Literary Editor
To photocopy or not to, that is the question
The writer Mani Shankar Mukherji, famously known as Sankar, and celebrated for such works as Chowringhee, was in town recently. In this issue of Star Literature, we carry literary impressions of the visit from a whole range of those who have had the opportunity to interact with Sankar.
Not growing up in a Bangla-speaking household, the only Shankar I was familiar with as a child was Shankar's Weekly. The one Bengali writer I knew was Tagore through his English translations: the poem "Where the mind is without fear and the head is held high" and the short story "Kabuliwallah." Sarat Chandra came a little later, and that mainly because of the movies my parents saw based on his books. Sarat Chandra's books themselves came much later when I was struggling to teach myself Bangla. Not just classics, a young man I met in French classes assured me, Sarat Chandra's books were also easy reading for a beginner. Then a friend in Chittagong helped me read Tagore's short stories in the original. Much later, a young tutor, who gave me a crash course in Bangla literature, introduced me to Bankim Chandra difficult yes, but rewarding and, because I was a feminist, helped me read Roquiah Sakhawat Hossein's Bangla essays. But Sankar did not figure in any of these readings.
It was not till a member of The Reading Circle returned from Calcutta last year, all excited after reading an English translation of Sankar's Chowringhee that I came to know that there was a Bengali writer who had been writing over five decades and had become a household name. Her excitement prevailed and, unanimously, TRC chose to read Chowringhee in the English translation. There was only one problem. Apart from my friend's copy there were no other copies. There were a few mild objections: "Let us wait till copies are available." But the excitement was too intense to allow for delay. So TRC members duly photocopied the entire book and read it. I do not photocopy a book that is in print, so did not get to read Arunava Sinha's translation.
Much later, in early October this year, our small reading group at Independent University, Bangladesh which had invited Sankar, or to give him his full name Mani Sankar Mukherji, as its 2010 Scholar in Residence, we read Chowringhee. By this time, The University Press Ltd., which had contracted to do five books by Sankar, had published Chowringhee. I had bought the book but was unable to proceed beyond a few pages. It was on the day of Sankar's talk at IUB that Words 'n Pages brought copies of Chowringhee and Middleman and l was finally able to get an original copy of the English translation. Thus it was that while Sankar was still in Dhaka on his first visit to Bangladesh that I started reading Sankar. I enjoyed the Bangla but, knowing that I could never finish it in the five days Sankar would be in Dhaka, skimmed through the English translation in a way that I could never have with the Bangla. Though we generally tend to prefer the original Bangla to translations, the translation by Arunava Sinha seemed a good one.
Though literary critics refuse to accord Sankar a high literary status, the book was fascinating. Chowringhee is, as Romesh Gunasekera suggests in his review titled "Hotel Calcutta" (The Guardian, April 18, 2009), an allegory for life in Calcutta in the mid-fifties. Of course there is much that is omitted with the hotel being the setting for only those people who would normally frequent hotels. Thus Chowringhee is almost completely devoid of Muslim characters except for a very few: Khan Bahadur Huq, for example, who attends the banquet of the Philanthropic Society, and Tobarak Ali who, with Ram Singh whips open bottles. There is mention of a Farida along with the cabaret dancer Connie, but Farida herself does not appear in the novel.
The opening paragraph of the novel, with its reference to Lord Curzon who conceived "the idea of dividing this green, fertile land of ours" suggests the shadow of partition, the first partition of Bengal leading to the Partition of India and a second partition of Bengal. But the rest of the book is free from political references. It is perhaps only in the brief episode of the Philanthropic Society that there are political echoes when the narrator suggests that there are occasions when Hindus, Muslims, and the English can co-exist. When it comes to eating and dining, the Agarwallas, the Langfords and the Khan Bahadurs are united: "It didn't take long for the wave of that laughter to reach the Khan Bahadur, with the result that three civilizations became one before my very eyes."
Of course there is the hotel itself, named Shahjahan and its bar named Mumtaz. Did the writer suggest the decay of the Mughals by using these Muslim names? The continued presence of Muslim culture in a world where Muslims had ostensibly been banished to a new homeland? The questions will have to wait till another time.
There is humour and pathos in Chowringhee as the narrator spelled "Shankar" rather than "Sankar" proceeds from the thankless job of hawking wastepaper baskets to the post of a receptionist/typist at Hotel Shahjahan. Young and innocent, he soon gets to see the seamier side of life: married women who take a suite for a night while their husbands are away on business, cabaret dancers who make a living by allowing customers to burst the balloons which cover their bodies, hostesses whose job is to see to the flowers and the sheets as well as entertain special guests. Shankar soon gets to understand what the request for an extra pillow means.
There is a profound sadness in the book as one after the other Shankar's friends and acquaintances depart, to distant lands and other jobs, or die by accident or their own hands. Marco Polo, whose wife has gone off without a divorce, leaves for the Gold Coast for a new job and a new life with Liza. Sata Bose, who was Shankar's friend and mentor at the hotel, falls in love with the air hostess Sujata Mitra and changes his job only to lose her in a car accident. The detective Byron, who had helped get Shankar a job at Shahjahan, leaves for Australia where detectives are held in greater regard. As the hotel changes hands, the future looks bleak. Shankar too loses his job.
Though there isn't one plot except in that the story comes full circle with the narrator getting a job at Shahjahan and then losing it it is in the fragments of the stories woven into the novel that the great charm of Chowringhee lies. Everyone has a story if we could only hear it with our hearts.
Above all, Chowringhee is an allegory of life. Using hotel metaphors, the narrator notes how people come together and then part:
When I had checked in here, it was filled with known and familiar faces. Some left after breakfast, a few disappeared after lunch; others went away after tea. Now it was time for dinner. And no one was left.
As I write these lines, I can understand the excitement of my friend Shahruk when she "discovered" Chowringhee. But for that discovery and the suggestion made at our meeting, "Can we not invite Sankar to Dhaka as we have invited Amitav Ghosh earlier," Sankar would not have visited Dhaka.
Yes, I got him to sign both my original copies of Chowringhee in Bangla and English, but my friend Asfa got him to sign the photocopy that had made a difference in our lives, that led to her persistence in keeping in touch with Sankar to ensure that he did come.
As Sankar signed the photocopy he murmured, "Is it right for a writer to sign a photocopy of his book?"
He did not answer. Nor did I. And yet both he and I knew that it was because of photocopies like that that many of the members of TRC got to know Sankar and that Sankar came to Dhaka to meet his readers in person.
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