Episode Overview

Podcast: New Books Network
Host: Jessica Zhu
Guest: Anand
Book Discussed: The Notbook of Kabir: Thinner than Water, Fiercer than Fire (India Viking, 2025)
Date: November 4, 2025

In this richly layered interview, host Jessica Zhu converses with poet, translator, and publisher Anand about his new anti-book, The Notbook of Kabir. The episode explores Anand’s journey through caste, music, and radical poetry, delving into his unconventional approach to Kabir and the boundless, stitchless fabric of Kabir’s poetic and philosophical inheritance. Through song, story, and incisive critique, Anand draws together Kabir, Ambedkar, Buddha, and the living traditions of social revolt and spiritual nonconformity.

Anand’s Background and the Genesis of the Notbook (04:59 – 13:31)

• Personal Journey:
  • Anand introduces himself as a Tamil from Hyderabad whose encounters with Kabir began as a child with moralistic textbook verses.
  • He experienced a rupture from his Brahmin family due to his relationship with a partner from another caste, propelling him into anti-caste activism.
    • "For me after the age of 20-21, my whole trajectory became to think and think against caste." (08:00)
  • Publishing for Navayana began as side project rooted in Ambedkarite anti-caste action.
    • "It was for Ambedkar that I started Navayana..." (11:07)
• Music and Return to Kabir:
  • Left music and poetry behind for politics, but was reignited by artist Venkatraman Singh Shyam’s insistence he return to singing, especially Kabir, sparking the creation of the Notbook.
    • "Venkat told me I should get back to singing. And I found my way back into second poetry because of Kabir." (12:03)

The Cover Art Enigma and the 'Notbook' Concept (13:31 – 22:41)

• Cover Analysis (13:31)
  • Jessica describes the layered, enigmatic cover: Ambedkar with his back turned, holding a book with a veiled Buddha, peacock feather, and the elusive presence of Kabir.
• Anand’s Interpretation:
  • The cover, by Vikrant Bise, intentionally teases the reader—Kabir could be Buddha, or hidden in symbols like the peacock feather.
    • "Maybe that little peacock thing...So I told him, baba Sahib, Ambedkar is reading a book. We don't know what book and looks like. It's a Kabir book. But there is Buddha..." (17:34)
  • Anand connects Ambedkar’s journey toward Buddhism, the role of Kabir as a signifier of dissent and formlessness, and how art embodies the book’s content by refusing simple categorization.
  • The 'notbook' resists the form and finality of a book—mirroring Kabir’s own antinomian legacy.

Kabir as Mystery, Collective Consciousness, and Kabir Stan (22:41 – 30:02)

• Kabir as Sign and Fabric:
  • Anand, via selected quotations, frames Kabir as a mystery, a sign, and a collective consciousness—“Kabir is a fabric without stitches, no centers, no edges, no beginnings, no endings.” (22:00)
    • "Kabir is an invitation to witness the formless take form." (22:00)
    • "Kabir is a fabric without stitches, no centers, no edges, no beginnings, no endings." (22:00)
• Kabir Stan:
  • Anand explains ‘Kabir Stan’ as a no-place, inspired in part by both the Urdu word for graveyard (Kabristan) and as a space beyond binaries, exclusion, or identity.
    • "Kabir puts all these things into question...the point of this book is to take you to that place which is beyond this book, which is to go find the Kabir in you." (27:07)
    • "Kabir himself becomes for me a sign of that which is not." (29:37)

Poetry, Song, and the Fabric of Love (30:02 – 41:02)

• Singing as Transmission:
  • Anand sings and translates "Affect Fabric So Fine," demonstrating how each performer—across castes, religions, and regions—makes Kabir’s verses anew.
    • "So when Kabir talks about the warp and weft, it is also sometimes the in breath and out breath that he's talking about." (33:00)
    • [Song performance] (32:51–37:17)
  • Discussion of the fluid, anti-hierarchical nature of Kabir’s poetry, where:
    • "Everyone can sing these songs in their own style. Just because Kabir is so big. Such a fabric." (41:02)

No-Place (Nirvana/Nibbana), Buddhist Parallels, and the Void (42:06 – 56:15)

• Kabir, Buddha, and the No-Place:
  • Anand draws connections between Kabir’s and Buddhist poetics of negation, emptiness (Shunyata), and liberation, emphasizing the shared 'not-place' of realization.
    • "Where there is neither sorrow... nor grief, no, no grief nor happiness. The other binary is truth and lies. Both are not there." (49:53)
  • Anand notes that Kabir appropriates and subverts both Brahminical and Buddhist binaries—transcending even these identities in the pursuit of the formless.
    • “If time is such a loop, then probably Buddha came after Kabir. To me, at least, at least in my journey.” (53:23)

Critique of Blindness, Authority, and Academic Canon (56:15 – 67:46)

