Of alien feelings

Odysseus Abroad

Amit Chaudhuri
Penguin2014, pp 243
Rs. 499

Amit Chaudhuri takes off from Homer’s Odyssey and James Joyce’s Ulysses to write this intriguing work of fiction. Several of the chapters use names from these works — like Telemachus, Nestor and Ithaca — whilst providing a modern interpretation of what it feels like to be Odysseus in a land of strangers. Following the stream of consciousness pattern, the novel often appears like a work of non-fiction as it captures moments in the life of Ananda, the protagonist.

It also sounds autobiographical as Ananda is placed in the England of 1985, which Chaudhuri inhabited when he went there to study literature. Even those who have not read Amit’s earlier books will not fail to make the connection. Chaudhuri has also indicated that the other protagonist, Ananda’s uncle Radhesh, whom he refers to as Rangamama throughout the book, is modelled on his own uncle.

It is unbelievable that the narration follows the course of Ananda’s adventures in the course of a day, though there are stories woven into stories, as is the case with epics.

The language employed is impeccably lyrical and beautiful and makes for pleasurable reading. As is the case with Chaudhuri’s writings, nothing momentous happens anywhere in the novel, nor is there a lead-up to a cymbal-clashing moment of reckoning in the final chapter. Yet, one is left with a feeling of enhanced sensibilities after putting the book down.

Chaudhuri’s powers of observation and analysis, and his ability to see the profound in the mundane and vice versa are further honed in Odysseus Abroad. The humour is subtle but greatly enjoyable, like when his character Ananda speaks of James Bond and how he is never shown washing the lather off his face as there is always an interruption making this “one recorded act of his humble daily toilette tantalising!”

He further muses that neither does Bond have to face the task of answering an aunt or father on the phone in the midst of a fight nor have to account for where he had been these past seven days!

From this matter-of-fact observation of Chaudhuri’s flows the deeper one on the “peculiarity of Western culture: this immersion in individuality, and the pretence that haemorrhoids or family didn’t undermine or subvert the frame of action — it was what made its myths so free-floating and fabulous.”

There are many themes that are dwelt upon in the course of this novel as Ananda engages with his tutors, his neighbours (who with their peculiar sleep patterns are a source of great annoyance), but the prolonged ones are the ones between the uncle and the nephew. Chaudhuri reveals a sensitive understanding of the many kinds of loneliness in a foreign land.

Though Ananda’s uncle has lived and worked for long in England and enjoys a handsome pension (which he doles out to relatives back home with a sense of inflated importance), he is still as lost as Ananda, which makes them both Ulysses-like, reaching out to each other in a kind of male-bonding that is not necessarily an uncle-nephew thing.

At times, Chaudhuri’s observations can be hard-hitting, as when Ananda speaks of the fund-raising that happens in the midst of tragedy: “By the time the Boomtown Rats came on, and the sea of dancing people in Wembley Stadium was being intercut with Ethiopian children with innocent eyes and bulbous heads, a phrase had arisen in his consciousness: ‘Dance of Death’.”

When Ananda tries to discuss this with Mark, a friend, he makes no headway as the moral angle is totally missed by the Englishman, himself a cancer survivour. The final lines after this encounter are deeply moving as Ananda sees himself as the outsider: “As for Ananda: his own position on this matter underlined to him his isolation from the world — from London...”

The use of the occasional Bengali word and phrase adds charm to the narrative. But the author is not above having digs at the gastronomic and intestinal preoccupations of Bengalis, as also their unswerving loyalty to the Poet, Nobel laureate Rabindranath Tagore.

In the last few pages, Chaudhuri offers an original interpretation of the Indian caste system, besides concluding in the words of Ananda that Rangamama had assumed all the four incarnations of philosopher, warrior, merchant and beggar, all in one life.

It is hard to turn even a single page of this fairly concise book without chancing upon some word of wisdom or some profound observation. Veritably, it is a book to be read slowly and digested as Chaudhuri covers all aspects of the human condition — sometimes with gravitas and more often with tongue-in-cheek humour.