Readiscovery

A Strange and Sublime Address vividly recalls Calcutta as it was in the 1970s and 1980s.

Amit Chaudhuri’s first novel, published in 1991, A Strange and Sublime Address tells the story of a Bengali boy’s visits to Calcutta.

Ten-year-old Sandeep goes with his mother from Bombay (Mumbai) to Calcutta to spend his summer holidays at the home of her brother, whom he calls Chhotomama.

One and a half years later, he revisits Calcutta with his parents when his father, a senior executive in Bombay, has business in the city.

 It is a short novel where nothing much happens except that Chhotomama has a heart attack during the second visit. He gradually recovers in a hospital.

Leading up to the heart attack are passing mentions that Chhotomama’s business is failing, and he has to sell his car before Sandeep’s second visit to Calcutta.

But the story is told mainly from the boy’s point of view, and children, being children, have a world of their own.

That’s what makes A Strange and Sublime Address so idyllic. It describes the fun and games Sandeep has with his young cousins, Abhi and Babla (Chhotomama’s sons), their older relatives, their outings in Chhotomama’s car and later in Sandeep’s father’s office car, and the city around them.

The writer describes everything vividly, making this one of the most evocative books I have ever read about Calcutta.

The arrival

The story begins with Sandeep arriving at Chhotomama’s house.

He saw the lane. Small houses, unlovely and unremarkable, stood face to face with each other. Chhotomama’s house had a pomelo tree in its tiny courtyard and madhavi creepers by its windows. A boy stood clinging to the rusting iron gate, while another boy pushed it backward and forward. As he did so, the first boy travelled in a small arc through space. When the taxi stopped in front of the house, they stared at it with great dignity for a few moments, then ran off in terror, leaving the gate swinging mildly and illegally. A window opened above (it was so silent for a second that Sandeep could hear someone unlocking it) and Babla’s face appeared behind the mullions.

Chhotomama and Saraswati, the maidservant, came down and helped them with their bags. Sandeep ran up the stairs with his cousins, not looking back. There was a thrilled impatience about his movements, as if he either wanted to finish or begin something quickly. His aunt, by contrast, stood at the head of the stairs, in a place that was half sunlit and half shadowy, with immaculate serenity, seemingly not having moved from where she had said. goodbye to him about a year ago; she said:

 ‘How have you been, Mona?’

When she saw Sandeep’s mother, she went down the stairs and grasped her hand in a relaxed way; all the excitement shone in her eyes. ‘Didi…’ she said. They went up in a procession, Abhi, Babla, Sandeep, his mother, his uncle, his aunt, as if they were going up to a shrine on pilgrimage. Later, they sat on a wide bed be- neath an ancient fan which, as it rotated, moved unreliably from side to side, like a great bird trying to fly.

The descriptions are picture-perfect. There are houses like Chhotomama’s in Calcutta and the way Sandeep and his mother are welcomed by Chhotomama and his wife is typical of Bengalis.

Pushing a car

The author is writing about a time when the Ambassador car ruled the roads in India. It was a sturdy, long-lasting vehicle but occasionally required a push and a shove to start. People pushing a stalled car were not an unusual sight in Calcutta. The scene when Chhotomama’s car has to be pushed to start on a weekday morning is rendered perfectly.

Sandeep woke in the sharp light of morning to shouts coming vague and muffled from the distance. He rubbed his eyes, knelt upon the pillow, then jumped sideways from the bed to the window. His cousins were already there, watching something with deep patience and interest. It was their father. He was late as usual. He was sitting at the steering-wheel of the old Ambassador, one arm casually hanging outside, one arm on the wheel, glancing backwards enquiringly, as if he were checking some crucial point no one else could see. A few idle men had gathered around the decrepit car.

