Abraham Verghese On His Characters And Faith (Image @abe_verghese)

Abraham Verghese, the American physician and author, opened up about his characters and faith. While speaking at the The Water that Binds Us session at Kerala Literature Festival (KLF) 2025 with Manasi Subramanium, held at Kerala’s Kozhikode, Verghese answered to questions on how his characters are formed and what is his take on faith.

When The Covenant of Water author was asked if his characters still haunts him, the author said they do. He said the characters have become concrete for him. He then explains the process of how his characters are formed.

“Someone out there once asked did I know the whole story before I started. I thought I did. I put it on a big map in my living room. I outlined in a white board the whole story. But what would happen is once I have the really good three dimensional characters – there is very famous saying in the writing circles that the character is defined by the decisions taken under pressure. It’s true in life by the way, you know. You put people under pressure, they make a decision. It tells you a lot about them. Every time I put my characters under pressure, they would indicate to me, “I would never do this. You know, its kind of silly you think I would do this thing””, said Verghese.

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“So, I would have to go in different direction. Erase the board, start over again and point in another direction. So, the characters are still very much alive. They are people I haven’t seen in long, long time”.

He also said that he never read his books because of his urge to get a pen and make some corrections. “Every time I read them, or tried to read them, my instinct is to pull out a pen and make some corrections. It really gets in the way of actually reading the books. I think I have wait to be old enough where I don’t have that reflex anymore”.

To the question of faith, Verghese said while he is not very much spiritual as far as his understanding goes, many assume him to be a very religious person, given the nature of his two novels. He said that he was only trying to be true to the times in which the stories are based.

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“People thinks that, they just imagine that I am a really religious…But I am really not. I am really envious of the kind of faith of my forefathers. And I was simply trying to be true to the times. It was characteristic of my grandparents. It was characteristic of my parents. They have the kind of faith that I am envious of. I recognise the rituals. It gives some strong sense of bond. Like when I get older…when I go to church, you know the Malayalam service. But a big chunks of it are in Syriac, which neither my parents, or anybody else (understand)…may be the priest understand. But the words are familiar. And they sort of invoke a very special feeling amongst all of us. Yeah, I am not very particularly spiritual in the way that I understand. I was just trying stay true to the times in both cases. Both are very old Christian nations. Both Ethiopia (Where his first novel Cutting for Stone was based) and India.