Tabish Khair is an Indian English author, poet and professor. He teaches at the Department of English, University of Aarhus, Denmark. He is popularly known for his books Jihadi Jane and Sci-fi The Body by the Shore (2022).
Wiki/Biography
Tabish Khair was born on Monday, 21 March 1966 (age 57 years; as of 2023) in Ranchi, Bihar (now in Jharkhand). His zodiac sign is Aries. He grew up in Gaya, Bihar. He finished Secondary schooling at the local Nazareth Academy. He belonged to a family of doctors and engineers and his father wanted Tabish to pursue medical studies like everyone in his family. After school, he started his medical studies but later dropped out to pursue a Bachelor of Arts in English (honours), sociology, and history. He graduated in 1986 and later, he pursued a Master in English from the local Magadh University and moved to Delhi to start his career in writing with newspapers and news magazines. During his time in Delhi, he fell in love with a Danish girl and moved to Copenhagen, Denmark for her. In the beginning, Tabish Khair did immigrant jobs in Denmark including hotel cleaning, dishwashing, and house painting. Later in 1999, he received a PhD merit scholarship and pursued a PhD at the University of Copenhagen, Denmark.
Physical Appearance
Hair Colour: Black
Eye Colour: Brown
Family
Parents & Siblings
Tabish’s father, Dr. Khalid Khair, was a doctor and his mother was a business owner for some time and later became a homemaker. His father passed away in December 2013.
Tabish Khair’s parents
Tabis Khair with his mother
Wife & Children
Tabish Khair has 3 children, 2 daughters and a son. There is not much information about his wife.
Tabish Khair with his children
Other Relatives
Kalam Haidri
Kalam Haidri was a businessman, lecturer, and writer. He was Tabish’s uncle as he married Tabish’s eldest aunt. Tabish was inspired by Kalam’s literary and political interests and visited his house daily and spent some time with him in his office downstairs. Tabish met many writers there like Joginder Paul and heard about many writers including Ismat Chughtai, Krishen Chander, and Bhisham Sahni. Kalam Haidri established The Cultural Academy, which helped young writers and students to write and get published in Urdu. During college, Tabish also edited multiple issues of an English-language six-monthly journal, Rachna.
Tabish Khair’s uncle, Dr Kalam Haidri
Tabish wrote an article for the online platform, Life and Legends, about his Uncle, known as “Kalam Haidri: Phoopajaan”. In the article, talking about his last conversation with his uncle, Tabish wrote,
I remember teasing him during one of my last visits. As he picked up his prayer mat and headed for a quiet corner, I said to him, ‘But Phoopajaan, I thought communists did not believe in God.’He turned to me, with a slight smile, and quipped, ‘When you reach my age, son, you will prefer not to take any risks.’
Religion/Religious Views
Tabish Khair follows Islam but according to him, religion is a complex matter and talking about it in an interview, he said,
Religion is a complex matter. I am a great admirer of theorists like Terry Eagleton, who is an atheistic Marxist but engages with his religious traditions in depth. I dislike people who believe in ‘god’ blindly or dismiss religions simplistically: both sides show a dismal lack of engagement with the complexities of the past and with human aspirations and thought.”
Signature/Autograph
Career
Tabish Khair started writing during his college days; he worked as the district reporter for the Patna Edition of the Times of India. Tabish got his first collection of poems, ‘My World,’ published by a major publishing house Rupa & Co., Delhi before he left his hometown. His debut collection was appreciated by senior poets and critics like Keki N. Daruwalla, Adil Jussawalla, Vilas Sarang and Shiv K. Kumar.
Tabish Khair
Later, at the age of 25 due to conflicts with some local fundamentalists, he moved to Delhi, where he worked for the Times of India. While in Delhi, Khair published two more collections and started writing his first novel, ‘An Angel in Pyjamas’, which was later published in 1996 by Harper Collins. In India Today, it was described as “the calling card of a writer with the power to fascinate.” Tabish’s literary work reflects the themes of Xenophobia, climate change, racism, abuse of power and science.
