The book is an engaging account of Calcutta through a visitor’s eyes, says Atul K Thakur
In all humbleness, Amit Chaudhuri admits he knows Calcutta not like a native but through his infrequent personal interactions with the city and its people. Maybe that’s blessing in disguise for the readers of Calcutta: Two Years in the City, as there is no excessive adulation of Mother Teresa and Satyajit Ray in the book; even the much venerated Rabindranath Tagore is summoned without any fixation. Neither is the Howrah Bridge introduced with any detail, nor is there any depiction of rickshaw-pullers so commonplace in the ‘city of joy’.
A major writer of his time, Chaudhuri is known for bringing out natural prose in English. His first book, A Strange and Sublime Address (collection of a novella and short stories), won the Betty Trask Prize and the Commonwealth Writers Prize, besides being shortlisted for the Guardian Fiction Prize.
While the first book presents the richness of Bengali culture, the latest one explores the city of Calcutta (now Kolkata); this time, however, the author doesn’t write like an absentee Bengali but as a city resident. In
personal accounts, shaped through deep sensibility, he brings forward the impact of changes on the former capital of India. His Calcutta comes across as a city with “a stupendous disregard for norms and regulations”, where “life and the imagination would hover most palpably over decay and dereliction”.
The book opens with a beautiful stock of imagination and fact. Chaudhuri’s interest in Calcutta is attached with the city’s diverse range of specialties, even if many of them have vanished or are on the verge of petering out. The city’s old icons/edifices are under heavy strain from the growing wave of globalisation (or the lack of it) and, as the author says, it is today mimicking its stature earned through long academic and intellectual exercises.
The book is a reflection of Chaudhuri’s perception of the city — first as a visitor in the 1960s and 1970s, and then as someone who moved there for two years between 2009 and 2011 to live with his parents who shifted there in the 1990s. His on-and-off relationship with Kolkata has enabled him to remain detached from the usual Bengali cliches: He, for instance, confesses that Jibanananda Das, not Tagore, is his favourite poet. He also has a word of advice for Bengalis when he tells them to curb their obsession with their personalities and conventions. As for the negative side, one finds a distinct disconnect between the author and his subject of study. The book appears to be a messy mix of sub-plots collected over the period of time — and at different visits. Thus, the author seems to be a perpetual visitor, his views exotic, and eyes moving too fast to capture the soul of the city.
With this memoir, however, Chaudhuri has given a timely impetus for a lively debate which Calcutta needs urgently. He speaks on all types of components needed to make the city complete, vibrant and vigorous. Read this book even if you are not a Calcutta lover. I am sure you won’t be disappointed.