Books: Immaculate Conception

FREEDOM SONG
By AMIT CHAUDHURI
PICADOR
PAGES: 202
PRICE: Rs 350

By Pritish Nandy

Everyone who grows up in Calcutta believes he has this one great literary work inside him. A book he always dreams of writing. The perfect book, be it a sheaf of poems or a grumble of short stories or an autobiographical novel that he does not know how to conclude. The form doesn't matter. What he wants to capture for posterity are the sounds, the smells, the chiaroscuro of a city so amazingly decadent in a magical sort of way that he wants to share it with the world. His first premise of course is that no one can quite see the city in the way he does.

Has Amit Chaudhuri written the great Calcuttan novel?

Arrogant? Maybe. Solipsistic? Possible. All good Bengalis are arrogant and solipsistic to an extent. That's why they never make businessmen. That's why Calcutta, for all its wealth and learning, remains the capital of Rajasthan. A quaint anachronism in this era of liberalisation. Yet, in a curious way, some of the finest achievements of modern Indian literature have emerged from this very arrogance. They are part of the same dream: to write the ultimate book that captures the spirit of Calcutta, its hopes, its despair, its angst.

I had the same dream. It produced several thin books of poems, some stories and a huge number of translations before I realised that I could never quite grab what I was looking for and so I moved on to simpler terrain. Journalism. But like all good Bengalis I never let the dream die. For I thought some day I would go back to it. To draw the subtle shades of dreams and images that I grew up with on what were once College Street and Harrison Road. But now, after reading Freedom Song, I have given up the idea.

Why? Well, simply because Amit Chaudhuri has written the book I always wanted to write and, in fact, he has written it far better than I could have.

It is his language that holds you first. Like the Ancient Mariner's eyes. The way he describes a place, a moment, an experience, a sharing, a hurt, a pain. It is all understated, casual. You smell the city. You feel its impossible magic as you eavesdrop on Khuku and Mini or watch Bhaskar and Piyu trying to live out their not exactly exciting lives.

In fact, the drama comes from its commonplace characters living out their unchallenged hopes in a city that has given up trying to cope with transition. Trapped in their own time warp, the main characters try to understand the world outside through familiar metaphors of pain and hope and an undying romance with the politics of despair. Can they ever escape? Will Calcutta walk out from the shadow of its past and rejoin the political mainstream? Forget tomorrow, can today ever dawn on a city that basks so comfortably in the sunlight of yesterday? Will these people, living out their ever so real lives in an ever so unreal context, ever realise where India is going?

I have no idea. I have no idea because I read this novel as I would read a diary. Dipping into it from time to time. At home in Mumbai. In the Central Hall of Parliament. On four flights that I took during the past week and a trip to Jaipur. I enjoyed reading it not so much for its narrative, which is supple and fine, but for its warm, enchanting style and its easy camaraderie.

Unlike most contemporary works of fiction by Indians, Freedom Song is not intimidating, not smart-arsed, not too clever by half. It is enriching and so easy to experience and empathise with that I will not dream of writing a book on Calcutta again. Not for a long time at least. Chaudhuri has done it for me. Very evocatively. Very stylishly.

AUTHOR SPEAK: ALEXANDRA SOTERIOU
Alexandra's Great Paper Chase
How a 13-year journey through India's papermaking tradition changed her life.

When she won a Fulbright grant to research hand papermaking in India, anthropologist Alexandra Soteriou hadn't the slightest idea where her karma would take her. "I had been seriously interested in papermaking. And India, a country of my longing, I knew had a rich papermaking tradition," she says. "But if someone had told me then that this was going to be a 13-year-old odyssey and I would write a book about the legacy of papermaking, I would have refused to believe it."

Neither did she have the idea that the odyssey would result in her getting involved in a United Nations project to revive the art of hand papermaking in India and Nepal -- and find markets for the exquisite paper products in some of America's best department stores and bookshops. Soteriou's company, World Paper Inc -- based in Hawthorne, New Jersey -- offers products of tree-free paper (made from used garments, coconut husk and milkweed) and helps support 500 families in India and Nepal. The latest project is a book. Lavishly illustrated, Gift of Conquerors: Hand Papermaking in India (Mapin) is not just a history of hand papermaking but also that of a community -- and of how modern printing nearly destroyed its exquisite art form.

Papermaking traditions in a Kashmiri manuscript "Paper is one of the best vehicles for the flowering of Indian art, literature and history," she says, "but where did it come from? Who are the men who worked in creating the paper and perfecting it?" The ancient Jain books wrote on palm leaves instead of using paper. Soteriou begins by examining the role of early papermakers: "The book not only focuses on the art of the kagzis (papermakers), the lore and legends of a craft that is over eight centuries old in India, but also on the brave efforts of the artisans to keep going."

Interwoven with stories of religion, conquest, repression and migratory routes are secrets about the art: "Take for instance the snake and deer 'paper' that was used to make translucent paper for centuries. It was made out of the membrane between the skin and flesh. Paper had to be specially crafted for pigeon post: "It had to be comparatively light. Otherwise, pigeons would have had problems carrying it." In the age of eco-friendliness the book "is also a tribute to the recycling spirit of hand papermakers". As Soteriou puts it, "These papermakers never wasted anything, even books were recycled."

Working on the book, Soteriou lived in Mathura, Daulatabad, Agra, Pondicherry and Jaipur to study the lives of hand papermakers. She expects her book to have a wider appeal than its subject would suggest. "For amateur papermakers," she explains, "I've included recipes and methods. But this is also a book on how paper helped preserve the literature of Hindus, Muslims, Jains and Buddhists." As she signs off: "This is a book for artists, bibliophiles and collectors." Essentially, for anybody who loves paper.

--Arthur J Pais