Amber Dusk-A Novel

Amber Dusk-Some Reviews

2008-05-17T01:40:00.019+05:30

Reviews, notices, citations, honours for the novel Amber Dusk:

The Telegraph
Indian Literature (Sahitya Akademi journal, May-June 2008) (Review)
Review by Prof Amitava Roy (Shakespeare Professor of English, Rabindra Bharati University)
NDTV
The Statesman
The Hindu
Deccan Herald (review)
Deccan Herald (notice)
Canon and Identity in IWE (Citation, Paper by Prof Niranjan Mohanty, Vishwa Bharati University)
Journal of Commonwealth Literature, Dec 2008 (Citation)
The Asian Age
The Echo of India
Pre-release reviews
Vodafone Crossword Book Awards Longlist

(Click on the above links to read the reviews. More reviews will be added as they appear)

Amber Dusk - A citation in a paper on `canon' and `identity' in IWE

2008-05-16T12:47:00.001+05:30

Prof Niranjan Mohanty, Head of the Department of English at Visva-Bharati University, Santiniketan recently presented a paper on canon and identity in Indian Writing in English, wherein he cited and quoted from Amber Dusk. The paper was presented as part of a keynote address delivered by Prof Mohanty at Loreto College, Darjeeling. The relevant excerpt from Prof Mohanty's paper is given below.

Excerpt from the paper `Contextualizing the questions on “canon” and “identity” in Indian Writing in English' by Prof Niranjan Mohanty:

I would like to conclude this paper by citing from a young fiction writer of Kolkata, Rajat Chaudhuri. His debut novel Amber Dusk (Delhi: Indialog Publication Pvt. Ltd, 2007) represents a psychedelic collage of myth and memory. It is a novel in which Kolkata and Paris figure luxuriatingly, creating a different verve, a striking sense of pulsation, bedecked by intricate moon-moments of love and intimacy. I shall cite here only those lines out of the many, in which Chaudhuri captures the rhythmic beauty of Kolkata life ridden with politics:

That night the government of the State of West Bengal was also working overtime. At the solid looking red –brick Writers Building from where the state is governed there was an urgent meeting of powerful ministers. The sweet makers were going on a day’s token strike. All sweet shops in Calcutta and all over the state would remain closed on Sunday. If the government did not budge, and went ahead with the new law, then this would be followed by continuous strikes. The Ruling Reds were jittery at the news. They knew that if the Bengalis were parted from their mistis, sweet, anything in the world –even the most absurd and unimaginable –would happen. (25-26).

I believe, even if young, Chaudhuri has successfully represented the state politics in West Bengal and the sweet-loving attitude of the Bengalis. There are certain things in life which do not go away and these certain things contain and constitute one’s identity, the substance or essences of one’s identity, whether these belong to what Ramanujan calls “outer” or “inner” forms and what I call ‘circles’ the ‘concentric circles’ that define, project and represent one’s identity.

The full text of the above paper is available here.

Copyright notice: The copyright for the paper `Contextualizing the questions on “canon” and “identity” in Indian Writing in English' belongs to Prof Niranjan Mohanty and any organisation to which he may have temporarily vested this right. All rights reserved.