‘Okay boys, start pushing,’ Chhotomama commanded without turning his head, looking keenly at a private landmark on the horizon. The idlers were quite unexpectedly altered into purposeful, energetic men, as if someone had turned a key in their backs. They took position, like a small battalion-two by the window, two at the back, and another reserve, who would do the indispensable work of shouting from the rear. At Chhotomama’s words, the team strained forward, and the recalcitrant car, after some stolid silent thought, decided to concede a few feet into the road. People had come out on the balconies, and were watching with sympathetic curiosity. Their eyes followed the car’s reluctant progress; their lips parted to pass a few well-considered comments; husbands and wives who had quarrelled the previous night were reunited in their avid appreciation of the spectacle; brothers who could never agree about a single point reached a brief consensus about the condition of the vehicle; astonished children who had never spoken anything but thickly meditative nonsense uttered, to the delight of their mothers, their first word as the car belched twice into motion and then stopped again.

Sandeep and his cousins stared out in embarrassed silence.

Lazy afternoon

The residential areas of Calcutta can be quiet and somnolent in the afternoon, with people resting at home if not out at work.

Chaudhuri captures the afternoon languor:

Between two and four o’clock, a golden stupor descended upon the city. Sandeep loved these two hours when it was too hot to move, when the eddying waves of people disappeared and a low tde came upon everything, leaving lane after lane like gullies in the sand and house after house like sandcastles upon an empty beach, when the splendid arguments in the tea-shops came to a brief conclusion, and everyone agreed with everyone and fell silent.

Clothes hung from clotheslines in the terrace, and undulated like many-coloured waves, all at once, when a breeze blew from the direction of the railway lines. They were happy, cheerful flags that signified life in a house. There were trousers, shirts, petticoats, blouses, and magnificent lengths of saris, each with a different and striking motif, each a small waterfall of life and colour, unravelled to dry. Sandeep had often seen Saraswati unfolding these sinuous boa-constrictors of cloth (how wrinkled they looked, then, bad-tempered and wrinkled, and how rejuvenated they would look tomorrow, when they were ironed and given their customary face-lift), beating them against the air with a single electric movement to rid them of the last drops of water, then clipping them, her arms wide- apart, as if outstretched in a deep and satisfying yawn.

A mist of drowsiness hung over the lanes. In the still houses, families had eaten their lunch of rice, dal and fish and fallen asleep. Afternoon was a time of digestion, a time of fullness and contentment, full bellies and closed eyes. In all the shadowy houses of Calcutta at this moment, the gastric juices were solemnly at work. There was not a movement in the corridors, no noise; yet if you put an ear against the belly of one of these sleepers, you would probably hear a rich gurgling sound.

Not everyone was asleep. People who had had a meal less substantial dotted the lane perfunctorily. Sometimes, a girl came to a terrace, ostensibly to hang, let us say, a sari on a clothesline; at the same time, a young man ap- peared on the terrace three houses away, apparently to in- spect a water-tank. They glanced at each other, then fum- bled with their work, then glanced at each other, then fumbled, then glanced such shy, piercing glances exchanged in the heat of the afternoon! How straight and undeflected the man’s glance travelled, how swift and disguised the woman’s answering glance! What rhythm the moment possessed!

Near a derelict tea-shop, a rickshawalla lay slouched in the shade of his rickshaw. Idly, he clapped his hands in the air. After a moment, Sandeep realized he was killing mosquitoes. Clap clap… clap… clap. . . Four mosquitoes. Clap… clap… Two more mosquitoes…

Calcutta winter

Sandeep returns to Bombay with his mother after the summer holiday in Chhotomama’s house.

But they return to Calcutta one-and-a-half years later in winter when his father has business there. The author describes winter in Calcutta:

Because it was a little cold in Calcutta now, people swathed themselves in shawls, mufflers sweaters, coats and several kinds of woollen garments. The first thing one saw when one came to Calcutta in December was a welter of warm clothes. As usual, the people of Calcutta did everything to excess; the streets had the air of a fancy-dress party as shawls and cardigans and jackets floated by solemnly in the nights, when it became reallly cold, beggars set fire to old rubber tyres, and sat around the circles of slow flame to warm their hands…

The author writes:

In the winter, the days ended early, Smoke rose from earthen ovens and wood fires into the air, and hung mysteriously over the lanes in the evenings.

Calcutta Book Fair

Chhotomamu, recovering in hospital after a heart attack, recalls one of Calcutta’s winter highlights.

