Portrait of a citizen.

[Text and photo by Mayank Austen Soofi]

He is one of Delhi’s most enigmatic booksellers, dealing online in precious editions of classic novels. He tends to abruptly disappear from society causing a puzzled distress to his fellow booksellers, customers and acquaintances. As abruptly he re-emerges. This afternoon, Vishal Nagraj is sighted in a city bookstore after a long spell of disappearance. He agrees to become a part of our Proust Questionnaire series, in which citizens are nudged to make “Parisian parlour confessions”, all to explore our distinct experiences.

The principal aspect of your personality.
I’m mostly lost.

Your chief characteristic.
I’m a sketcher. I like drawing sketches of writers… Emily Dickinson, James Baldwin, Szymborska, Joan Didion, Virginia Woolf, Sylvia Plath, Anna Akhmatova…

Your main fault.
Sometimes I stop talking to people, including friends, throwing myself into utter solitude.

Your favourite occupation.
Doing anything with books. Reading, collecting, curating and selling. When into a bout of serious reading, I am
sometimes overwhelmed by feelings of deep sadness, and sometimes by feelings of ecstasy. Both these things leave me with long phases of silence and solitude.

If not yourself, who would you be?
Prince Myshkin, the protagonist of Dostoevsky’s Idiot.

Where would you like to live?
In a tranquil house with thousands of books. I have somewhat such an arrangement. I live in a flat in Mayur Vihar Phase II. It is filled with solitude and books. There are books even under my bed.

Your favourite prose authors
Proust, Borges, O. Henry, Margaret Atwood.

Your favourite heroes in fiction.
Sherlock Holmes.

Your favourite heroines in fiction.
Anna Karenina.

Your heroes in real life.
My elder brother, Ranjan, who taught me how to listen to stories. During my childhood spent in eastern UP’s Deoria, I remember, he would sometimes wake me up at midnight and read aloud the stories of O. Henry.

The natural talent you’d like to be gifted with.
To have an extrovert nature. I sometimes leave things unsaid… I wish I could have the ability to freely mingle with people.

What is your present state of mind?
Feeling a little perplexed.

Your motto in life.
To have poetry in my life.