© Thinkworks Pvt Ltd – Aatish Taseer’s life reads a piece of fiction: he not only embodies cultural conversations, but he has lived out slices of history, geography, and conflict. Taseer is the lovechild of Tavleen Singh, a Sikh Indian journalist, and Salman Taseer, who was a Muslim politician in Pakistan. Aatish spent a long time understanding what he was; the search for his father took him through eight Muslim countries where he tried to fathom what Islam and Pakistan meant to him. His grandparents have found themselves at crossroads with Manto and Md Iqbal in the history of the country’s most rife political moments. This is story that involves an assassination, a blasphemy case, and the partition of the subcontinent. The literary tropes continue with Aatish discovering his sexuality, making him a refugee of culture, language, history, and morality. His latest book is an exploration of India and Sanskrit — what repels him from it, and propels him towards himself.