Chhotomama recalled the annual Book Fair which was held around this time of the year in the maidan near St Paul’s Cathedral. He remembered the stalls, makeshift temples of books, and the people queuing outside with a religious concentration and devotion. He remembered drifts of people inspecting and sifting through books, opening and shutting hardbound editions, cloth-covered editions, paperback editions. How often he had met old college friends and their children wandering through the crowds. And once the fair was over, that miniature cardboard city would be taken apart, the books would vanish, the crowds disappear, and the maidan would be empty, as if one elaborate mirage had dissolved once you came too near it.

Calcutta at night

The author describes the streets of Calcutta at night in winter in loving detail. He does it through the eyes of Sandeep as he and his cousins and relatives leave the hospital after seeing Chhotomama.

At night, after they had said goodbye to Chhotomama, they returned homeward through the lit lanes and alleys of Calcutta. Watching the lanes, they temporarily forgot their own lives, and, temporarily, their minds flowed outward into the images of the city, and became indistinguishable from them. Even at night, the streets were theatres full of actors and extras: reckless dogs, insufferable cows lying in the centre of the lane, families arguing, old women gossiping, children chasing cats, rickshawallas idling, Vaishnav devotees singing religious songs for all to hear. As they watched from the car, they were charmed by the illusion, some nagging uncertainty in their minds was soothed into extinction, they briefly merged with this vague, vast enterprise in which everyone seemed to be taking part.

In some lanes, as they passed, they saw marriages. They saw cars and rickshaws with people getting out of them, people carrying gifts, approaching gates covered with intricate garlands and festoons, and the sound of the shehnai, rich, leisurely, half mournful and half serene, with the special sadness of the human voice, filling the lane with the notes of the Raga Shankara or the Raga Bhairavi. Listening, Sandeep, Abhi and Babla fell asleep, Sandeep’s head against Babla’s, Babla’s against Abhi’s, as if they were dreaming the same dream.

Saraswati Puja

The author describes Saraswati Puja, celebrated when winter turns to spring. With Chhotomama still in hospital, his wife, Sandeep’s Mamima, celebrates the puja at home.

Towards the end of January, the people of Calcutta celebrated the festival of the goddess Saraswati. In every house and lane, offerings were made punctiliously to the austerely beautiful goddess of the arts and of learning. Students would scribble ‘Nama Saraswati Nama’ a hundred and eight times on a piece of paper so that they might pass their exams. Painters would say a silent prayer for their paintings, and musicians for their music. Writers would ask the goddess to bless the new book they had written: bless this book… bless these words. Saraswati, riding a swan, playing the veena with long, attentive fin- gers, would listen to everyone and promise nothing.

Mamima, too, had brought a small, earthen idol of the goddess. She was going to pray for Chhotomama’s health, though this was perhaps somewhat outside the goddess’s domain. Yet surely. The deity looked so kind and calm and generous. Her mere presence was comforting. There she sat at the end of the room, like a shy bride too diffident to converse with the rest of the family. Surely she would understand Mamima’s prayer, this goddess of art and learning.

They decorated the floor before the idol with circular and geometrical motifs, using rice-paste to draw the little and large designs. The women wore new, starched saris, which swelled unmanageably around them like plumage; the starch made the cotton cloth crispy, gave it the texture of a potato wafer. As they bent to make the patterns on the floor, the white paste oozing from their fingers, now stooping, now rising, the ends of their saris skimming gently behind them like wings, they reminded one of grave birds dancing in a clearing.

Again, the descriptions are picture-perfect. That is how the puja is celebrated at home.

The ending

The story ends in the first week of February, with Chhotomama getting well enough to be told he could leave the hospital and go home.

The children, meanwhile, are playing in the hospital garden. When a bird sings, they go up to tell Chhotomama, who is talking to his wife.

“Have you seen it?” he asks them.

No, they say.

“Go back and look for it,” he tells them. “And when you’ve seen it, come and tell me what it looks like.”

They return to the garden and see the bird sitting on a tree. But sensing their presence, it flies away.

That’s where the story ends, but the scenes and incidents linger in memory.

I can’t recall a book more evocative of Calcutta in the 1970s and 1980s than A Strange and Sublime Address.