A New Extract

2008-03-06T21:42:00.004+05:30

Some more days. He would take his time. Let the rain beat down on him and the sun cauterize his wounds. Let the animals circle round him and dance their strange tarantella. The weariness would leave him and he would wake up to a new freshness, new and soaped clean without Shang dragons haunting him or Lopamudras titillating him. He had had his flirtation with all that, a real heck of an affair - deep down and reality-rich and there were things he had learned. But it was a dangerous game, a thankless dice-game, like going deeper and deeper into the bowels of a darkness in search of more of the artificial light that illuminates hidden corners of it, deeper and more of those flashing neons, the burning strobes and pink incandescence, but deeper too and deeper still.
The little river sniggered as it went by. Pedro stared at the clear water and the white and black stones on its bed. Why do you bring hard days to these people, he asked the river. Are you the river of bad news and ill omens? But the river did not answer. It sniggered and flowed by. Like an insult it went on going. And in the starlight he saw it winding away far away into the hills and through the forests and in a flash he saw it like an enormous serpent twisting and coiling over the red earth, hissing menacingly. His hair stood on end as in the dark night he saw the stream transformed into a poisonous ominous reptile of death. A blue slithering demon.
He moved away from the bank of the river, blue in the starlight and looked the other way. Should he tell what he had just seen to Suhuria? No, they are superstitious people and they will be scared. No use scaring them. If he does some good turn in life now was his chance to do it. He would help these people. He would teach them how to tame this serpent that was sneaking into their lives. Teach them some lessons in living. Living like head-high men, men of glory, of the present. The hills were laughing as he walked back to his hut.
He did not get much time though. A week and half later on a lovely clear night he heard the sound of gunfire from the village. And shouting of men and women blew in with the wind. Cries of pain. He was not sure what he should do. He waited. Could be dacoits attacking the villagers, so he should be careful. A few moments later he stepped out and walked cautiously to the village. Carefully through the darkness, stopping every time a shadow came to life. Or the trees whistled. Then when he was almost there he saw the darkness pierced by the powerful headlamps of a jeep. There were no proper roads leading to this village so only jeeps could travel but this was being driven like crazy. And the screech of the brakes as it backed out, like a thoughtless machine gone insane, wheels whining in protest. Ruthless; the lights changed direction as the vehicle climbed onto the laterite road and the engine roared with power. He stepped off the footway and planted himself carefully behind a big tree and watched the impudent driver scream the vehicle and madly disappear between the rows of trees. The jeep was packed with policemen.
At the village he was greeted by a terrible silence. Terrified villagers were slowly coming out of their huts and standing silently at their doors but no one said anything. Alarmed men and women choked into speechlessness. He went up to the village headman and asked him what exactly had happened. `Police came and fired on us,’ he said sulking away to where a group was beginning to assemble. Then he saw Suhuria among them. They were attending to two men with wounds on their legs, waist and body. Blood was flowing freely from the wounds and someone was washing these with water. One of the two was gasping as if life was jostling at the door to escape from the injured body while the other moaned and shrieked, tossing from side to side. His face had a mad wild look, setting into a queer mask of agony. The bullets had shattered his kneecap and damaged his ilium. The gasping man had a punctured lung. Luckily, there was a doctor among the group of tourists staying at the village and he took charge of it. A tall villager held the lantern up higher for light but still it would be mostly luck, and in ample proportions, that could save the life of these poor villagers, far as they were from proper medical aid and other guarantees of civilisation. Villagers carried the men away, one still screaming and twisting in pain contorting his face the other falling gradually silent.
The police came, Suhuria told him, looking for the bhattis and they protested. `They would have broken and destroyed everything and so we didn’t allow them. They tried to enter our houses and one of them misbehaved with our women! That mongrel Sukumar! We all came out and threw bricks and stones at them and that was when they fired on Marang and Shukrua.’ He was panting heavily.
Pedro tried to calm him but it was not easy. He took him to his hut and tried to talk about other things. `The doctor will take care of Shukrua and Marang,’ he tried to assure him falsely. But it did not work. Suhuria’s eyes were fired with hate.
`I will skin that devil Sukumar alive!’ he growled thumping with his fist. Pedro poured him some mahua and helped him drink it.
`You have to control yourself, I know this is intolerable but…’ Pedro tried to reason.
`How can I sit here without doing anything while they come and kill my people and destroy our living. We have to sell the drink to live! We have to; the mustard and paddy are so undependable,’ Suhuria was emphatic as his heavy words brutally bludgeoned the diffident silence of the night.
Pedro imagined Suhuria would make a good leader for his people and perhaps lead them on to a kingdom without cares, a kingdom free of all dependence, self-sustaining and happy. A land where power walks with head-hung in shame; where the will to power is cloaked in ignominy. Where men are free. Here in the village where he was big, Pedro believed freedom for all to be a desirable commodity. But somewhere deep within Pedro did not trust leaders. The glorious trait of leadership failed to impress him at all.
What a peaceful place the world would have been if men and women did not have leaders, he thought. Because it is leaders around which power builds its home. It is the stout shoulder from which force hangs its black bow, it is the brazen chamber where coercion bursts forth from its egg.
If there were no leaders - political, religious, business, tribal and more - individual conflicts, individual avarice, individual lust, individual cupidity would never become matters of collective emotion and there would be no manipulation, no driving of opinion. I would be blessed to be born in such a world, Pedro dreamt and wondered. Leaders and leadership, he believed it now, are behind a lot of collective unhappiness and violence that the world sees today. As if within the heart of the leader, are nurtured all the sorrow, all the woes of our lives.
Could he do anything? Was it necessary for him to worry? Perhaps if Rishi was here he would have discussed his thoughts with him and plan a glorious utopia and if, like Count St Germain, he could live hundreds of years he would experiment with one of these desirable solutions. An experiment of utopia within a small group of people just for starters, a model for emulation on grander scales later, perhaps. This little hamlet would be an ideal place to start experimenting. But would it be worthwhile, everything was so obvious, how easy it was to see within the hearts of men. Of course Rishi would talk of eugenics if he agreed with his thoughts about leadership. Leaders, their offspring, and those with inborn leadership qualities should not be allowed to breed, that is what Rishi would say. Castrate leaders! Sew the labia majora of empresses! Vasectomise some VIPs. Or, if it is possible, perhaps their leadership gene should be plucked out or neutralised. But who will do it? Won’t we need another leader to do that and coercion to make the poor leaders agree to this eugenic planning exercise? It all boiled down to hopelessness and, unlike Rishi, he did not put much faith by eugenics. Very easily, Pedro believed, eugenics becomes a dirty tool of power.

