Book Review – The Awakening by Anita Agnihotri (Translated by Nandini Guha)

Arjun is a cobbler’s son. But he is not interested in pursuing the family business. He wants to make idols for worship during Puja time. But no one is going to buy an idol made by a cobbler’s son. So what happens to Arjun and the people who are a part of his life forms the rest of the story.

Arjun’s story and the impact of casteism on poor people is the main theme of the book. But there is also a parallel story in the book. It is about how young people went to war against the government in the ’60s and ’70s and how they were arrested and tortured and killed by the government and how this impacted their families.

Though events from both these parallel stories are interleaved through the book, they don’t intersect each other. Towards the end the two plots brush each other, but otherwise they are really two independent stories.

I loved both these stories but I found it strange that they didn’t come together and merge with each other. It looked to me like two novellas were merged to create this novel.

One of the things that I loved about the book was the way it describes how Puja idols are made. It was beautiful art, but it also looked like a very complicated process, and the life of the artisans who made it seems to be very hard.

The part of the book which was about parents losing their children to police violence in custody was very heartbreaking to read. I can’t imagine what parents went through during that time. It was a difficult period in contemporary Indian history.

I enjoyed reading ‘The Awakening‘. Anita Agnihotri has written a novel about a newly appointed civil servant and her challenges at work, which is based on her own experiences. I want to read that. She has also written a novel about the river Mahanadi, which is quite famous. I want to read that too.

Sharing some of my favourite parts from the book.

“There was a time when lights from the windowpanes dazzled the boats midstream. At that time the town had honour and dignity. The grandeur of the wealthy was considered a reflection of the town’s well-being and health. The poor of course lived no differently than they do today. If a history of their survival were to be written it would be the same down the ages – they fought for survival either standing tall or crawling on all fours.”

“A big steamer would lead the way followed by four boats filled with straw. During the day they sailed down the river, dropped anchor at the onset of night. In this way with several halts, the two day journey was completed in four days. Gaur had been plying his boat for more than 15 years now. He carried an earthen barrel filled with drinking water and a porcelain jar containing lime pickle, crimson coloured rice and a fish curry. In the Bada area the paddy had long stalks so the straw from here was longer and there was great demand for it since it was used for all sorts of purposes. He’d been just 25 when he first sailed on the river, and his heart trembled. He could barely look at his wife when he took leave of her. The river pirates, the danger of fever and of course the great Master who with thunderbolts of yellow and black could take a life at will, without warning – all this was in his heart. And then there were the crocodiles and tortoises whose home was the river. Despite all this Gaur had gone. The river held a magnetic attraction for him. Every year at this time his blood was excited by the call of the river, the boundaries of home, fields all became confining. Gaur would become irritable, his appetite would diminish and sleep would evade him. Then his wife Kajli would scold him with a wry face, “Go on. Go now, leave for the outdoors. I can see home cooked food is not suiting you any more. There’s nothing for me to understand. So don’t make any excuses. A strange sickness is what you have, honestly!” On a cloudy afternoon, or on an evening when the sun had set, Kajli’s face would torment him to death as it floated up into the sky looming above the river.”

“Actually Swapnabha had never seen his mother at all. The name Swapnabha, meant that he was the dream that his mother had barely fulfilled on earth, and disappeared into thin air thereafter.”

“Possibly from the age of fourteen whenever anger and grief overwhelmed him, Arjun, with the scalpel in his hands and the artistry of his fingers, transformed his anger into pictures on clay. Next to the peaceful Lakshmi idol, would be created a storm-tossed owl its eye-brows crinkled up in a frown. Or the lion’s mane would embody the velocity of a tempest. Since the time Arjun could transform and mould beautiful shapes, he had never had to come home to the drudgery of cooking his own meals.”

“They carried on much like a tree whose heart had been emptied when the birds flew away but had still spread its branches in all directions. Even today, people came to sit in the shade of the tree and small plants dreamed of living and growing bigger by entwining themselves in the tree’s branches.”

