Language As Ballet

If one were to think about this phenomenon at some length, it would not be a surprising trend. Even if one takes a myopic view of the sweep of Bengali literature, the illustrious pedigree of English-language writers (some albeit bilingual) would include a wide range of authors—from the poet Michael Madhusudan Dutt and Rabindranath Tagore, to Nirad Chaudhuri, Satyajit Ray and Badal Sircar. So, what I've outlined earlier as an obvious new group has in fact a long literary history of over a century.

While reading the book under review, I could not, being a Bengali-speaker myself, escape the pleasures of acute Bengaliness the novel provides. This of course include many Bengali obsessions: indigenous food ("jilepi and shingara"), politics, and sports—endless "adda" (discussions) that meanderingly embrace reminiscences, human warmth, paroninda parocharcha (genial back-biting) with all its over-inquisitiveness—as well as impassioned debates on philosophy, music, cinema, literature, and the very act of writing itself.

Anyone who has previously read Chaudhuri's two beautiful little books, A Strange and Sublime Address and Afternoon Raag, will immediately recognise the familiar gentle voice in Freedom Song. Only here, there is a subtle shift, a shift discernible in the fine texture and stance of his voice, one that can be detected only on the most sensitive of Richter scales. It is one that sees him moving from being a cinematographer to acting as a multiple character on the set itself.

The story involves a fairly homogenous cast of characters—Bhaskar, Manik and Piyu, or Mini, Khuku, Shantidi and Shib, among others. Middle-class discussion about contemporary politics vie with the young, paunchy protagonist Bhaskar whose Communist leanings and interest in street-theatre does not find stage-space. Arranged marriage, arcs of ageing, friendship, couched love, Calcutta—all occupy the novel's primary narratives.

But the book is equally about patterning of words—its "spun pink-white winter smoke", the internal architecture of language itself. In this novel, the narrative is more open-ended with its strands untied to allow the reader to fill the unresolved spaces. This is a dangerous ploy, a ploy only a confident writer can get away with, and Chaudhuri does it with measured assurance: "That had been a particularly empty time. For seven days of the curfew the country had been like a conch whose roar you could hear only if you put your ear to it."

Amit Chaudhuri is a poet's novelist, not just in sensibility but in terms of technique. Freedom Song is set in short sections and sub-sections separated only by a repeated visual icon, much the way stanzas are transparently set apart in a narrative poem. But within their separation exist a sense of intimacy, a juxtaposition like synapses that allows the larger story to continue without terminating or affecting the immediate narrative. And all this, employing a language that is balletic—slow and artful, and at the same time, arresting and precise.