• The Parable of the Blind and the Elephant:
  • Critiques the famous Buddhist parable for its normative, ableist framing; Kabir, by contrast, embraces blindness, muteness, and difference to explode authority and certainty.
    • "They think only they are true the Buddhas, holding what they grasp the elephant us." (61:03)
    • “The mute bursts into song, the deaf can decry the notes. The cripple springs into dance, the blind paints in unseen tones again the restatement of the Nibbana Sutta…” (65:03)
• On Academic Blindness:
  • Jessica and Anand reflect on how academic scholarship (particularly Buddhist Studies) often reproduces the voices and agendas of the elite or dominant class.
    • "We are just reproducing the stories of the 1%. And you know, it just so happened that if you're telling the stories of that 1%, you're pretty much repeating the stories of subjugation..." (67:38)

Songs of Revolt: Chokhamela and Subversive Bhakti (71:53 – 78:26)

• Performance and Analysis:
  • Anand sings Chokhamela's devastatingly subversive abhanga, which denounces caste-based pollution—“If Choka is tainted, everything is tainted. Birth is a taint... Purana is tainted. So tainted. Vedas are tainted. Shastras are tainted. What did I do? I read the whole verse upside down.” (73:56–77:29)
  • Explains how Chokhamela’s marginalization produced poetry that was both radical and universal—a thread picked up and expanded by Kabir and Ambedkar in their own ways.

Guru and Subversion: The Ramanand Legend and Universal Fabric (81:24 – 85:44)

• The Guru-Kick Myth:
  • Anand examines the legend of Brahmin guru Ramanand rejecting Kabir—and how this rejection paradoxically generates a more universal, emancipatory consciousness.
    • “The rejection by Ramanand creates the consciousness of a more universal emancipatory subject... Such is the grace of the fabric of equality. It wraps everyone in its fold.” (82:42)
  • Through repeated singing, the meaning of such stories (‘my guru got me high’) keeps shifting, inviting readers to live beyond strict binaries.

Final Reflections and Notable Quotes

• Universality, Empathy, and Song:
  • Anand underscores that the love of knowledge, music, and transformation is not reserved for the elite or academic; Kabir’s and Chokhamela’s legacies belong to all.
    • "There is nobody who is not capable of enlightenment is one takeaway from this book that I hope you will get. And that itself is a kind of enlightenment, I would think." (88:14)
• On Being a “Buddhu”:
  • “A buddhu is somebody who is like an idiot who doesn't know who can ask stupid questions. And it is by asking silly questions and stupid questions that you get close to Kabir or you get close to becoming Kabir or even the Buddha." (85:49)

Anand’s Forthcoming Projects (88:42 – 91:36)

• Working on musical and poetic translations of the Tirukkural corpus (Tamil), transforming them into “raga sonnets.”
• Preparing a major musical and possibly book-length project on Chokhamela with collaborator Dhamma Ranadive.
• Continues to explore and perform radical poetic traditions in ten languages, focusing on their capacity for social and philosophical transformation.

Timestamps for Key Segments

• Introduction / Anand’s Personal Journey: 04:59 – 13:31
• Cover Art and the ‘Notbook’ Concept: 13:31 – 22:41
• Kabir as Sign and Kabir Stan Explained: 22:41 – 30:02
• Song Performance: “Affect Fabric So Fine”: 32:51 – 37:17
• No-Place / Buddhist Parallels: 42:06 – 56:15
• Parable of the Blind / Critique of Authority: 56:15 – 67:46
• Chokhamela’s Subversive Song: 71:53 – 78:26
• Guru Ramanand and Subversion: 81:24 – 85:44
• Final Reflections and Upcoming Projects: 86:52 – 91:36

Memorable Moments and Quotes

• On the Notbook’s Resistance to Form:
  • "This is an anti-book. The point of this book is to take you to that place which is beyond this book, which is to go find the Kabir in you." (27:07)
• On Love and Emancipation:
  • “Such is the grace of the fabric of equality. It wraps everyone in its fold. That is so beautiful. It’s full of rain and love, all at the same time.” (82:58)
• On Academic and Social Revolt:
  • "Let us set the dynamite to the Vedas and shastras that give no room for love and for reason and for rational things thinking. What is Shokamela doing in 14th century here...he was literally setting vedas and shastras on fire by denouncing them." (77:10)
• On Universal Enlightenment:
  • "There is nobody who is not capable of enlightenment is one takeaway from this book that I hope you will get." (88:14)

Closing Sentiment

As Anand and Jessica weave poetry, politics, and philosophy into shared song, listeners are invited to inhabit “Kabir Stan”—a boundless fabric beyond text, caste, and discipline—where “every stranger becomes a friend,” and “the love of knowledge is not confined to books.”
"We are all in our minds capable of traveling anywhere. That is the beauty of it. So I think we can all be part of this Kabir Stan. Because we are all going to end up in some Kabristan, in some graveyard or the other. Whether we are buried or burned." (92:36)