'Clouds' - A book deserving of Man Booker
CLOUDS, Chandrahas Choudhury’s second fiction, has come out a good nine years after his first novel, ARZEE THE DWARF. Why such a long gap, especially, when the earlier one won so much accolade and awards? Well, you can’t question an author’s moods. But I know one thing, he has been at it ever since I came across him – 2013. It appeared he had completed it then, and I even read a chapter of the book. (That chapter has now gone to the back seat, much transformed.) It takes that long to come out with a literary masterpiece. I must dare to predict here, that CLOUDS is well on its way to grab the Man Booker. I would be surprised if it doesn’t get into the shortlist, at least.
The writing style is unique, very original, ‘Chandrahasian’, if I may say about his voice. Two stories run parallelly, alternating every chapter. It might seem they are entirely different stories with nothing connecting them. They are symbolically conjoined by clouds. So there are two First Person narratives running side by side – Farhad representing a progressive Parsi community and Rabi (with Eeja and Ooi) representing a religiously dogmatic Odia society. The author has shuttled between these two diverse mindsets, using characters at opposite ends of the social order, with élan, and has left readers like me gasping to catch up with both the ideologies. I guess that is the charm of his writing. The pace, although slow, often urges the reader to turn back the pages they’ve already read to be sure they’ve got it right. I did not get why the pronouns for Eeja and Ooi are in first-letter-capitals (like He, She, Him, Her, They, You, Your etc) like it is done for Gods. Those seemed like brakes in the middle of the sentences.
For Farhad and his ladyloves, it is the attainment of sexual liberation, breaking away from bondage that the middle-class-well-off people in their midlife have to face, especially if they are single. Farhad, Zahra, Hemlata are all separated from their spouses and realize they have serious urges in life other than professional ones. Their story can be summed up as sexual revolution of an older generation.
On the other side, the group from Odisha is trying to stick to dogmas and rituals leaving their desires and consequences to their Gods. Even here, Eeja and Ooi consider themselves much more religiously permissive than their attendant Rabi from the Cloudmaker tribe. But Rabi, though an uneducated tribal, who worships Cloudmaker as the absolute God, appears to be the most rational in his actions and understanding. Finally, he liberates himself by running away, but not before completing his assigned task of taking care of an old couple. Another main character here, Bhagan Bhai, engulfed in social development activities is a bachelor despite pressures from his parents. He too finds a live-in partner in a woman with an abusive husband.
The writing is so fresh and different – two first person narrators often engaged in ranting out their thoughts. That’s how we get a peek into their minds. Farhad, at times, speaks in the third person referring to himself as Farhad (or Billimoria, that’s his surname) when he makes light of himself or when he wants to emphasise his thoughts. On the other side, Rabi indulges in talking to himself when he wants to pick on Eeja, but cannot, because he is only an attendant.
In the end, the two stories don’t merge. They end independently, the way each had started, but both drop into anti-climaxes, with no resolution in sight. And that’s another positive for a daring author.
