or how I thought an audience would think someone like me should write or how I thought I should project myself as a writer. I became a writer free of all affectation and accoutrement. I just wrote because it felt like the right thing to do at the time. My muses just shifted gears, as they’re wont to do once in a while. My writing style wasn’t so much a development, it was more stumbling into a stack of cheese wheels.

Who is the reader you had in mind?
While writing the thing? No one, really. I just knew that bringing all this stuff back up felt really good. It was a catharsis that just happened to be a book. I was expressing something that I didn’t feel I could say fully with paper and pens and brushes. But after writing it, having a publisher pick it up and knowing I’d be back in India a year later to launch it, I set out on a worldwide adventure to research the next books, and instead of meeting ‘like-minded travelers’ as I would have previously described them, I did notice a change in my perception, in that they weren’t just good fun to have around a dinner table, they were probably my ‘target market’. I’m such a sell-out.

If there is one thing that you think we should, as readers, take away from your work, what would that be?
A physical copy, and another one to give away as a gift. Wait, that’s two things. And there’s probably a third—that there are no answers, there are only plateaus of learning before there are more questions.

In the book, you take apart everything sacred and profane. What do you believe in? Do you have any heroes (besides Dr Heagney)?
Belief is a funny thing. It’s the buoy that keeps you from drowning in a nightly sea of existential dread, and yet it’s also the shark that’s going to bite you in half and bleed you out just as you think you’ve got a good grip on the buoy. What do I believe? I believe this admittedly hurried metaphor to be true to the best of my knowledge. My heroes? Those that still choose to swim.