My Restaurant Finds - Song Hay

It is one of the best no-frills Chinese restaurants in Calcutta yet very few of us know its name. It has been around for quite a long time now and unless you have been too, chances are you never heard about Song Hay in the midst of the noise and the hype. Not so of course, for the steady stream of office-folk, at day’s end, out from the grey mansions of Dalhousie and Bowbazar, from the pigeon holes of Esplanade and Central Avenue, the halls of Lyons Range, where many fortunes are made and many more go up in the diesel-smoked evenings of Calcutta.

They come quietly, even if they had been loud during the day and they usually remain quiet and dignified till it’s well past nine. I always love pushing through its heavy glass doors to escape from thankless summers, to meet someone, for good food and intoxication.

Song Hay welcomes everyone -- the modest interiors with the double pillars twined by dragons, the red Chinese lamps hanging from the pearl-colored ceiling, the calligraphic lettering of a light box, the little nooks and private spaces with tables, created so thoughtfully by the designer, have a delicate charm.

What is it that makes a restaurant special? I have often wondered why run-down place like Olympia in Calcutta is packed like a tin of sardines every evening while just across the street, waiters at another establishment wonder, where have all the customers gone. I have found no good reason why the loud and baroque United Coffee House in the heart of Delhi seems always short of seats while a few steps down, Volga laments for lost custom.

Talking about Volga, the dim-lit, red carpeted watering-hole has a sinister air that has struck my fancy (and I will write about the fantastic mutton cutlets here) but not so for the average punter.

So we really don’t have an answer, what makes an eatery, a relentless crowd-puller. I have given this some thought and when it comes to my favourite watering holes and hiding places I believe it’s the feeling of comfort, that a restaurant can give its customer, that’s most important. Of course then you have price, for I am talking of places where the average person can visit. Food comes somewhere in-between the two and service sometimes matter.

The food at Song Hay has a variety that very few similar places would offer. Then, they have most of the items available, and not just menu-fillers. The fare you get at Song Hay at that price is really a steal. Tasty, good-looking and served in basic porcelain or stainless steel plates and bowls. My favorites are the pork dishes – the fiery Mongolian pork, the unforgettable pork-fried, or the simple and delicious pork chowmien.

Jayanta was asking the other day, `how could they make pork taste so delicious?’ Well, the meat of pigs is not considered particularly tasty by many like him, so I told him to find out from the kitchen.

I have to warn you that I tried only a small selection from their quite extensive menu and am sure there are more discoveries waiting to be made. But if you are not in a hurry and happen to be in Waterloo Street of Calcutta, then dive into this pleasantly air-conditioned place with friendly waiters and ask for their `fried chicken’ and wash it down with a bottle or two of Carlsberg. If it’s still not evening, you know you would be getting a 10% discount on the bill, all the year round.

I usually drop into Song Hay well into the evening, usually with some friend or colleague and we quickly gravitate to our favoured corner and order the heavenly Double Happiness chow mien to go with quite a few rounds of dark rum – it’s always Old Monk. I don’t care for starters or finger food to go with my evening tipple and plunge straight into the heart of the menu of one of my favourite restaurants of Calcutta.

I haven’t been to Song Hay lately because of some unplanned distraction but will be there soon. At this time of the evening they would be having their tables full, the aroma of crispy chicken rising from the kitchen, wafting through the dining halls, twining around the tables and the smiling waiters (Michael, who looks like a rock star, is usually at our table) the dragons rolling their eyes, wondering at this crowd getting ever so excited about Double Happiness chow mien and thin ginger slices soaked in balsamic vinegar.

Suggested dishes: Double Happiness Chow Mien, American Chop Suey, Fried chicken, Fried Pork

Location: Waterloo Street, Kolkata (diagonally opposite to the old Great Eastern hotel)

Hearty meal for two with drinks: Rs 600

Bad Sex Gems and BL’s Deathless Legacy

Norman Mailer won it in 2007 for a passage from A Castle in the Forest, that goes, `Are you all right?' she cried out as he lay beside her, his breath going in and out with a rasp that sounded as terrible as the last winds of their lost children.

'All right. Yes. No,' he said. Then she was on him. She did not know if this would resuscitate him or end him, but the same spite, sharp as a needle, that had come to her after Fanni's death was in her again. Fanni had told her once what to do. So Klara turned head to foot, and put her most unmentionable part down on his hard-breathing nose and mouth, and took his old battering ram into her lips. Uncle was now as soft as a coil of excrement. ...'

Last year's nominees include John Updike for dirty descriptions in The Widows of Eastwick and Paulo Coelho for a spirited passage in Brida. Updike quit the game sometime back and wouldn't be bothered whether they give him the `Bad Sex in Fiction Award' but gentle Paulo, could have a sermon or two for the red-blooded editors at Literary Review who run this heart-warming contest. His salacious bit consisted of footpath sex in Brida which is "the moment when Eve was reabsorbed into Adam's body and the two halves became Creation" and climaxes with the über-orgasmic, “As if struck by a sacred bolt of lightning, she unleashed them, and the world, the seagulls, the taste of salt, the hard earth, the smell of the sea, the clouds, all disappeared, and in their place appeared a vast gold light, which grew and grew until it touched the most distant star in the galaxy."

