Amit Chaudhuri: Real Time: Stories and a Reminiscence

Freedom Song: Three Novels rather shamefacedly.

He does not demur; he studies its cover.

I tell him I must retrieve wife and daughter

from Rhythm House, and brave the traffic

to Mahim, to take part in a “live chat”

on rediff.com. “I’ve never done this sort

of thing before.” He suggests I protest

too much. “I think Amitabh and Jaya

Bachchan were on it the other day,” he says, smiling

smokily; I see myself in a mirror,

dishevelled, late. What is it exactly

that I want from him? Neither he nor I

quite know, and we know that we don’t know,

and this lack of certainty, in which he has the mild

upper hand, this bogus talk about

contracts, I suppose, gives us some

leverage with each other, or is that only my

fancifulness? We agree to meet for lunch

on Monday, a day before I fly

back to Calcutta. For twenty-five years

he’s published nothing, or little. This doesn’t mean

he’s not been writing. In fact, for many years,

he’s been composing poems about the Kala Ghoda

he sees from his window at the Wayside Inn,

the parking lot now cleared of cars for the ten-day

festival. He writes about the woman

who washes herself and her children, and cooks

on the pavement, or the homeless stringing their string cots,

or odd-job men and their paramours

and quick lunches. As I discover on Monday,

when the Wayside Inn’s full, and we crowd

round a single table, lunch is a great

unspoken theme. People enter, leave,

sated or still in search of satiation;

Arvind will send me some poems a couple

of months later, by Kolatkar, describing the slop

eaten by the odd-job man on the pavement.

We are united by orders of dhansak and fish

and chips, and kachumbar, drowned out by cries of “Waiter!”

and “Arrey, Udwadia?” I think of Frank O’Hara,

like Kolatkar, between the painter’s world and the poet’s

(Kolatkar is a well-known commercial artist),

writing his “lunch poems,” crossing the streets

from Times Square to Sixth Avenue in New York

on weekdays, a cheeseburger in one hand,

Poems by Pierre Reverdy in one pocket.

Kala Ghoda, in those poems I’ve still

to read, is no less beautiful in its journey

between the Jehangir Art Gallery and the Wayside Inn.

“Neon in daylight is a / great pleasure,” says O’Hara

as he discovers its useless radiance around mid-day.

Kolatkar notes a different flame. “They’re burning

Valentine cards today,” gravely

in his deep Bombay accent, musical

with irony. And “Arvind’s begun

to look like Gurudev Tagore.” Pauses. “By

the way, will your daughter have ice cream?” My wife

gratefully accepts. Our mealtime’s not

quite over; while a half a lifetime’s work is almost

done, and remains concealed, as if it were

ingested, and coursing in the veins; and another’s

half a lifetime’s work still to begin;

no hunger, before or after lunch, is complete.

Two stories here are retellings — and quite personal interpretations — of episodes from the Hindu mythologies. “An Infatuation” is a retelling of an episode from the Ramayana, in which Lord Ram (often spelt Rama) is exiled to the forest for fourteen years because of a curse; he is accompanied by his brother Lakshman and his wife, Sita. Here, a rakkhoshi (the Bengali word for female rakkhosh, or rakshas in Hindi — a powerful demon), Surpanakha, falls in love with him and tries to seduce him. Ram plays along with her and then humiliates her, as the episode shows. She rushes to her brother Ravan, the king of demons, who will avenge her by abducting Ram’s wife, Sita — thus setting into motion the main action of the Ramayana. “The Wedding” is a retelling of the story of Lord Shiv’s (often spelt Shiva) wedding.

Most of the other stories are set in either Bombay or Calcutta, at any time between the seventies and the present, with the exception of “The Great Game,” which is set in both Bombay and the city of Sharjah, in the United Arab Emirates. The Hindi word “saala” in the story literally means “brother-in-law”; but it is also a term of abuse. In a casual sense, it suggests someone who has the tiresomeness of a brother-in-law; in a stronger vein, it carries the implication “I have slept with your sister.” I should point out that the story was composed some time before the match-fixing controversy in early 2000, in which key players from several countries were either found to have thrown, or were suspected of throwing, matches in return for payment from bookies. This story is not about match fixing, but it does depict the one-day game (as opposed to the more traditional “test” match, played over five days), in which there is always a result. The rise of the one-day game has been coterminous with the globalisation and commodification of the sport, its incursion into unlikely places, and the spread of satellite television.