Tag: Rana Dasgupta

  • Clarity begins at home

    Maybe it’s a 40s thing, or maybe it’s just me projecting my top-of-the-mind thought on to others, but these days, ‘the place to retire to’ is a recurring theme in many conversations with friends. Once upon a time, in line with Pico Iyer’s “Home is not just the place where you happen to be born. It’s the place where you become yourself”, Bangalore was an obvious choice. A few years ago, Cochin got back into the consideration set, as I veered more towards who I was than what my self image was. The mind and its narratives.

    During a recent trip to Cochin, when a classmate described my school-self to D, I had a moment straight out of a Kazuo Ishiguro book. He is one of my favourite writers, and at least two of his books feature narrators with flawed memory constructions. In the books, it is fascinating to watch the peeling of reality against the narrator’s reconstructions. Ishiguro is kind, and usually brings the narrator down gently. In my case, I was first shocked to realise how I was like one of his narrators, and then pleasantly surprised at how my friend remembered me. Maybe he was being kind. But this isn’t the first time. When a similar recollection about me had happened with one of our other classmates during a reunion a few years ago, I had brushed it off as his false narrative. Because my own perception of who I was then was different. But after this, I realised that this was the key to Cochin behaving like a magnet!

    In Capital, Rana Dasgupta wrote – ‘when one becomes homesick, it is not a place that one seeks, but oneself, back in time.’ Despite my conscious mind’s narrative constructions, my subconscious probably remembers it more accurately. It remembers someone whose sense of humour did not have the cynicism that an adult life gifted it. Someone whose whistling skills seemed like magic to his friends because it was not self-conscious. Maybe, by pulling me back to a place, the mind believes it can also pull me back to a time and a self that was happy with itself. That him who I was.

    And maybe it’s not just that. Before I left Cochin, I made it a point to visit an old hangout. An aunt’s home. My mother’s cousin, whose granddaughters were roughly my age, but insisted on calling me ammava (uncle) especially in public. My memories of that place and my aunt, and these I am sure of because there are physical spaces that could testify to it, are ones I cherish and am deeply grateful for. The place and the person brought a sense of warmth and security to a teen life that was troubled by loss, and a mind that did not even realise it was unmoored. I see the afternoons and evenings I have spent there as an incomparable act of kindness. A refuge from the world at large.

    So maybe what drags me back to Cochin is a little more than who I was. It is also about those around me at a certain stage of my life. The friends who made me feel special. The people who made me feel secure. And places that are so deeply etched in my memory that it would be impossible to feel lost even now. Even as I realise that the places and people may no longer be around and that this construct is one that fits the current idea that I have of myself, I also think that somehow the mind will conspire to project an environment that can anchor me.

    P.S. As I began writing this, I had an intense sense of deja-vu. Very meta. I had gone through these thoughts before, I was sure. And indeed I had. That is somehow reassuring.

  • Solo

    Rana Dasgupta

    I remember liking Tokyo Cancelled, Rana Dasgupta’s earlier (and first) work of fiction. When I first came across Solo, its blurb content for some reason made me stay away. I remembered the leaps of imagination and thought I might not be able to keep pace. Recently, I read his non-fiction work ‘Capital’ and thoroughly loved it. And thus Solo arrived on my bookshelf.

    A blind old man in Bulgaria, cared for by his neighbours, and dependent on them for many of his basic needs, reminiscing about the days gone by, might seem like a rather dry premise to base a novel on, but it magnificently surprised me. Ulrich is nearing the end of his life’s tenth decade and has lived through years of Bulgarian political experiments as the country’s elite switched their ideologies through the great wars and after. His early well-provided-for life contrasts sharply with the poverty of his later years, and the steadily declining quality of his life is poignant in itself. Through Ulrich’s perspective and experiences we see the socio-economic changes that take place in the country, and the author is able to do justice to both the suddenness of some of them as well as the gradual nature of the others. The sensitivity with which the author narrates a life that’s fallen on hard times that’s truly wonderful. (more…)

  • Capital : The Eruption of Delhi

    Rana Dasgupta

    Much has been written about the Maximum City – fiction and non fiction – and it continues to be the muse of many authors. But other than Dalrymple’s City of Djinns, I have not really read a book on Delhi. Add to that Rana Dasgupta’s superb play on the title itself – Capital – and this was a book I had to read. I am really glad it didn’t disappoint.
    There are many Delhis, as Dalrymple brought out in his book. The city has existed in many forms across centuries, and many of them live side by side – Mughal, British, post-partition, post 1984, and the one that the author stresses most on – post 1991. It is easy to see many parts of the commentary as a standard impact of globalisation, but if you have lived on both sides of the 90s, you would know what an enormous impact liberalisation has had on our lives. But I get ahead of myself!  (more…)

  • Habits and home

    It’s been happening on enough recent Cochin trips to be given the status of a habit – visiting The Grand hotel for lunch. The food is predictably good, though they take liberties with what can be called ‘meals’. But there’s more to it. The Grand has been around for as long as I can remember, and in the otherwise rapidly changing landscape of my hometown, it offers a solidity and anchorage that is rare and appealing. This time, we had this guy seated right behind us. 🙂

    Another habit, which is even older, is shopping from Malabar Chips – for friends, colleagues, and us. Some of the people working there have been around for decades, and I told D how I’d watched them change over the years. “..all the faces that made up my childhood“, as Rana Dasgupta phrases it in Solo. It made me think how we probably notice changes in others more than they themselves do. By the same token, we don’t notice ourselves change. (more…)