There are many more absurd, crude and downright funny passages written and rewarded each year a fine sampling of which is available at the Literary Review site. This year’s contenders for the bad sex award in fiction included Thomas Pynchon, Will Self and Mark Haddon better known for his `The Curious Incident of the Dog at the Night Time’. Iain Hollingshead, won the award this year, which according to the award’s founder is given out `with the aim of gently dissuading authors and publishers from including unconvincing, perfunctory, embarrassing or redundant passages of a sexual nature in otherwise sound literary novels.’ Read the passage that clinched it, for this first-time writer.

Talking of tongue-in-cheek awards, awards that chastise or ones that poke fun, who can ignore Edward George Bulwer-Lytton’s lasting legacy. This 19^th century Englishman began his novel Paul Clifford with the momentous (and much abused),

"It was a dark and stormy night; the rain fell in torrents, except at occasional intervals, when it was checked by a violent gust of wind which swept up the streets (for it is in London that our scene lies), rattling along the housetops, and fiercely agitating the scanty flame of the lamps that struggled against the darkness."

The Bulwer-Lytton Fiction Contest, each year, invites people to `compose the opening sentence to the worst of all possible novels.’ Started in 1982, the contest now attracts thousands of entries in a number of categories, all striving to keep alive the legacy of this Englishman with the strange surname. Anyone can enter the contest electronically or otherwise.

This year the prize was won by a 55-year old writer, David McKenzie for composing this:

"Folks say that if you listen real close at the height of the full moon, when the wind is blowin' off Nantucket Sound from the nor' east and the dogs are howlin' for no earthly reason, you can hear the awful screams of the crew of the "Ellie May," a sturdy whaler Captained by John McTavish; for it was on just such a night when the rum was flowin' and, Davey Jones be damned, big John brought his men on deck for the first of several screaming contests."

The winner for the detective fiction category, appeals even more with this horrendously amusing,

``She walked into my office on legs as long as one of those long-legged birds that you see in Florida - the pink ones, not the white ones - except that she was standing on both of them, not just one of them, like those birds, the pink ones, and she wasn't wearing pink, but I knew right away that she was trouble, which those birds usually aren't.”

Lytton’s great-great-great-grandson is however not amused by the increasing popularity of the prize and recently threw a challenge to its founders for maligning his ancestor’s name. He said, "to have been the first person to have penned a cliché was a mark of genius". In fact, other than `dark and stormy night’ Bulwer-Lytton had created many over-abused marvels like, "the pen is mightier than the sword" and "the almighty dollar”. This Guardian article has followed this debate.

From the Ig Nobel Prize to the Razzies, there are a whole lot of chastising, tongue-in-cheek or downright bitchy honours given out each year. Just reading about them and could make a dull weekend exciting. The Wikipedia list for Ironic and humorous awards is a good starting point.

To top it off, with a bit more from the Bad Sex Awards, here is an entry that makes one laugh with its mock-profundity. This is from a novel called Will by Christopher Rush:

``O glorious pubes! The ultimate triangle, whose angles delve to hell but point to paradise. Let me sing the black banner, the blackbird's wing, the chink, the cleft, the keyhole in the door. The fig, the fanny, the cranny, the quim - I'd come close to it now, this sudden blush, this ancient avenue, the end of all odysseys and epic aim of life, pulling at my prick now, pulling like a lodestone …’’

And this gem from Absurdistan, by Gary Shteyngart (Granta),

"You wanna pop me?" she said. This must have been some new-fangled youth term. The verb "to pop."

"I wanna bust a nut inside you, shorty," I said. "I wanna make you sweat, boo. Let's do this thing."

Bulwer-Lytton image courtesy thedandy.org

Norman Mailer image courtesy Wikipedia

A Bellyfull of Books

Ever seen a machine bellyfull with Madame Bovary or Marquis de Sade? Patiently waiting for you to deliver itself of its burden of dictionaries or the latest potboiler? Well here they are. Book-vending machines were introduced in France a few years back. According to one report they were introduced to cater to off-hour demand, when stores are closed. The above image of a book-vending machine is from NewPages which has also a lot of other stuff on books and writing.

Crackpot Index and False Prophets

This started with an Orkut notice from a friend in Brazil, who has been researching crackpot texts. I dug a bit deep and came up with material that is intriguing to say the least. From the perspective of a fiction writer and one who is interested in realities that are not immediately discernible, Pseudoscience is just another expression of the unconscious mind. And being so it has some intrinsic value, to folks like us.

Alternatively, to a man of science, pseudo-science (be it astrology, theories of lunar-effects and the possibility of levitation) and all such `crackpot stuff', that sometimes have a huge fan-following, is only a step back into the darkness. John Carlos Baez, an American mathematician (he is a cousin of Joan Baez) at the Univeristy of California has devised this somewhat humorous, Crackpot index. It is a test for rating scientific claims and the person/s who make them. Not entirely frivolous this set of simple questions have been used to test quirky theories about prime numbers and to my mind can be well used to challenge and weed out false prophets and dangerous beliefs that threaten the fabric of this nation. Really the scope and applicability of this index are enormous and it's potential remains untapped.

A few of the criteria used in the Crackpot Index (the higher the score the more plausible that the theory is devised by a crackpot):

5 points for using a thought experiment that contradicts the results of a widely accepted real experiment.
5 points for each word in all capital letters (except for those with defective keyboards). 3 points for every statement that is logically inconsistent. 10 points for each new term you invent and use without properly defining it. 20 points for suggesting that you deserve a Nobel prize. 40 points for comparing those who argue against your ideas to Nazis, stormtroopers, or brownshirts ... You can find the index here.

And these are some crackpot theories/ideas that the index is originally meant for.