If you, oh weary friend!
Stand by this lonesome hill,
Mourn me not but do me lend,
Your stick to tame the will
RIP
Endless Equality Endeavour
(A horn of The Human Followership Development Project)
(1871- Present)

His thoughts calmed as he visualised this gravestone in his mind. But he would give Suhuria a few ideas. Of course, he would not ask him to lead a self-defeating revolution. There were smarter things on his mind.

Copyright 2007, Rajat Chaudhuri, All rights reserved.

Calcutta Streets

2007-11-25T00:23:00.001+05:30

Calcutta streets are a cauldron of emotions. This photograph is from the Esplanede area where some group is organising a demonstration. Street protests, demonstrations, processions are the bread and butter of Calcutta life and comes back again and again in the pages of Amber Dusk.

Parc de la Villette

2007-11-24T22:29:00.000+05:30

Someone took this snap of mine at the Parc de la Villette in Paris. This park, a master design of Bernard Tschumi is a must visit for lovers of architecture and design and was built over a huge slaughterhouse in this area. Paris is an abiding theme and setting for Amber Dusk.

Lake Malren

2007-11-24T22:25:00.001+05:30

Lake Malaren of Stockholm is at the heart of the novel. I had taken this photograph of the mystical Malaren one chilly evening sitting on the deck of the barge restaurant-The Ludwigschafen. Don't ask me what camera...

Jacket Designs

2007-11-24T22:21:00.000+05:30

This is an early jacket design for the book. At that point the novel seems to have a different title! Many different versions of this design were tried but finally the quality of the image was not good enough. I took this photograph of a whirling dervish (coloured red) at the École des Beaux-Arts in Paris. The woman in the foreground was in the audience.

Amber Dusk - A pre-release review by Amitava Roy

2007-10-25T06:20:00.002+05:30

AMBER DUSK smells of Calcutta streets and resonates with the seductive tunes of Parisian nights. Robot oracles, the enigmatic photographer Valence Jourdain, a shadowy Blue Princess, Indian tribesmen and the mystical Lake Malaren colour this fascinating narrative, creating an edgy reality. The novel presents a rich tapestry of ideas weaving together Calcutta and Paris and the lives and passions of the unforgettable individuals that walk their streets. Here is a delicately crafted story about love, loathing and beatitude and the quest for peace in a time of intolerance.

`Rajat Chaudhuri's Amber Dusk is a multi-levelled exploration of Love and other forms of Death where reality mixes and mingles with hyper , super , virtual and surrealities to leave the reader breathless. A global cast of identifiable yet strange and sublime characters common saints, santhals, socialites and terrorists, pimps, prostitutes and gays, projectors and dreamers, actors, artists and astrologers, animated robots, talking birds and toys, prophets, revolutionaries, utopians, millenarians all flit across the dreamscapes of the protagonist Rishi's several lives and multiple forays into alternate worlds and times as the reader is taken on a vertiginious roller-coaster ride across cultures and continents. Calcutta is at the heart of this Quest Novel cum Bildungsroman cum psychedelic collage of Myth and Memory as Rishi the central character hunts for life's meaning with his lovers and antagonists that takes him finally to Stockholm's Lake Malaren (equi-significant to our own Manassarovar) and back to Kolkata following epiphanies and illuminations that take us through the Marriage of Heaven and Hell.

