If that does not sufficiently rouse reader interest, read the blurb by Amitava Roy, Shakespeare Professor of English and Drama, Rabindra Bharati University, Calcutta: (It is customary to identify the location of Rabindra Bharati University as Shantiniketan, but here it is given simply as Calcutta, not even Kolkuta) “ … Amber Dusk is a multi-levelled exploration of love and other forms of death, where reality mixes and mingles with hyper-super-virtual surrealities to leave the reader breathless … A big, ambitious, first novel on the Liebestod theme mapping out multiple, existentialist journeys and border-crossings. A memorable novel of East-West encounter.”

Decades before Chaudhuri was born, apparently, James Joyce’s Ulysses hit the English reading public in the US like a thunderbolt, it was celebrated as a literary innovation. In the case of lay youth like us what remained from the pages of the bulky tome, was that Joyce did not shield a urinating penis from public view but instead described its action in detail, and that turning the spotlight on orgasm was his flair.  

Rajat Chaudhuri does not go to that extent, presumably because what could be erroneously sniffed at as soft porn is not a novelty in these permissive times when most metropolitan newspapers— in English— ape old time British tabloids by displaying bosoms. Voyeurism and vicarious titillation leave the young cold. Only oldies get some kick out of them. Remember Shabana Azmi’s statement that watching the so-called naughty television channels bored her!

Not that the author’s prose is stilted or that there is sex on his mind. First, a glimpse at the story of Amber Dusk. If his writing can be so prosaically packaged. The narrative opens with a massive protest in Kolkuta by makers and— not to mention consumers— of sweetmeats against a Government bid to regulate the size and price of their wares. The scene of  ‘action; is the Consulate General of Japan. Characters flit past— so many of them, of different nationalities, ages and gender. However, there are nuggets like that Nabin Das, sugar trader, had created the Rosogolla. Valence and Rishi, the principal characters in the novel hail it as ‘ingenious’.
Finally, what can be called foreplay in the affair between Rishi and Valence, sample this impassioned prose— “Found her looking at him with a gaze that could churn the oceans, could burst forth into a thousand memorable lines from the pens of mighty poets, that could transform volcanoes into cool springs of relief, that could touch and cast the hardest heart after the form of joy and sensitivity.”
G S Bhargava

AMBER DUSK
Rajat Chaudhuri 
July 2007, India Log Publications Pvt. Ltd.,
 New Delhi, 110 0024.
  Pp. 352, Price 250