- Drilling a hole in a person's head will release excess pressure and elevate him to a higher level of consciousness. (This is known as trepanation - see image)
- Creation biology (That tries to explain biology without evolution)

The Internet is bristling with examples. Good examples are at the wikipedia entry on pseudoscience and at this forum. Have your fill of cranky ideas but who knows how some of these may become inspiration for future science.

(The image accompanying this post is from the King's College, London website)

Le Clézio quote ...

Here is a Le Clézio quote that came up in one of the many articles that is being written about him after the literature Nobel prize. Strangely this important figure of French literature is little translated into English:

`The dawn of peoples is important because we seem now to be living in the dusk. You have the sense that we are getting near the end.`

Jean-Marie Gustave Le Clézio, a true citizen of the world, is a patient student of non-western, extra-logical sensibilities and civilisations.

Here is an excerpt from his novel Étoile Errante (Wandering Star) from the Words Without Borders website. Wandering Star is the story of two teenage girls, Esther a French Jew and Nejma an Arab.

The excerpt is an English translation of the French original.

Readings: Saikat Majumdar's Silverfish

Forgotten Little People

There is something about Andrew Marvell’s poem, To His Coy Mistress that strikes the fancy of writers. Hemingway used two lines from this poem in that important scene from A Farewell to Arms when the hero Frederic Henry, is leaving his beloved again, to fight a war.

``But at my back I always hear

Time’s winged chariot hurrying near”

And time surely, as we would see, was not on their side. Saikat Majumdar, in the final pages of Silverfish writes, `There will never be world enough, and time, something inside told her …’ This sentence too reminds us of the beginning of Marvell’s poem,

``Had we but world enough, and time,’’

Time is important in Marvell’s poem as it is in Majumdar’s delicately written novel about two people separated by more than two-hundred years of history but bound to each other by a tale of neglect and forgetting. There is at least one other contemporary writer I can think of, who has put this metaphysical poet’s lines in his narrative.

Silverfish is a story about a woman in 19^th century Bengal and a school-teacher in present-day Calcutta living out starkly different lives. But as the reader slowly discovers, these two lives have similarities, nuances, shades that bring them gradually closer to each other, both figuratively and also within the narrative through the device of a forgotten manuscript found in an old trunk.

The woman, Kamal, is living a life of material plenty in her rich-husband’s house in 19^th century Calcutta, where a thousand customs suffocate her free spirit. She wants to read and write, the world outside attracts her. But she is not allowed to step outside. Kamal’s story, always told in the first person, begins with a tinge of sadness and a shade of the lyrical:

``I can see the streets through the windows, the red-hued streets I haven’t stepped out in ten years, maybe fifteen, maybe more.

I lose count of time.

They say the wives of this family pass the marble lions of the main gate only twice. They enter as pre-pubescent girls – tiny, shy new brides, eyes red and swollen from crying, drowned by the shower of flowers and music and wedding chants. They leave in the dusk of their lives, through the hushed fragrance of sandalwood and white tuberoses, the name of God sung again …’’

The other protagonist Milan, a school-teacher in present-day (the early nineties, I should say) Calcutta, is fighting a losing battle against the bureaucracy and a corrupt system that is withholding his meager pension. Milan is an idealist and so his battles continue.

These individual battles, of Kamal and Milan, draws along the intertwined narratives of the novel till the time, they begin to flow into one another. This is the structure of Silverfish, a slow-moving river of a novel that unhurriedly coaxes the reader to accompany it on its journey.

While the battles of Milan and Kamal are vastly different – because of two centuries that separate them, because of the social milieu that they come from, because of several other factors – yet in their relentless struggle against customs and soulless traditions (in Kamal’s case) bureaucratic intransigence and political crime (in case of Milan), these two characters seem to tell the story of the `little man’ fighting powerful, unknown enemies. Silverfish is in fact the story of this struggle that common people have been engaged in for ages.

Their stories – forgotten, lost or silverfish-ridden however constitute important yet neglected passages in the history of this nation. Yet nobody seems to care. At least not those at the centre of this story. Even those who do care, do not have the energy to carry on bravely against the formidable forces of forgetting, the armies of neglect, amassed against them. Some of them like the old bookseller Moidul, commits suicide. Only the young Shireen, who is a professor in the United States (like Majumdar himself) in the final pages of this book, hold out a glimmer of hope. A hope that these forgotten histories will not be lost after all. But Shireen herself is also unsure and so – `There will never be world enough, and time, something inside told her …’

The parallel narratives of Silverfish are written in markedly different styles. I personally was more attracted to the spare and delicately shaded narrative of the present, as perhaps being a fellow Calcuttan, I could identify easily with the setting. The narrative of the past is lyrical and appropriately antiquated but sometimes I felt it was slowing down the pace of the story. Yet nowhere does Majumdar’s prose strike one as overwrought, nowhere is it burdened by the spirit of exoticising that has struck the fancy of many Indian writers today.

A reading of Kamal’s narrative reveals the author’s indebtedness to Bengali literature and in fact he has mentioned in interviews that the task of re-creating 19^th century Bengal was facilitated by his reading of Rabindranath Tagore and Sarat Chandra Chattopadhyay among others. To delve a bit deeper, one would perhaps have liked Silverfish even more if Kamal’s narrative was written in Bengali while Milan’s was in English. In fact the story of Kamal, sometimes seems to be a translation of a Bengali original while Milan’s does not. Perhaps this was the author’s intention. In any case as experiments of such bi-lingual texts are too far fetched and impractical we would not discuss any more of it here.