“Dolls made out of unbaked clay got washed away during the monsoons. Of course they were more durable if they were fired. Then they lasted for a long time. But in what condition they survived, what they endured, only the doll could tell. Too much heat was also dangerous. If a vertical crack appeared anywhere, then one day it would shatter into smithereens. There were amazing similarities between man and clay idols. Man was born on this earth, and with its clay he created the image of a God, who could neither be touched nor held. However the image was not actually a God, it was more human really. Urmi was one such burnt-clay goddess-doll. Even before she could learn about life and start a family she had fallen into the fire…Yet Urmi, seemed to have walked on fire with ease. However, that a crack was gradually forming within her, thanks to her proximity and repeated encounters with fire, was something no one had realized. Much later, one day, Urmi suddenly cracked into pieces. In a household, people who suppressed their own traumatic feelings had a tough time. They looked fine, keeping calm in the face of other people’s troubles. However, if the pain in their hearts rose up in revolt, then what a sight that would be! No one would accept it. Every one would be irritated. They would say, what on earth is this! We never expected such an exhibition from her. If someone who drank regularly came home sober one day people would be pleased. But if somebody who never touched liquor was to imbibe a peg or two one day people would rise up in consternation. Urmi discovered that her situation was somewhat similar. The family members were so used to her never expressing herself verbally, that Urmi’s voice now sounded strange to their ears.”

Have you read ‘The Awakening’? What do you think about it?

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Book Review – Days and Nights in the Forest by Sunil Gangopadhyay (Translated by Rani Ray)

I got Sunil Gangopadhyay’s ‘Days and Nights in the Forest‘ many years back when it first came out in English translation. I loved the description of the book on the back cover and that is why I got it. I finally got around to reading it.

Four friends board a train and get down at a small station in the middle of nowhere. There is forest all around. These four friends are all from the big city. They want to stay in the forest for a while and enjoy the quiet and the solitude. But things don’t go according to plan. What happens during their stay in the forest is told in the rest of the story.

There is good news and bad news. The good news first. The story sounds quite realistic. The characters in the story feel real. There is no attempt to make the tribal folks, the santals, look exotic. They look like real people. Also Sunil Gangopadhyay’s prose is simple and spare and moves the story at a good pace. The pages just flew by!

More good news. There is a beautiful introduction by the translator at the beginning of the book. It is very interesting to read. And the final piece of good news. The description of the book on the back cover. It is exceptional. If you don’t believe me, I’ll show you. Here is how it reads.

“Set in the turbulent 1960s, ‘Days and Nights in the Forest’ (‘Aranyer Dinratri’) was the second novel that a young Sunil Gangopadhyay wrote. Largely autobiographical, it is the story of a whimsical, impromptu journey that four city youths – Ashim, Sanjoy, Shekhar and Robi – take into the forests of Palamau.

The four friends blithely imagine that their escapade into the wilderness will distance them from ‘civilization’ and take them closer to pristine nature. In reality, the solitude and austere majesty of the forest force them to look deeply into themselves and confront their all-too-human follies and ‘civilized’ foibles in new, unexpected and frightening ways. As they hear the ominous sound of one tree after another being felled, encounter mercenary traders bent on milking the forest for all it is worth, and see the simmering unrest flickering in the eyes of the tribal inhabitants, they are compelled to look well beyond their own time to a plundered and violated world where the forest can never be a pastoral utopia – a world that is, inexorably and inescapably, our own. They return to Calcutta ineffably changed – sadder, older, more introspective.

‘Days and Nights in the Forest’ was made into a celebrated film by Satyajit Ray very soon after its publication. Now translated for the first time from the original Bengali into English, this prescient and sophisticated novel remains as sharply relevant more than forty years after it was first written.”

It is good, isn’t it?

Now, the bad news. I didn’t see all these coming out in the book. The story in the way it is told, is not satisfying, there is no conflict between the tribals and civilization (it seems to be a product of the blurb-writer’s imagination), I don’t remember any scene where trees were felled in the forest or any mercenary traders milking the forest for all it is worth (again seems to be a product of the blurb-writer’s imagination). The blurb seems to imply that this story is about the clash between civilization and the pure, pristine, primitive way of living, and it is about how our modern civilization has destroyed the environment. That is a beautiful plot, and I love that plot, and that is the reason I got this book. But this book doesn’t have that plot. How there is such a big gap between what the story is and how the blurb writer understood it – I don’t know. I remember Amy Tan once telling this story. She said that sometimes she wrote in one of her stories that a character wore a blue shirt. When she later went and read the Cliff Notes of her novel, the Cliff Notes said that this character wore a blue shirt, and that indicates that the character is feeling ‘blue’, that is she is depressed. Amy Tan said that this was not what she meant at all. She just meant that her character wore a blue shirt. There is no interpretation there, there is no subtext there. It is just a simple case of WYSIWYG (What you see is what you get). The same problem seems to be there in Sunil Gangopadhyay’s book. It is a simple story of four young men going to the forest and doing questionable things, but this has been interpreted as a case of the clash of civilizations and environmental devastation. Even if I stretch my imagination, I’m not able to make that leap.

This book was made into a movie by Satyajit Ray. Maybe the movie is better. Maybe all the subtext is there in the movie. Maybe people saw the movie and enjoyed it and projected that interpretation into the text. Who knows. But I’m hoping to watch the movie sometime. It is a Satyajit Ray movie after all. It will be good.