The title itself reveals the sensuous apperceptions and the inventive imagination of the author who creates images of Beauty and its evanescence almost on every page of this novel. Amber Dusk resonates with echoes from at least a triple pun dusk falling around `Amber', a famed restaurant in the heart of Kolkata; golden sunsets fading and slipping into dusky twilight; and ``the cow-dust hour'' or ``godhuli lagna'' the most propitious time for marriage and romance when the Radhas and Krishnas of the world must set out on their glorious quests amidst the gathering gloom.

A big, ambitious first novel on the Liebestod theme mapping out multiple existentialist journeys and border-crossings that should create both ripples and waves among its international readership. A memorable novel of East-West encounter.’— Amitava Roy, Shakespeare Professor of English and Drama, Rabindra Bharati University, Kolkata

Amber Dusk – About the book

2007-10-10T20:05:00.000+05:30

This is from the back cover:

AMBER DUSK smells of Calcutta streets and resonates with the seductive tunes of Parisian nights. Robot oracles, the enigmatic photographer Valence Jourdain, a shadowy Blue Princess, Indian tribesmen and the mystical Lake Malaren colour this fascinating narrative, creating an edgy reality. The novel presents a rich tapestry of ideas weaving together Calcutta and Paris and the lives and passions of the unforgettable individuals that walk their streets. Here is a delicately crafted story about love, loathing and beatitude and the quest for peace in a time of intolerance.

Gypsy Mug - The dedications page of Amber Dusk

2007-10-10T08:00:00.001+05:30

Amber Dusk is dedicated to this coffee mug. The mug belongs to a Gypsy who is the best-fortune-teller known to me. This Don Williams song goes out to her, wherever she may be now. The Spanish Gypsy girl Carmen’s story, which inspired scores of films, hovered somewhere at the back of my mind while writing this book.

Amber Dusk – Where I began

2007-09-05T02:24:00.001+05:30

Ten or more years ago the famous Bengali author Sunil Gangopadhyay had a long travelogue serialised in the Calcutta daily, Anandabazar Patrika. If I remember correctly the title of that travelogue was Chobir Deshe Kobitar Deshe, a simple translation of which would be – In the Land of Painting and Poetry. The travelogue was about his journeys in France, the people he met there, the culture, the colours, the associations with literature and art. It used to be published on Sundays and I preserved every clipping. At this time, I was drifting among strange professions, celebrating that lightness, spooked to my bones by a future which seemed dangerously predictable. I was discovering Calcutta with young poets and painters - roaming her streets at night, arguing with zealous policemen about the right to remain drunk for ever, sparring (a bit bookishly) with friends about artists and art. I was also doing a bit of writing (book reviews, middles and stuff), some of it in newspapers like the The Statesman and The Telegraph. That was when the idea of a novel came to my mind and I immediately filled fifty pages with thoughts that were still unprepared to be words. But then I lost my way and life intervened with its bag of tricks. The project did not take off again till much later, when I was in the midst of a responsible but exciting job in a non-government organisation. I was travelling a lot; to France, America and other places. And the routines of that job, somehow, bred in me a discipline of writing regularly. That helped. I used to harbour an innocent admiration for the French and their country. Some of it may have come to me from literature, some perhaps from my first French teacher Eric Blandin at Alliance Française de Calcutta. When Jacques Derrida came to speak at the Calcutta book fair, Eric presented me with a photo of the linguist and a book on French philosophers. And Sunil Gangopadhyay’s delicious prose had already cast its spell. By then I knew what my book would be about.

Amber Dusk – An Omitted Excerpt

2007-08-30T18:17:00.001+05:30

This is a scene that was there in the original manuscript but was later removed:

Tired they slept late and woke up in a pitch black room, the evening seemed to have leaked in through the windows and made their room very dark. They were staying in the first floor of the hut and after dinner downstairs, they smoked cigarettes and went to walk together in that cool innocent darkness.