There are some moving passages near the end of the book where past time and present time mingle in a touching scene surrounding Milan’s heart-attack. The narrator’s voice is appropriately somber; it has the saltiness of hidden tears, the pain of a life and a time about to vanish for ever:

``Rainwater, cooking water, wasted soup and gravy down rust-iron kitchen pipes, faecal water from leaking, bursting drainpipes, holy water from the mythic Ganga river sprinkled daily around the house, on the shrines that nestled Shiva and Krishna and Lakshmi.

Desire rose from all, smoky, gasping fumes of it.

What did the red earth of this back alley speak of, what had it been a hundred, two hundred years back? The sad bundle of moth-eaten papers now lay in peace, inside the loose Shantiniketan bag slung from his shoulders, but they had been somewhere else, a long, long time ago. The red earth might have been the inner courtyard that lived, drenched with love and disgust and the power of the real in the pages with the gaping holes, the courtyard that allowed the one slice of sky they saw for the most part of their lives, the blisters of the read earth he had trodden with dusty slippers a little girl had once hidden away, aeons ago, the smell of freshly chopped vegetables and red dye applied on women’s toes, the vermilion on the partings of their hair.’’

And finally, when Shireen is flying away to New York with Kamal’s silverfish-ridden manuscript safely in her bag, the novel achieves something close to the sublime. Sublime or what pseudo-Longinus had called hupsos. Those last few pages have a transcendental quality about them, they remain with you and they grow in your mind, long after the book has been put away.

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Silverfish by Saikat Majumdar, HarperCollins Publishers India, New Delhi, 2007, Pp. 293

Published article.

The above book review is Copyright © Rajat Chaudhuri, 2008. All rights reserved.

Meditation - Learning about oneself

Posting here a quote from J Krishnamurti:

`Meditation is one of the greatest arts in life-perhaps the greatest, and one cannot possibly learn it from anybody, that is the beauty of it. It has no technique and therefore no authority. When you learn about yourself, watch yourself, watch the way you walk, how you eat, what you say, the gossip, the hate, the jealousy-if you are aware of all that in yourself, without any choice, that is part of meditation.'

Of Gourmets, Ghosts and Goddesses (Pujo Journal I)

A frozen margarita sky wrapped itself around Calcutta this Saptami morning. The first day of the Pujos – the rainclouds remind me of exotic drinks. Shared with shiny-faced people with glowing skin, in a far-off country. Many years ago. With the sun outside, and wistfuly thinking of Durga Pujo being celebrated far away at home.

But today I have woken up early. Egged on by those around me. The roads suddenly look clean. Early in the morning perhaps roads in every city look clean. I am preparing myself for the Goddess. I have started avoiding crowds, I have become a bit apprehensive. What, with the wanton taking of lives in the name of whatever suits radicals on every side, religious or otherwise. Religious radicals or progress-radicals or `freedom'-loving radicals. And so, to avoid crowds, to try to return home perhaps, in one piece, we are driving down south, this early in the morning.

The road to the south, recently repaired, perhaps to give us a better Pujo ride, goes by lakes brimful. The coconut palms on the far banks throw trembling shadows on the water. I hear the first beats of the dhak. It comes to us from somewhere beyond those waters. On the far side, beyond those trees, among the cluster of buildings the man beating the dhak is the first messenger of the Goddess, speaking to me. His festive beats is the music of life, talking, singing, laughing proudly in the face of death.

But the driver is going too fast. I signal him to slow down, I snap on the seat belt. We have entered the city. We stop in front of a pandal and those accompanying me step out. I can see her from the car and so prefer sitting inside. Early morning lethargy is still creeping in my blood. The pandal is modest but in good taste. She is slim, with beautiful eyes. Mahisasura, who she is slaying, is a bit-lacking in expression. We stop again at Gariahat and visit some pandals on foot.

The roads are just beginning to come alive. Along the footpaths, barricaded with bamboo walls, small groups of men and women are walking leisurely. We join them. Many of the pandals have been decorated by artists. The artists have had their say in the design of the image and have left their unmistakable mark on many. Some I liked, some didn’t mean anything to me at all.

One of these south Calcutta Pujos has a Daliesque Goddess floating in mid air with a blue halo around her. She is memorable and I am sure she will intrigue us even more at night, when the hidden lights in the cave-like structure where she is residing, are switched on. To me she is both a poignant surrealist image and also one that could be brought about by hallucinogens. Something like magic mushrooms or peyote cactus.This image of the Goddess interests me much as my second novel (to be published) has themes quite akin.

In another pandal in the south, the Godess is in the form of a carved stone image (see image at the beginning of this post) of an ancient temple. Stylised with the aura of the ancient about her, she glows in the clever reddish lighting that have been used there.

We drive to other parts of the city. Many pandals have installed CCTV cameras and they remind me of shopping malls and big department stores. Their sight leave me a bit sad. Sadness, irritation, bitterness. The sight of the cameras and all that they stand for, what is before them, what lies in their past, leaves my mouth dry. I feel a faint throbbing in my head. Maybe it’s time to eat.

We drink tea at Park Street in a large, well-lighted place with newly-printed No Smoking signs all over the walls. The signs remind me of the cameras in the pandals. What do they have in common? We walk a little up the road to a place where they serve a mix of Gujerati and north Indian savouries. They even do dosas, but we have arrived too early for that. We eat tasty, ghee-soaked sweets, some of us have kachoris. The jalebis they serve are works of art by themselves. As I walk out I am accosted by a small girl in a torn frock. She has a tired worn face, there is the redness of some disease in her eyes, she wants me to buy something from her. A box of paper napkins. I take the box from her and for one last time look at her. Her eyes are suddenly bright. She has smiled somehow, I notice. She runs across the streets and vanishes near the French restaurant. The restaurant with the French sounding name, and the associations with Toulouse-Lautrec. It’s time to head north.

