The Ranchi Rajdhani Express follows two routes from the New Delhi station. The first route passes through the cities of Kanpur, Allahabad, Mogulsarai, Gaya, Bokaro and Muri, before reaching Ranchi. The second follows the same till Mogulsarai, but instead of taking the Delhi-Howrah Grand Chord to Gaya in Bihar, it turns towards Garwa Road and Daltonganj in Jharkhand. I enjoy the second route more because the change in topography from the flat plains of Uttar Pradesh to the plateau of Jharkhand is quite dramatic. It’s through this route that early morning, around 6.30 am, the Rajdhani crosses the tiny McCluskiegunj station, without a halt.
From the train window, McCluskiegunj looks like any other Jharkhand village. low-lying hills surround the small town, and if you focus long and hard enough, you may be able to see a handful of old bungalows hidden behind the bushes. For people in Jharkhand, what comes across as striking is the name of this town, which is distinctly different from others in the State.
Founded in the 1940s by one Mr. ET McCluskie as a special township for the Anglo-Indians, the first and only one of its kind, McCluskiegunj, in the span of these 70 years, has witnessed extreme changes, both in its demography and lifestyle.
Vikas Kumar Jha’s novel McCluskiegunj is the story of this unique town in the otherwise quiet State of Jharkhand. Narrated by an omniscient but candid narrator, the story begins in Hong Kong where Dennis McGowan lives with his wife liza and son Robin. The McGowans had migrated to Hong Kong from McCluskiegunj right after Robin’s birth, as the sleepy town offered little prospect of work and future. Haunted by the nostalgia of McCluskiegunj, Mr. McGowan cannot come to terms with his displacement. And, even after living in Hong Kong for more than 20 years, his mind constantly returns to McCluskiegunj, its hills, the rivers, and his friends whom he had left behind in Jharkhand. Robin is sympathetic towards his father’s nostalgia and, fed with all sorts of stories about the life and people of McCluskiegunj, decides to visit the town himself.
What happens next is the story of the novel. However, it’s not just Robin who anchors the narrative. The omniscient narrator is present both in Hong Kong and McCluskiegunj, giving the reader a brilliant juxtaposition of the cosmopolitan space with that of the rural. So while the first chapter introduces Mr McGowan, who then informs the reader about McCluskiegunj, the second chapter immediately shifts to McCluskiegunj where Mr Ruben Rafael has passed away. The two stories of Hong Kong and McCluskiegunj are joined after the arrival of Robin in Jharkhand.
Robin’s homecoming is initially expected. Filled with some amusing first-world-meeting-third-world curiosities and incidents, the novel shows Robin’s negotiations with rickshaw-drivers, taxi-drivers, telephone booth operators in impeccable Hindi, which sure leaves them baffled. Through the several characters in the novel, other sets of several characters are also introduced, and the story so continues. Therefore, while Robin is evidently the protagonist, he is crucially complemented by the residents of McCluskiegunj. These residents include Mr Gibson, the real and iconic Kitty Memsahib, Bahadur Oraon and his family, Mr Mendez, Mrs Bonner, Mrs Tomalin, and many, many others. In the course of the novel, the reader also gets the chance to know the stories of all these people who together make the town. Each of these stories is told in the same personal and profound manner as the novel; so, by the end of it, it’s less the story of Robin and more the story of a community.
Vikas Kumar Jha, a journalist by profession, seamlessly mixes historical accuracy with fictional truth, and the result is outstanding. The novel arrives at the time when the population of the Anglo-Indians is constantly decreasing in McCluskiegunj. The villas are deserted, and several people have left India for Australia, Canada, New Zealand, or Britain. The power equation has changed in the McCluskiegunj society too. The Anglo-Indian sahibs, historically used to an affluent lifestyle, are leading the lives of the common man, some even languishing in poverty. Mr Jha, in an interview, points to the fact that while other minorities like the Parsis toiled to keep up with times after Independence, the same wasn’t true with the Anglo-Indians who would not take up vocations practiced by the natives, not even agriculture.
Kitty Memsahib, who is both a real person and a character in Mr Jha’s novel, has been around for about 80 years now. For some, she represents the life of McCluskiegunj. Indeed, the novel’s cover shows her thin and frail frame in a sari. An Anglo-Indian woman married to a tribal man, Kitty Memsahib sells fruits at McCluskiegunj station to sustain herself and her family. There is something viscerally tragic in the suffering of those who were once thought to be beyond it. The desperation, anger, hopes, and pain of Kitty Memsahib all, at once, break down in tears in a striking passage in the novel, which for me is what defines the present state of McCluskiegunj.
The same is what Robin experiences after the initial days of his stay. The idyllic landscape slowly transforms itself into a land of sociological and political conflicts. The more Robin investigates, the more he finds about the hollow workings of the political system and a corrupt bureaucracy. What follows next is not pretty but necessary: McCluskiegunj’s future becomes a trade of lives. The climax is both sweet and bitter, albeit a bit rushed, which is disappointing. However, the climax does ask the reader to contemplate on the futures of both the idea of revolution and the human revolutionary carrying it forward.
McCluskiegunj is the story of a unique town in India, the narrative of which goes against what a majority of Indians believe to be true. A timely novel which attempts to portray the past, the present, and the future of a place in one narrative, this is first of its kind and with the bearings of a sure classic.
The reviewer is an award-winning poet and the author of Painting That Red Circle White