Tabish Khair’s debut novel
After Delhi, he moved to Denmark where he completed his PhD in 2000 and wrote a thesis which is published as a book Babu Fictions: Alienation in Indian English Novels (2001), this talks about the problems faced by Indian writers, when writing in English and the reasons for not being able to write in Hindi or Urdu. Khair’s second novel, ‘The Bus Stopped,’ was published by Picador in 2004. His major books include The Thing About Thugs, How to Fight Islamist Terror from the Missionary Position, and The Bus Stopped. Khair has co-edited various books and journals, including a casebook of essays on Amitav Ghosh (Permanent Black, Delhi) and ‘Other Routes’, an anthology of pre-1900 Asian and African travel writing.
The Body by The Shore by Tabish Khair
His academic papers, reviews and essays have appeared in famous journals and newspapers. Tabish did his first reading from his book Just Another Jihadi Jane in Bergen, Norway, for a small but informed gathering in September 2016. In 2022, he published a Scientific Fiction novel, The Body by the Shore. He received an honorary fellowship for creative writing from the Baptist University of Hong Kong, fellowships at New Delhi’s universities and a by-fellowship at Churchill College, Cambridge University, UK. He edited Other Routes (2005), an anthology of travel writing by Africans and Asians in 2005. His work has been translated into more than 6 languages including French, Spanish, Danish, and Portuguese.
Tabish Khair at Kolkata Literary Meet 2019
Tabish has read his poetry and books at many global events including the Jaipur Literary Festival (2017), Tabish Khair at Kolkata Literary Meet (2019), and Kalam Festival, Kolkata (2019). He has been the writer of residence at York University in the UK and a visiting fellow at Cambridge University and Leeds University. He has been a visiting fellow at Delhi University, Jawaharlal Nehru University, Jamia Millia Islamia, and the Indian Institute of Technology Bhubaneswar in India.
Tabish Khair at Jaipur Literary Festival 2017
Awards & Honors
- His second novel, The Bus Stopped, was short-listed for the Encore Award (UK).
- His novel The Thing About Thugs was short-listed for the Man Asian Literary Prize and DSC Prize for South Asian Literature.
- In 1995, his poem Birds of North Europe won first prize in the sixth Poetry Society All India Poetry Competition.
- In June 2008, his novel, Filming (2007), was shortlisted for the Vodafone Crossword Book Award in India.
- In 2010, his novel, The Thing About Thugs, was shortlisted for The Hindu Best Fiction Award.
- The Danish translation of his novel, Filming: A Love Story (2007), was shortlisted for Denmark’s top translation/literature award (the ALOA prize).
Favourites
- Book(s): Lost Connections by Johann Hari, Changel: The Biography of a Village by Arvind Narayan Dass
- Indian writer: Khushwant Singh
- Beverage(s): Sheer Chai, Lassi
Facts/Trivia
- In 2020, Khair took part in a large protest against Racism and the BLACK LIVES MATTER movement in Aarhus, Denmark.
Tabish Khair at a protest in Aarhus, Denmark
- Tabish wrote a poem about his mother, for Poetry at Sangam, an electronic journal by Priya Sarukkai Chabria, in 2016.
- According to Tabish, he does not like his literary work to be categorised as diasporic, subalternist, and post-colonial themes. He hates being recognised as a “Modernised or Westernized Muslim” and does not want to be identified as such.
- In 2020, Tabish Khair was part of The Decameron 2020, a project set up by Italian writer Erri De Luca and director Michael Mayer, where they got different authors from around the world to write a story about their life during lockdown. Tabish Khair wrote River Of No Return, which was read by Indian actress, Shabana Azmi.
- He is a great fan of the works of Salman Rushdie and is often seen reading his works in interviews.