We stop at a few pandals in Central Calcutta. On the way we plan lunch. Lunch – Chinese or Mughlai, Chinatown or Arsalan? At last we settle for Chinese. Tomorrow (Ashtami) it will be home-cooked vegetarian fare. Nabami, of course is the day for mutton – biriyani or kosha or maybe the classic kochi-pathar jhol with rice.

The frozen margarita has melted and a fine rain has begun. Rain like spray; here in Bengal we call it illshaguri. We huddle into a pandal. A folksy Goddess, made from bamboo or what could be wood. Stylised and beautiful, and in another pandal a group of beggars has taken shelter near the goddess. They form a circle of silence around the brightly-lit image of the Mother, the saviour, the protector, the banisher of evil. The beggars hold out their hands, dignified and calm. And surely, perhaps because the pujo-revellers do not want to miss out on their share of good-karma, the beggars get more then they expect. The Goddess smiles a cryptic smile, the beggars count their nickels, surrounding the platform where she stands. Like practioners of an occult sect. I am suddenly scared and step quickly out of that pandal.

The crowds have begun to swell but walking up to the pandals is still comfortable. One of the Pujos, is making a statement in the context of Tata’s Nano small-car project. The pandal is made to look like closed factories and there is a model of the Nano car near the entrance. The message is clear. Open the closed factories before taking on new industrial projects.

We drive deeper into the north. To the oldest neighbourhoods of Calcutta. On the way we take-in another famous Pujo which is themed this year around environment. Another way to spread the much needed message that we cannot go on plundering the resources of the planet and behaving like a bull in a china-shop, so to say. The earth has its limits, Sister-mother Earth (to use St Francis’ words) is patient, but her patience is running out fast.

The Pujos of the north have a different aura. They seem to be steeped in history and tradition. Well, not all, but many of them. The Goddess at Bagbajar Sarbojanin is the traditional ekchala image (Durga and her family on a single platform). The pandal is styled after an ancient temple, the tales from the Puranas adorn its interiors. On our way out from this pandal we discover the traveling Banarasi paan-seller. His shop is on a raised platform and his advertisements, written in Dev-nagri say, he has been traveling all over the country selling his rare betel-leaves. Amitabh Bachchan in his film Don did much good for the Banarasi pan-seller as the opportunities provided by these festivals, where he brings his rare offering. Every connoisseur knows how the Banarsi paan melts slowly in your mouth, releasing it’s delicate cocktail of flavours of aromatic tobacco, areca nuts and spices.

Perhaps after Durga Puja is over, he will travel northwards again. For Diwali – the festival of lights and then perhaps when the winter is fresh, he will take his wares to Punjab or to southern India in time for Pongal or some other festival whose name is unknown to me. Perhaps he will go another way. He could, after a good-year’s earnings even decide to go back to his village, on the ghats of the wide Ganga, where on a cold evening he may be telling his wife and children of the strange places he has been, the people he has met on the road. They will listen wide-eyed to his story but what is strange to them will no longer have been strange to him. My memories of this Durga Puja will be of the Benarasi paan-seller traveling across the country, traveling alone and confident, bringing the delicate taste of his betel-leaves and the aroma of spices, like a salve for suffering souls.

Copyright: Rajat Chaudhuri 2008. Published article. All rights reserved.

The Indian Literature (Sahitya Akademi) review of Amber Dusk

I am posting here the full review of my novel - Amber Dusk, that appeared recently in the Indian Literature journal of Sahitya Akademi. Sahitya Akademi is India's national academy of letters. INDIAN LITERATURE is Sahitya Akademi’s bi-monthly journal.

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Amber Dusk by Rajat Chaudhuri

The book under review—Rajat Chaudhuri’s Amber Dusk is a text that retrieves memories and spatio-temporal configurations of Indian writing in English. This aspect makes this reviewer think about a point that has often been debated and widely contested - the politics of Indian writing in English, Several times while browsing through the pages of many Indian English authors, I had raised the issue of differences that are at play within the sensibilities of Indian writing. To be specific, these differences have to be understood in the graphic notations provided to the reader regarding the cosmopolitan and urban divide, the setup of imaginary landscapes that are suited for the writing of the writers, the academic framework of the writers including the idea of production and con­sumption of these texts, and the mechanisms of the market-oriented networks. Here in the postcolonial context, this reviewer would like to tilt the so-called absorption of many literary texts into the Western-oriented ways of consumption by mooting the idea that all that talk about the cosmopolitan experiences may not be well-marketed and the audience including the West, perhaps, will not be so ready to accept the existence of these texts. In the past one decade, several tests that talk about the cosmopolitan experiences failed to catch the attention of the market and the readership of the West. This is another serious issue popping up when we look at the reception of these texts not only abroad but even within our country, One should keep in mind here that these divisions, fundamentally situated on the premise of the readership, have created more cleavages within the Indian writers in English.

