Thank you, Sankar!
Mani Sankar Mukherji aka Sankar has had the rare distinction of becoming a legend in his own time. There is hardly an educated household in both Bengals where at least one of his books has not been read. Although a prolific author, in the popular imagination he is best known for three books: Koto Ajanere, Chowringhee and Seemabaddha with Chowringhee being perhaps most iconic. Forty seven years after Chowringhee was first published and made Sankar a household name in Bengal, a recent English translation, in 2009, has brought him well-deserved although belated world-wide recognition. I have a personal relationship with Sankar, not the man but his books and the depictions of his books. I suspect, like many of my generation, I first watched Sankar before I read him. I was fascinated by the movie Chowringhee which came out in 1968 with the inimitable Uttam Kumar playing Sata Bose, and particularly its depiction of the cosmopolitanism of Kolkata in the late 1950s. For a somewhat precocious 11-year-old boy who had been born and brought up in Dhaka, the movie was a visual testament to my mother's (always an ardent Calcuttan) lament about the essential difference between the pleasant provincialism of Dhaka in the 1960s and the bustling urbanity and sophistication of Kolkata where she was born and brought up and never quite got over leaving. Subsequently when I read Chowringhee as a young boy and several times since then, I have remained enthralled and drawn into the subtle and nuanced descriptions of a city and a society on the cusp of change from a polyglot cosmopolitanism to a more strident parochial Indian identity a veritable fin de siècle. Like the best of authors, Sankar's writing evokes a multiplicity of emotions. It transports the reader to a place in time which he/she can almost taste and touch and participate in. This capacity of drawing in the reader emotionally is something Sankar shares with Marcel Proust, the author of Remembrances of Things Past. As a psychiatrist I am struck by Sankar's great capacity for empathy, for putting the reader in the shoes of the characters he creates. When you read Chowringhee you become the characters: Sata Bose the urbane receptionist/concierge who has seen it all the venality of the rich, the squalid lives of the hotel employees, the daily compromises you need to make to go along and get along. You suffer with him in his ultimately unsuccessful attempt to escape from this sophisticated but tawdry world that the Hotel Shahjahan represents into the anonymity of middle-class domestic bliss. His love for the air hostess Sujata Mitra and their desire to live a simple life away from all of this hustle and bustle come to naught. You understand the complexity of Rosie, a grasping shrew trying to make it in a tough neighborhood. You appreciate the impossibility of Karabi Guha, the hostess who wants to transcend class barriers and marry her true love Anindo Pakrashi, the scion of a notable industrialist family. You are titillated by the extramarital shenanigans of Mrs. Pakrashi, hidden behind the veneer of wifely duty and social responsibility. Sankar taps into a rich vein of middle-class fascination and contempt of the lives and hypocrisies of the wealthy. He weaves an intricate tapestry which ensnares the reader and leaves him at the end of the book hungering for a sequel. There is so much to say and so little time and ultimately we are here to listen to Sankar the man himself. So I will stop here. However, I want to share an anecdote which speaks to Sankar's iconic reputation. A few days a friend of mine called me and said, "To ke to pawa jai na. Khoob byasto? I never seem to be able to get in touch with you. Are you very busy?" I said,"Hein, Sankar ashchhe to. Yes, Sankar's coming." "Kon Sankar? Which Sankar?" he asked. "Money nai Chowringhee, Simabaddhar lekhok. Don't you remember? The author of Chowringhee, Simabaddha." He seemed a little confused. "Lokta ekhono bechey acchey? Aami to bhebe chhilam onek agay mara gechhey. Tui thatta korchhish na to? Is he still alive? I thought he had died a long time ago. You aren't pulling my leg, are you? Is he really coming?" "Asholai ashchhe. Tui ashish. Yes. You should come," I said. Finally, I want to thank Sankar Da personally for allowing me to appreciate my mother's youth through his writing. Thank you.
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