Late that night the rabbits came to their room. The same little animals Rishi had seen running down by the riverbank this morning. Just after the grasshopper had disappeared. Their pink eyes glowing in the dark and they stood in the middle of the room quietly, as if watching them sleep. But Rishi was awake. He was watching them too. Softly he stepped out of the bed and tiptoed across the room.The animals ran to the door and he opened it. Darkness dripped thick from the sky as he stepped out in the cold night. They seemed to lead him and he followed the little white creatures.

Faint starlight clothed the night like fine silk and he took the laterite road that turned right and behind their hut, entered the deep jungle.Yet he was not really afraid. He noticed how the rabbits moved confidently down the middle of the path and it was assuring. And for sometime they went walking silently through that silken night. He kept away from the trees and the undergrowth on the sides of the path for he knew there could be dangerous beasts lurking there and like the rabbits he walked through the middle. Through the lonely darkness for many minutes and then abruptly the trees fanned out and the path widened into a glade covered by a fine carpet of grass. The tall trees stood on all sides of the opening. The rabbits disappeared somewhere as Rishi noticed little lights glowing from places in the grass carpet. Naked flames flickering on the ground all over the clearing in that dark winter night. Like diyas that light up Indian homes during Diwali - the Festival of Lights. Who has put these lamps here deep in the forest? The villagers … someone who lives in the forest? A hermit performing some secret ritual for salvation? His furry companions were nowhere. Rishi suddenly felt very lonely, a bit afraid and he wanted to turn back and return to the village. To Valence. To the darkness and the starlight, to the sound of bugs scraping away at the wood of their simple bed.But as he tried to turn back from that mysterious show of light he found his feet heavy. As if he had grown roots. He tried again but his feet would not let him slip away. As if they had been clamped to the forest floor.He saw something and focussed his eyes. There it stood, the grasshopper again, gigantic in size, taller than the trees, looming above the forest, standing in the clearing and the lamps were little specks of gold near its feet and his thorax glowed with a green brilliance and Rishi’s hands began to freeze. It did not talk to him this time and kept standing tall in that clearing in the woods, looking at the stars and more little lamps began to light up among the trees and the bushes, till it was more light. And this lovely warm light fell on Rishi’s face and the green glow touched his hands and he wanted to stand there for ever.

Morning mist had begun to ride in from the north and its moist gossamer cover was blotting out the glade. It made the world watery, the scene as if seen through a translucent window. Rishi strained his eyes. The lights were disappearing, the grasshopper seemed to have dissolved among the white curtains of mist - a green shiny blob, faint behind the soft white drapes. And looking at where it had stood for the last time Rishi saw a rearing white steed like a lightning flash within the dark circle of trees.It looked majestic, powerful. But soft brushes were painting at the translucent window and he could not see it for long. Where had he seen that horse, he thought. Somewhere, somewhere? He remembered - in a dream, in an old painting … St Anthony slaying the dragon, the Temptation of St Anthony, the temptation … His mind began to cloud out like that little glade in the forest. He was far from the village. As he turned to go home he looked up at the heavens. The crystal night burnt with a million sapphire stars dim to bright. The Giant Hunter, Orion, glowed with its brilliant and distinct design on the night. And at a distance the aging Sirius was a brighter burning fire. Rishi went on gazing at them for a long time and he did not notice when a quiet pink blush had touched the hills of the far far right.

Amber Dusk- The society of dead book-covers

2007-08-23T22:31:00.000+05:30

This is a blurb for the back cover of the novel that was finally not used:

AMBER DUSK is a magical tale of love, a fresh novel of ideas, a cross-cultural caravan ride. This ingenious story smells of Calcutta streets and resonates with the seductive tunes of Parisian nights. Robot oracles, French shadowmasters, the enigmatic photographer Valence Jourdain, the mysterious Blue Princess and primitive Indian tribes, colour this fascinating narrative, creating an edgy reality. Rishi the young researcher in love with Valence and Pedro Braganza, the wasted son of a chocolate baron, are drawn and transformed by this world as Rishi gets mixed with a French terror plot and Pedro digs the underbelly of Calcutta. At the heart of the story are the mystical depths of Lake Malaren in Stockholm, where conflicts seem to resolve though not for everyone. What happens to Rishi when he returns from Malaren and how does Pedro deal with the chilling prophecy of the robot oracle? This novel questions, haunts and illuminates in equal measure. Ingenious story-telling at its best.

