A Kolkata Book Launch
Book launches are daily affairs in Kolkata. The university bookstore at dusk hosted the launch of Rimi B.Chatterjee's novel, The City of Love (Penguin India, 2008). The air filled with Moushumi Bhowmik singing "Ami opar hoye boshey achi." Rimi acknowledged her debt to scholars for the Indian Ocean bits in her novel. Finally, Dr.Amlan Das Gupta, English professor at the Jadadvpur University, played Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan on a CD Rom drive. The author termed her book as "a non-verbal record of where the spice trade began." The theme was clear: Trade and love. Set in the early 1500's against the backdrop of Vasco Da Gama's arrival at Calicut, Fernando, a Florentine who was fleeing Machiavelli's march up and down the Piazza della Signoria, was approaching the phantom city, which, if forbidden to him would make his rubies look dimmer and his camphor smell stale. In Malacca, Fernando, the "red faced…yowling" animal is soon "Frank", the "Frangi" who is captured by the Sultan of Malacca and rescued by Alamgir, the doctor on board 'Shan-e-Dariya'. It is a ship that rests in Chittagong when the pirates are not sailing. And then begins the quest. Rimi's (teacher of English at Jadavpur University, Kolkata) third novel is a tale of a journey with the changing backdrops of Chittagong, Calicut, Malacca, Gaur and Delhi. The author almost subverts Edward Said's epigraph to 'Orientalism' ("The East is a career") as she covers almost 500 years with erudition and pride. The East becomes the Ultimate with opportunities of the spice trade. But alongside a commerce that hates war, Rimi couples history and geography to place India and Africa at the centre of vision in maps that preface the written text. The story begins with the Portuguese arriving with guns and ships to control the lucrative space trade. It then moves on with Fernando, the Castillian trader equipped with a knowledge of the capital. But parallel to Fernando Almenara's "ambiguous journey to the city"(Nandy), the author sketches yet another plot with Daud Suleiman al-Basri, a Moorish pirate aspiring for wealth; Chandu, a Shaiva-Tantric beginner in quest of deliverance; and Bajja, a tribal girl seeking spiritual freedom. There's also a portrayal of an escapist in a Bhairavdas who looks to flee from the mundane in a Tantric system. But what's most central in the novel is the anti-postcolonial twist. While Fernando, the white man has "lice in his hair", living in "the stifling gloom full of rat-stink" and "throws up a foul green liquid," Chandu is "chubby" and "fair and round as the moon" and "his cheeks stuffed with sugar puffs." The notion of the East being the Rude is countered by the West surfacing as "skeletal." Yet, the East is portrayed with metaphors of food trail in the book while the book calls foreigners "mlecchas." Nearly all shelved books have signs of lead or ink; nearly all readers underline, highlight their favorite points; all write their names on the books and date them…as a stamp of ownership. But it's difficult to pick places in Rimi's The City of Love and it's also difficult to own it. The book belongs to history and the lines bear the footprints of the greedy herd. Rimi's novel reduces Western might to pervasive insecurity while the East at no point forfeits liberty. Rather, at the touch of Chandu's hands Fernando's "chest" changes from "crimson to brown." This stands for the ultimate conversion of color and race. The author however cautions that we are confronting "a bad time for the old ways: too many new things have to challenge the shadows where the truth moves." This is the time that Rimi's novel talks about where most of us wear masks which are best unmasked by love and by the city called Ashiqabad, where lovers look at a mirror that reflects their image of the Self and the Other and finally celebrate the conclusion with verses from Bullah Shah: "O Bullah, the Lord pervades both the worlds;
None now appears a stranger to me." Rimi B.Chattejee's novel is a worthy read, specially for those who have special interests in persecutions, decolonization and its attendant pain and pride. Rubana is a poet pursuing higher studies at Jadavpur University
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