Reading ‘Days and Nights in the Forest’ was an underwhelming experience for me. Probably because I came with high expectations. I know now that we can’t trust the blurb anymore. And if we can’t trust the blurb, the only thing we can do is jump blindly into a book, and hope that the risk pays off. It is like jumping into the river and hoping that we’ll learn swimming on the way. But reading is less risky. And there are worse ways of spending your time. And you have an opportunity of writing a review like this. So all things considered, it is not that bad.

Have you read ‘Days and Nights in the Forest’? What do you think about it?

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Book Review – Diverse Detectives Month – Three Books featuring Byomkesh Bakshi mysteries by Saradindu Bandyopadhyay

This is the first book I am reading for Diverse Detectives Month hosted by WoCReads. (Or rather the first three books 🙂 )

I decided to start with a book which had a collection of Byomkesh Bakshi mysteries. After finishing one book, I decided to read another and then another. I think there are only three translated collections of Byomkesh Bakshi mysteries in English. Now I have read them all. The three books I read were ‘Picture Imperfect‘, ‘The Menagerie‘ and ‘The Rhythm of Riddles‘. The first two were translated by Sreejata Guha, who was probably the first to translate Byomkesh Bakshi mysteries into English twenty years back, and then continued translating other Bengali classics into English. The third book was translated by Arunava Sinha, who is the current doyen of Bengali-English translators. The first book had seven stories, the second one four, and the third one three – that is fourteen stories in all. The first collection mostly had stories from the first part of Saradindu Bandyopadhyay’s career, from 1932 to 1937. The second collection had stories from the second part of his career, from 1952 onwards. The last story in the second collection was written in 1967.

Byomkesh Bakshi was one of the first Indian fictional detectives. The first Byomkesh Bakshi mystery appeared in 1932 and the last one in 1969. There was a break of fifteen years between 1937 and 1952, when Saradindu Bandyopadhyay went to write screenplays for Bollywood, but he came back and continued from where he left off. While reading the stories, it is hard not to spot similarities between Byomkesh and Sherlock Holmes – the way the character gets introduced first, the way the narrator Ajit and Byomkesh become roommates. There is even a police officer similar to Lestrade who creates problems for Byomkesh. Sometimes, Byomkesh wakes up Ajit in the middle of the night, or early in the morning, to go out on a mission. He doesn’t say, “Wake up, Ajit! The game is afoot!” though. However, as we read more stories, we discover that the two series diverge, because Byomkesh and his friend Ajit are quintessentially Indian and Bengali. In many stories, at some point we can make a list of suspects, and typically the culprit is one of them. But it is hard to guess who. Saradindu Bandyopadhyay almost never cheats, by bringing an unknown character from outside the main cast, and declaring him / her as the culprit. Which is a wonderful thing. There are beautiful, humorous passages in many of the stories, and though things get lost in translation (which is one of the essential aspects of humour, that it gets lost in translation), the humour typically peeps out through the translated English sentences and is a pleasure to read.

Some of the stories in the book are short, but others are long, while some approach the length of a novella. I liked the stories from both the time periods, but I think I liked the longer stories more than the shorter ones. In one story, which runs to more than a hundred pages, called ‘The Quills of the Porcupine‘, Byomkesh Bakshi and Ajit come only in the beginning and in the end. The middle, which is the biggest part of the story, features a young couple who are newly married, and describes how their relationship evolves. If we remove the mystery aspect of the story, it almost reads like the story told in one of my favourite Tamil movies, ‘Mouna Ragam‘. I wonder whether Maniratnam just lifted Saradindu Bandyopadhyay’s story (maybe from its film adaptation), made some changes to it and called it ‘Mouna Ragam’. If that is true, then it will be one more case of a famous Tamil movie being a copycat of another. I feel sad just contemplating on it. The longest story in the book is ‘The Menagerie‘, which runs to more than 150 pages. It has a complex plot with many murders and suspects and an ending which is hard to guess. It was made into a famous movie by Satyajit Ray, and I want to watch that sometime.

I enjoyed reading these three Byomkesh Bakshi mystery collections. It was interesting to read about India of a different time, and about this famous detective, or truth-seeker as he called himself, and how he discovered the truth about strange happenings, and how he brought bad guys to book, with a little help from friends. There is an acclaimed TV adaptation of the Byomkesh Bakshi stories starring Rajat Kapoor. I think I have watched one or two episodes of it. I hope to watch it properly one of these days.

Have you read Byomkesh Bakshi stories? What do you think about them? Which ones are your favourites?

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