Amber Dusk – The Perfect Expression

2007-08-05T09:15:00.000+05:30

I have never researched the subject of author’s photos. Whether it should be with a stack of books in the background or maybe a toilet. And the perfect expression - glum, cheerful, poignant et al, et more. I chose a pub at Saket in Delhi. Two gins before this shot.

If you want to buy...

2007-08-03T02:27:00.001+05:30

The novel Amber Dusk (Author: Rajat Chaudhuri; Publisher: Indialog; Pages 354/Paperback; Rs 250; US$ 7.5; ISBN 81-8443-008-6) is available in most big bookstores across India. What follows is an incomplete list of stores. If you face any problems in acquiring the book please write to Mr Girish at Indialog. Email: liaison@indialog.co.in; Tel: +91-11-29835221; +91-11-29830504

Bookstores and Outlets in Delhi

Oxford Bookstore, Connaught Place; Teksons Bookshop, G-4, South Ext-Market-1, New Delhi-49, 011-24617030,24640649 The Book Mark, A-2, Ring Road, South Ext –Part-I, ND-49, 011-24693216Midland Book Shop, South Ext, New Delhi -49, 011-24653880 -81Prakash Books India Pvt Ltd, 4223/1,Ansari Road, Daryaganj, New Delhi-2, 01123285921Om Book Shop (Saket, South Ex, Vasant Vihar, Metropolitan Mall-Gurgaon, Noida-Great India Place Mall) http://www.om-books.com/ Vaibhav Book Service, 4764/2A, 23-Ansari Road Daryaganj, ND-2, 011-55629669, 55629679IAB Publishers & Distributor (P) Ltd, 4596/1A, 11 Daryaganj, Delhi-110002, 011-23266480, 23266681 General Book Depot (GBD), 16,Ansari Road.Daryaganj, ND-2, 011-23263695, 41563695 Famous Book Store, 25, Janpath Bhawan, New Janpath Market, ND-1Frontline Book, Connaught Place, ND-1; BookWorm, M Block, Connaght Place, ND -1 011-23322260

Chandigarh

The Browser, SCO 14-15, Sector 8-C, Chandigarh, INDIA. Phones: (Library) 91-172-2547350, 2547340, (Bookstore) 91-172-5052340

Bookstores and Outlets in Mumbai

Strand Book Stall, "Dhannur", Sir P. M. Road, Mumbai –400001,022-2661994, 22661719Shree Book Center, 8, Kakad Industrial Estate, S.Keer Road, Off- L J Road, Matunga (West) Mumbai- 16, 022-24377516Zzebra Publishing and Distributor , 3/21, Anand Nagar, Opp Birla Bhavan, Near Rationing Office, Santacruz East, Mumbai 022-26050542-43-44-45Book Channel (India) 21,Rajgir Chambers, 12/14, Shahid Bhagat Singh Road, Mumbai-400023; 022-22662328

Outlets in Kolkata and the eastern region

Crossword; Landmark, Lord Sinha Road; Classic Book Store (near Jeevan Deep Bldg); Oxford Bookstore, Park Street; Timely Book Center; 30,Chittranajan Avenue, 2nd Floor,Kolkata - 700012 Tel: 033-30226794Mansi Publishing House, 96 Mahatma Gandhi Road, Cal-7, 22571440 Bookline Wholesale & Distribution; 7,Tottee lane Kolkata-700016 Tel: 033-2440903, 2454238

Also available at Oxford Bookstore, Darjeeling (West Bengal) and bookstores in Patna, Ranchi and Bhubaneswar.

Bookstores and Outlets in Chennai

Oxford Bookstore, Alphaland Books Pvt Ltd; 14, Jagannathan Road, Nungambakkn, Chennai-34 (More names will be added here as the book reaches new stores)

London

Star Books

You can buy the book online from the publisher here:
Buy Online

The Indian Literature (Sahitya Akademi) journal review

2007-06-25T15:02:00.002+05:30

INDIAN LITERATURE (Sahitya Akademi’s bi-monthly journal)

(Vol LII. No 3.; May-June 2008)

Amber Dusk by Rajat Chaudhuri, Indialog Publications, New Delhi; 2007, Pp.352, Rs.250/-

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. Rishfs 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)

Sahitya Akademi is India's national academy of letters

Indian Literature journal review

2006-07-08T18:20:00.002+05:30