Silicon and spy craft | Interview with Ramjee Chandran, author of For No Reason at All

Ramjee Chandran says his novel is based on things he saw and lived through in his career in the 1980s.
| Photo Credit: Asha Thadani

Bengaluru-based journalist and podcast host Ramjee Chandran’s debut novel For No Reason at All (Penguin Random House) is an engaging tale based on true events around the silicon metal controversy of the 80s. Politics, power play, lobbying, skullduggery, espionage and the hubris of a bureaucratic overlord, combine to create a quandary for the Indian prime minister and his advisers. Should they champion indigenous technology or rely on U.S. imports? Set largely in New Delhi, the pacy narrative is suffused with elegant prose, wit and a curious mix of characters. Edited excerpts from a conversation with Chandran:

Q: What compelled you to tell this story?

A: The book is a record of true events that occurred from 1984-88. It is significant because it captured something that doesn’t easily happen in India — a product of scientific research actually made it to commercial production.

When two professors from the Indian Institute of Science went to Mettur to get a jar of hydrogen, a chance meeting with my former boss R.V. Ramani, the managing director of Mettur Chemicals, led to them figuring out they both had the same goals — to make silicon metal to meet the country’s photovoltaic needs.

Q: And you were Ramani’s lobbyist?

A: Yes, I was. Mettur Chemicals was part of the Seshasayee Group, Chennai.

Q: In the prologue, you have said: “All of this is true, except the parts that aren’t.” Can you elaborate?

A: For certain things that I have said in the book, I need deniability. I need to deny that they were facts, mere fiction.

None of the skeletal part of the story is untrue. I may have exaggerated a few parts, I’ve dramatised certain facial expressions, ambience, and coloured between the lines; but the narrative I have threaded together is pretty much true. I have fictionalised a bit, given voices to characters to say some things.

The story itself, undeniably, is of national and international importance; the foreign intelligence and spying by the Russians, French and Americans is true. This story was on the front and edit pages of newspapers for the better part of two years, and was also subject to Parliamentary and CBI enquiries.

Q: So, the fictional element is small?

A: Very little. The novel is largely based on whatever happened.

Q: When did you get started on the book?

A: After I left Delhi and returned 13 years ago, I took a stab at it, but discarded my first draft. I got busy editing a magazine for a decade but later sat down to write the book and got the momentum. I wrote it entirely from memory; it burned deep in my head; I could recollect it like a movie in my head.

I tend not to write from my gut, all my writing is constructed; it takes a lot of effort to be spontaneous. I live by the principle that one’s craft is important.

Q: You have captured the nuances of Delhi’s politics and bureaucracy brilliantly despite the long gap.

A: I was very curious and took my job seriously. I was a fly on the wall, many conversations were playing out in front of me and I was listening to a lot of stuff while waiting for top central government officials, even the prime minister.

I had friends in RAW [Research and Analysis Wing] and met them to understand what their spy craft was. As far as research is concerned, it was all what I saw and lived.

Q: In hindsight, what’s your view on the silicon metal controversy and how it slowed India’s progress in this field?

A: India was never at the forefront of making silicon chips and taking on the world; but, had the Mettur silicon project moved ahead without getting sucked into politics and bureaucratic power plays, India would have been 30 years ahead of the rest of the world in the use of silicon in photovoltaics. We would have been leaders in electric vehicles and ahead on so many applications. In the nonsense that was going on, the country lost in this area. At that point in time, many young people felt the country was being held back; viscerally, I felt that my own future was being held back.

Q: Should writers be responsive to contemporary happenings in society and write about them even as fictional stories?

A: I think it is stupendously important to be able to tell these kinds of stories because one way or the other, it is part of our heritage, business heritage, if you like.

Q: What’s next?

A: I’m writing a scholarly book on the history of Bengaluru.

The interviewer is a Bengaluru-based independent journalist.