What was the first seed for “Antyesti for a Dead Ganesa” and what was your writing process like to figure out the themes?

I first had the idea for this story during my early teens when I was reading every science fiction novel and story I could lay my hands on in Bombay (as it was known back then). I wrote a draft of it when I was fourteen, writing longhand on ledger paper. (They were the longest paper available cheaply and if I wrote in tiny handwriting, I could fit a lot of words onto both sides of one sheet.) It was titled “Embryoglio” back then and it was about this weary detective who investigated a case involving artificially manufactured illegal clones of Indian gods.

It started, as does the current version in Lightspeed, with the detective descending on Chowpatty Beach where the deteriorating embryonic clone of Ganesa has been found. I have no doubt now that it was sparked by the sight of thousands of Ganesa idols washed up by the tide on Chowpatty Beach after the annual Ganeshutsav, which ends with millions of people immersing their idols of the elephant-headed god in the ocean.

I held on to that draft for years, aiming to revise it and send it to Asimov’s, which was edited by George Scithers at the time I wrote the first draft, and later by Gardner Dozois who read a submission by me and encouraged me to send more. Eventually, I lost the ledger paper, along with thousands of other pages covered with most SF and horror stories and novels, and speculative poetry. “Antyesti” is literally that story recreated by me from memory, and it’s as exact a replica as I could write today (or in 2023 when I wrote this draft).

What was it like working with elements of crime fiction and science fiction? Could you also expand on how you struck a balance between thinking about technology and mythology in this story especially how the story speaks about mythological symbolism refracting through technological innovation?

I’ve always been fascinated by the intersection of genres. Intertextuality adds such interesting layers, as tropes interact with tropes and the expected path twists in unexpected ways. But as far as the symbolism, balance, and technological aspects go, I’ve no idea what to say about those things since this second draft was literally written as an exercise in memory (and emotion, since I was trying to recreate not just the story but also the emotions I experienced while writing it). Other than that, I hardly know what the story contains as I never read it through after finishing either draft. If you ask me to summarise it, I’d probably provide a very bad, grossly inaccurate summary, like an AI hallucination. The simple truth is, I have no idea. It just poured out of me and the only time I’m going to reread this second first draft is when I have to go over the copy edits which I’ve just received! I’ll leave it to readers to discover its secrets and meaning and am happy to hear what they find.

One theme that strongly emerges for me is the way old systems are given fresh paint instead of looking to change them entirely—for example the way the caste system changes to status ranks in the story. Is a full transformation of society possible according to Neel?

Isn’t all hierarchical structure basically the same thing with different names? Isabel Wilkerson’s brilliant book Caste talks about this quite eloquently. To me, caste, race, class, privilege, identity, are all forms of societal structure designed to divide people into “us” and “not us.” Education, culture, and language have become part of these structures now, along with the weaponization of language, the claiming (and reclaiming) of culture, and the more widespread acquisition of the privilege of higher education. Since I seem to feature at the bottom of the rung of every ladder when it comes to any of these structures—race (BIPOC), caste (low-caste and out caste by birth), privilege (born dirt poor, still relatively poor or lower class at best), education (no college, no degree), culture (a unique hodgepodge of micro-minority and marginalized cultures that makes me the only person of my ilk I’ve ever had the pleasure of meeting), identity (NonBinary, Neurodiverse, Genderqueer), you name it—I suppose these things were on my mind when I wrote the first draft at fourteen, and the second first draft last year.

Is a full transformation possible? Nope. The whole point of structure is to divide and diminish, not to improve, transform, or change. Antyesti forms one small part of a very ambitious space opera adventure series in which I guess I’ll find out through the writing.

As a writer from India myself I am always conflicted about how much to explain and how much not to. It is not just about a Western audience but also India being culturally and contextually so different in real-time that makes me wonder. What are some things you keep in mind while writing stories based in India like this one?

Oh, that’s a relatively simple answer for me. I don’t keep an audience in mind when writing. I keep in mind a person with an open mind who loves story, enjoys science fiction, particularly “hard” science fiction, and is intelligent enough to want an SF story that’s exciting and explores an authentically realized fictional world. I think the best SF stories, like all good stories, teach you how to read it as you go along. I don’t know if Antyesti achieves that level of excellence but hopefully it aspires to that level.

I love the relationship between curating, censorship, and cloning, especially how they are closely connected, perhaps even sides of the same pyramid, if I may. What are some of your thoughts about this triangle?

Let’s face it, curating is a form of censorship. The act of editing, as practiced in any field, including traditional book publishing, is very much about bias and prejudice, personal as well as societal, as much as it purports to be about the pursuit of quality. The only real difference between an editorial choice, or curation of any kind in any field, and censorship, bans, and forced retractions, is whether or not we accept the authority of the person or persons making those choices. It’s about power, not choices, really. And at its core, choice itself is a form of power play.

As the title goes, much of the story revolves around death and the return of the dead as a metaphor that is both a blessing and a problem. What about death did the story want to explore?

The protagonist’s own death, since he’s a detective who is literally resurrected from the afterlife each time he’s assigned a case. Since it’s in first-person POV, it’s inevitable that he would be obsessed with it. And of course, the concept of rebirth, resurrection, avatars, the cycle of karma, are all really about death and the return of the dead. Every god is a recycled version of an older god, just as all stories are recycled versions of earlier, dead stories.

One question that I ask all writers, because I struggle with it, is a good ending. I love the ending here, if it is an end, and was wondering (without giving much away) what is the process like for you to arrive at the end of a story? Maybe you can use this story as an example, but it can be general too.

This is going to sound ridiculous, but I hardly remember the ending! I know that in the original first draft, I ended with him being sent back to his pod for storage, to be resurrected again for his next case. I assume that’s how this second first draft ends too. To me, it was the most organic ending since I love Asian story structures which are always cyclical—as against Western story structures, which demand transformative change over a three-act progression. Ultimately, matter, like the matter of stories, never truly transforms or changes, it simply appears to change.

Is there a project you are working on currently? And if not are there any themes, objects, or news that might be tickling your fingers?

I write under a lot of pen names, across many genres, but of relevance to this story, I am working on a long, ambitious space opera cycle that I hope to start publishing myself from early 2026 onwards. That was the intent with which I resurrected this story from its stasis pod after all those years.