Though the tune is not ripe enough to debate the above-mentioned features, Rajat Chaudhuri’s novel at the very outset dismantles the notion of a peculiar sense of readership that many Indian English writers would wish to have. First and foremost, this is a text about the cosmopolitan Kolkata experience in conjunction with the rural spaces which are actively restructured and figuratively examined by several characters in the novel, At the same time, the hub and hue of the city life, the,valueless systems attached to the postmodern glimmerings of market and other sophisticated network connections are clearly outlined in the context of the more modern French lives—in other words, by the French Connections. Here the cosmopolitan sensibilities are mutually wedded together to project the notion that several spaces and times are lived by all of us many times, Secondly, Amber Dusk shows that how a character like Rishi can have non-linear imaginations; ah1 of them without any staticity or coherence. Time is only a temporal disjuncture for this character because his cosmopolitan sensibility has already destroyed him within the narrow catacombs of imagination. There is a tendency very much suggested here to go back to the roots of alienation by bidding farewell to the extravagance of enjoyment from the postmodern sensibilities that always destroy truth, essence and character. The text, therefore, is a snow-clad Iamb waiting for its redemption by looking at its own existence. When freedom is not negated, it is natural that one would have a tendency to cross all borders. But Chaudhuri’s characters like Pedro, Anamika,Valence and Suhuria are all much more time-clad characters enjoying the wetness and warmth of the new time and yet chained to their perturbed consciousness. However, for a character like Daniel, the limitations oi freedom are very important as far as his ideas of investigation are concerned. There are all types of people; but none of them except the ones that are prone to action (including an abortion or the announcement of the doctor regarding the death of a baby) the more modern sense of freedom never achieves any significance. In other words, this freedom also is something provided to a serious reader of Chaudhuri’s novel.

The wide galaxy of characters in Chaudhuri’s text is coming from different walks of life and the Bengal life is the only background that unites them. There are some questions left at stake here. For example,

Rishi’s relationship with Anamika and Valence—though given a full account of its differences in tropes but never gets into the innards of the rural scenario— often punctures the text, Anamika k projected as a character typical from a Bengal middle-class background carrying with her the hopes and aspirations of the future, yet suspicious of day-to-day existence. On the other hand, Valence offers the possibility of all that the West cat! offer to an upper middle-class character who oscillates between the two worlds—or to be precise, between the systems of anticipation and destruction. The world of the corporate bourgeois and the multi­millionaires of the global times is given a prominence among the many repercussions and movements, their living styles are located within s doubly constructed inner time mechanism of adjustment and their tempo of passions is allowed to flow at unwanted aeons of speed. This is not ,i life dim is emulated But something that is inherent here now. Since speed calculates the movement, the surreal portrayal of the author of Rishi and Pedro’s lives are vivid enought to bring what is before our very eyes myopic - the world of advertisements, condoms, horoscopes, e-mails, continental food, dish washers and disposable diapers are all a part of this atmosphere. Bishwa’s ASHIANA ENTERPRISE, the jobs that are meant for the educated upper class of people, the business lagoons and the bureaucrats with their night clubs and parties are all very mucyh the visible features in the Third World. However, the resistance against this particular set-up, as Pedro often ruminates, can never be c reated by brining a rural atmosphere in the city. Pedro’s wanderings are moe difficult like that the Camus’s Meursault, as the meanings are everytime robbed from him. But unlike Meursault, he never takes up a rifle to shoot a firangi or a Santal to alleviate hsi postmodern existential paradox. Pedro’s sacrifice at the end of the text is another reassertion of his own freedom. His responsibility finishes only when the destruction by the detonators happens. This also is an indication of embracing the modern world’s systems of recuperation. Everything evaporates soon as the poor villagers and their dreams never fulfill what need to be done regarding their future. Pedro’s cosmopolitanism, unlike Rishi’s, never compromises anything. This rationality, by all probability, is an indication against several NGOs and other activist groups that are functioning in our time. The Bengali intelligentsia’s sense of attaching themselves to everything is mocked at; and the concomitant experiences of the altered regarding daily problems are cited here. Outlining the tales of the poor villagers and mentioning that their favourite drink called mahua taken away from them, the questions of alnd and the autochtbonous attachment of the people with it are cited here. This runs parallel to the Nandigram of contemporary time.

Later when Chaudhuri write, “Castrate leaders! Sew the labia majora of empresses! Vasectomise some VIPs,” the satire against the popular films in which one encounters the silly death of certain politicians engaged with looting, arson and rape, is brought out. Pedro’s fight is against a system of daily routines and miss-jnatching media that sell celebrities and flesh. This corporate world of late capitalism has its trajectory set out in the world of advertisements and stardoms.

What interests the reader most in Amber Dusk is the excellent narration rendered both in the first person account (Rishi’s) and the third person. Before the undeniable fact of moral irresponsibility, Rishi twice loses his mind the blood-lust of narcissism sucks all scruples and arguments dry. There are impersonal descriptions and the nonsensical reflections concerned with environment, mental topography and the geographical locations of India, France and Spain. Some interesting references need to be pointed out. Rishi's first encounter with Daniel in France and flit later realization that who actually Daniel is, is narrated through a sequence of broken sentences, reminiscences, observations arid mainly through a foray into the past. But this going back to the counry’s past is nothing historical as far as the questions affecting their mind are concerned. Both characters are concerned about their present - that is constructed and thrown our by a series of dislocation. The surreal strategy Chaudhuri employed here, it should be remembered, is the one concerned with the nation’s questions of identity. Daniel’s trans-national identity becomes very much regional at the end of the text. Another surreal atmosphere is the conversation of Rishi with the grasshopper. This should be understood as the con­versation with the protagonist’s altar-ego. Again, in the chapter The Cup of Saladin’, these surreal atmospheres are heightened by mixing up the Spanish and the Oriental features through characters that become sign systems like LOPAMUDRA. These references are an exegesis of the character’s occupation with the distant past of Bengal. It should be noted that nowhere in his novel Chaudhuri offers a chutnified language of Salman Rushdie or a greasy mellowing narration of Arundhati Roy that would have suited the taste of many Indian English readers in the West and here,

