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BOOKS
All in the
Family
Riveting scenes from a bioscope
By Nilanjana S. Roy
Of the five years Amitav Ghosh took to write
The Glass Palace, several were spent on research into an area of Indian
history that had been all but elided. Very few still remembered the Indians
who had lived, worked, and finally fled from Burma before Independence
and Partition.
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WALKING FROM THE GALLOWS
By Krishna Datta
Srishti
Price:
Rs 295
Pages: 397
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One of them was Krishna Datta; her family history
was exactly what Ghosh was looking for, had he but known it. Too many
family histories are either of little interest to outsiders or suffer
from a natural reluctance to offer strangers the keys to almirahs that
still contain skeletons. Here, however, is the combination of a chronicler
who places candour above all and a family that represents a slice of larger
history.
Walking From the Gallows is a devastatingly honest
portrait of the Datta family across four generations: part social document,
part window into the lives of bhadralok who substituted a quest for adventure
for the dilettantism that too often marked that set of Bengalis.
 The
figure who towers over, and inadvertently provides the title of the book,
is Krishna Datta's uncle, Biswajit. Typical of this writer's style, she
presents the family's attempts to refine his history against the hard
facts: Biswajit Datta began his career in Burma as a hangman. A few weeks
and fewer executions later, he moved on to become a successful contractor.
As the Japanese and the British readied for a final face-off, elements
from the extended family-other nephews, sons and cousins, made their way
to Rangoon to take their part in the family business until history forced
them to flee. Meanwhile, nationalism, the collapse of the joint family
and the lure of the Brahmo Samaj were shaping the Dattas for better or
for worse.
This is a riveting document, the characters
emerging as freshly as if from a novelist's mind, but drawn with an affection
reserved for people who really did exist. However, the lack of editing,
the absence of a family tree or an introduction are omissions that convert
what could have been a tour-de-force into a series of pictures that are
dated but alive, like flawed but richly nostalgic scenes from a bioscope.
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