Vol. II. Issue. III September 2011 - The Criterion: An International ...

www.the-criterion.com The Criterion: An International Journal in English ISSN 0976-8165
heard shouts __ a taxi driver must be insulting a bus driver. It
was the first traffic jam of the evening, punctual, ceremonial
and glorious (Chaudhuri, 80-81).
Chaudhuri’s use of the adjectives ‘punctual’, ‘ceremonial’, and ‘glorious’ for
“the first traffic jam of the evening” is an instance of a mellowed irony. As a
Calcuttan, Chaudhuri seems to smile along with the inconveniences caused by
traffic jams in the city. Thus when the traffic resumes its flow and everything
becomes normal again, the author implies that not only the flow of the traffic
but also the flow of the natural world had been halted, and that life comes
back to the city with the cleaning of the jam:
The two hours of golden stillness has ended. The cars and the
crowded buses were on the roads again; Abhi and Babla [The
two cousin brothers of Sandeep] would come back home from
school [for their school bus might have been halted in the
traffic jam]; pigeons flapped their wings and rose above
rooftops, a clean universe of rooftops and terraces (Chaudhuri,
81).
Of course traffic-jams in the streets of Calcutta sometimes do have their
serious consequences too. The novel shows how Sandeep’s Chhotomama,
who already had had a heart attack, suffered another attack in the car itself,
because the car by which Chhotomama had been taken to the hospital for
immediate treatment was caught in a traffic-jam:
On the way to the hospital, Chhotomama had another attack.
He vomited on the floor of the company car [the car of the
company where Sandeep’s father worked]. The driver, caught
in a traffic jam, shook his head from side to side. He [the
driver] had seen these things happen to his elder brother, who
had died in half an hour (Chaudhuri, 93).
This is a very common and appalling phenomenon that the city of Calcutta
witnesses almost every day.
A City of Frequent Power-Cuts:
Frequent and uncertain power-cut, another major problematic aspect of
urban life in Calcutta, has also a vivid representation in A Strange and Sublime
Address. The author, in the novel, gives as much as five references to the
intolerable frequent power-cuts of Calcutta which no doubt exemplify
unwanted and tedious disruption in the flow of the common urban life in the
city. The first reference, as for instance, is made in Chapter 4 of the novel
when we are given a picture of Chhotomama’s household on an “unbearably
hot” (Chaudhuri, 25) afternoon while all the members of the family are
striving hard to beat the heat which is doubled by a sudden power cut:
They [the members of Chhotomama’s family including
Sandeep and his mother] had shut all the windows and closed
the shutters so that the room was a large box covered by a lid,
Vol. II. Issue. III 195 September 2011