After reading Amber Dusk which book will you take? Or what thought would brood your mind? Though these questions may not give any direct answers, some reflections regarding this type of narration need to be pointed out. It is not true to say that Chaudhuri’s cosmopolitan knowledge system has entirely created a new mode of writing. There are many adhesions and cohesions of oriental and occidental objects of interest in the novel including the Buddhist preachings and prayers offered.

The characters lose their identity many times as there are too many conflations with the West and the Indian rural scenario. But objectively looking, the text offers beautiful deftness and felicity of the village people, the boatman and his life and many interesting vignettes on Bengal. Chaudhuri’s is a narrative the furnishes the rural background as a vibrant and active source of many maladies of a cosmpolitan atmosphere. In this sense, this is not a novel that is written specifically for a target audience. This is the difficulty of another type of writing emerging within the Indian English writing. The reading and reception of the text are becoming more subjective, setting aside severe academic constraints and competing knowledge systems. At the same time, this new writing that emerges should be recognized as aa antidote to many academic influences of pushing certain type of Indian English writing ahead and the construction of a separate space of Indian writing offered under the guise of the western jacket of Indian English.

Krishnan Unni P.

(The reviewer teaches English at Deshbandhu College, Delhi University)

(This review was published in Vol LII. No 3.; May-June 2008, of Indian Literature journal, Sahitya Akademi. All rights reserved by the publisher)

Urban Updates I (Enriching Busrides)

There are such a variety of buses in this city. Red ones with the signs of upkeep hard to discern, two-storied ones that moved about with vintage nonchalance and broke down whenever the time was ripe, cream ones that had appeared as salvation but seemed to be retreating in ignominy, the ones for executives where no one except the conductor is allowed to stand, the so-called mini-bus with a flash of red and yellow on their sides and finally the ubiquitous workhorse the tin can `private’ bus that literally brings the competitive spirit to the streets and so is a safety hazard for passenger and pedestrian alike. The variety and possibilities does not end here. In fact with the bus and the trams and the taxi, the metro and the autorickshaws and the rickshaw, the circular railway and the river ferries, Calcutta provided a larger menu of transport options than almost any other city of India. Yet it fell far behind cities like Delhi where environment-friendliness of transport was concerned. Moreover what was also lacking were good roads and a seamless integration of the major modes of transport and this prevented passengers from easily changing from one type of transport to the next.
Pedro climbed on one such workhorse of Calcutta’s transport infrastructure – a private bus. It was so packed with passengers that he had to hold the door handle and hang outside the door, and set off for Mrs Gaitonde’s office in the south of the city. One among a swarm of human commuters on a tin box vehicle, packed with sting-less bees.
All kinds of things happened on such a bus journey. Each was a kind of learning, an experience that kind of leavened one up, fluffed one up like a roti full with the hot air of understanding. However continuous travelling soon mashed and kneaded you up so much that any further developments could not be expected.
After hanging for sometime by the handle at the door of the speeding bus and ducking inside every time another passed dangerously close, Pedro felt his hand getting tired. He advanced a step and changed to his left hand, when the conductor noticing his movements decided to ask for his ticket. One couldn’t blame the conductor for this decision. For everyday there were people who took a ride and went off smartly without buying a ticket. Fights and exchanges would occur and the conductor would be the wiser. `Let me get inside! Then I will buy the ticket,’ Pedro screamed back over the noise of tyres and horns.
‘Well, the poor fellow is carrying a bag and besides he doesn’t look like one of those sneaky types,’ the conductor thought. `OK, step in brother,’ the conductor said as if with those magic words the crammed tin-box of sweat and discomfort was transformed into someone’s grand reception hall. Pedro looked away, the conductor looked the other way, telling the passengers who wanted to alight at the next stop to come along. `Step in uncle,’ he advised Pedro this time.
A kilometre onward from where he had boarded the bus, that meant about ten minutes at that hour, Pedro managed to wriggle inside. He climbed the steps and tried to make himself comfortable just beside the conductor. Inside, the bus was filthily packed, noisy with a quarrel that had flared up between passengers in the front and smelt horrible now and again with someone farting away to glory.
A jovial pair, both sixtyish, chatted merrily about the problems of their lives. Their conversation progressed in the form of a Socratic dialogue about some common ill of the city, the condition of the roads or for the time being, the escalating price of onions.
`Onions are up, Potla,’ remarked one. He was a weather-beaten small man but he wore a freshly ironed dhoti and a clean milk-white shirt. A circle of hair bordered his shining baldness and this remembrance of past glory was given the care it deserved. But his face was wrinkled in a hundred places and his forearms were labouring with the folds and furrows of decades. This incongruity with his fresh dress gave him the aspect of an ancient tome, moth-eaten and dog-eared but bound carefully in leather. His gilded frame eyeglasses were like the gold lettering on its spine.
`No doubt the bus smells so horrible. What? You say they are up, but I thought they should be cheaper,’ Potla looked round him as if looking for consent. He had flowing white hair, oiled and combed back. Thick-rimmed spectacles with heavy post-cataract glasses framed his face and magnified the size of his eyes. So it seemed he saw more than his constitution - frail and modestly shod in a white shirt and old drainpipe trousers - could bear.
`They are, they are. Thirty a kilo, this morning. Don’t get so easily driven by contingencies…he pinched his nose to avoid the horrible smell of unclean bowels… That’s the great mistake we all commit. See what is there beyond and in between,’ the tome said.
`I see heads and heads and bags and legs and hear the tyres, the brakes and the horn. But tell me why is this. Why should the simple onion get out of the common man’s reach?’ Potla pondered.
`You shouldn’t ignore the garlic though. Keep a watch on garlic, it has been getting pricier too. Yet, it’s not as bad as the onion. Now, you tell me why is that? That the humble onion should fetch so high a price?’ the book in the gilded frame eyeglasses asked.
`Because here in the city we begin to turn away from the communists…’ Potla ventured undecided.
`Who did you vote for last time?’ the old volume shot back as if taking umbrage at Potla’s comment.
`Ah?’
`Come on, nobody is listening, tell me which party drew your valuable custom?’ the book pushed on.
`I remain faithful to the Marxists,’ Potla confessed at last.
‘There, you see. Your vote has not changed. Nor has mine. Nor has that of anyone worth mentioning, that I happen to know. And still you say that onion is up because we are turning away from the communists. Do you read the papers?’ the book began to show signs of belligerence.
`Yes two of them, one on weekdays, another on Sunday,’ Potla replied meekly.
`Have you seen what is happening to oil, I mean crude?’ the book asked.
`No. Not oil…Why?’ Potla looked lost, in deep waters.
`And still you say you read two newspapers. Anyway for your information, oil has been rising too,’ the book spelt casually.
`Ah! That’s bad?’ Potla was not sure where it was going this time. He pushed up his eyeglasses as if to refocus and his blown-up eyes played over the standing passengers. Pedro was among these and he was now near the middle of the bus. He was listening to this conversation and trying to prepare his mind for the meeting with Mrs Gaitonde. But it was difficult to concentrate in that crowd. `What sweet news could she have for us?’ Pedro wondered.
`Bad? It’s terrible news. One we should all be worrying about but nobody cares. Why, because we have enough foreign exchange stocked and we hope the great powers will do something soon? That’s our belief eh?’ the book had cooked up derision in his voice.
A wheel of the speeding tin can suddenly fell into some bad pothole and the whole vehicle lurched and shivered before the power of the engine pulled it out and it moved on. Standing passengers were thrown towards the front and were cursing aloud. In that sudden flurry Potla flew from his seat and landed on the lap of an elderly woman who shook him off as she would a fruit-fly, as soon as he had settled there. Profusely apologising he returned to his seat, brushing his trousers, nursing an injured arm and honour. The driver recklessly drove on.
`There, you leave your seat when I am coming to the important part. So little concentration you have,’ the old volume remarked, completely ignoring Potla’s plight.
`So we should be seriously concerned you say, that oil is sky high,’ Potla said at last.
`There you are! And that’s because the world’s only superpower is buying a lot of oil, though it has reserves for a generation. Now tell me why?’ the book asked.
`Why? Er…could be because it thinks prices will rise even further and so it is stocking up,’ Potla replied.
`There, there, you get it all mixed up again. It is stocking up true but not because of what you think. The price is rising because America is buying oil and America is buying oil because it is preparing for the Great War,’ the book had switched into a didactic tone.
`The Great War! What is that now? Is it reported in the papers?’ Genuine concern.
`The papers. Ha! Do you think they can see that far? Anyway…don’t waste my time, I have to get down at the next stop. The Great War is for the control of Asia,’ the book advised.
`America is preparing for the control of Asia!’ Potla looked sincere in his wonder.
`Exactly…and that’s why onion is up and oil is breaking all barriers,’ the book explained.
`Can you translate it all for me?’ Potla asked like an inquisitive student.
`Very few people know about it but it is true. The US has plans to set up new strategic bases in South Asia and in places near the Russian and Chinese borders. In our region the US has problems, if there is a need for quick mobilisation. This is the area where their Central command ends and the Pacific Command begins. Here, at the margins, both the commands have weaknesses and so they need new bases,’ the book advised.
`So Russians are buying onions to stock up for war and winter?’ Potla interjected without warning.
`There you get it wrong again. But you are very close…Only it is us, who are buying onions,’ the book disclosed proudly.
`I haven’t seen a single onion on my plate for the last three months. And you say…’ Potla remarked naively.
`Tch. Onions and chapatti, that’s the cheapest bet against an empty stomach. You know the strength of the Indian Armed Forces?’ the book went on irritated at the lack of enlightenment of Potla.
`About two and half million,’ Potla ventured.
`What happens when our government stocks up onions for two and half million fighting men?’ the book asked.
`Ah!’ Potla looked with awe at the book, `So we are secretly preparing to upset the American plan for the control of Asia! To be ready in case we come under attack from them or their friends in this region.’
`See. If you just exercise your mind you can make it all out,’ the book proffered.
`But the Chinese, they are on which side?’ Potla again looked confused.
At this point the bus began to slow down as it approached the next stop. The book hurriedly rose from his seat and began to scramble towards the door making his way through the crowd with his hands. `That we will discuss tomorrow,’ he said as he vanished among the packed human mass. As the bus-driver braked abruptly Potla again flew from his seat and landed on the elderly lady’s lap.

Published article. © 2008. All rights reserved.