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

www.the-criterion.com The Criterion: An International Journal in English ISSN 0976-8165
Technology are the two departments which have reached to such a height of
development today that one can hardly think of any existence in the present
world without receiving any help from these two benefactors. This is
important to note too that the city, at the same time, also plays an immense
role in properly bringing about man’s exceeding development in these two
major areas of human civilization. In fact, one is the supplement for the
development of the other. Quite naturally, Calcutta as a city must have such a
place of pride. But, unfortunately enough, Chaudhuri’s A Strange and Sublime
Address gives us a different image; here Chaudhuri has represented the very
worse condition of the telephones and the telephone department in Calcutta
during the 80s and 90s of the last century. He has called the Calcutta
Telephones as a “creature” (Chaudhuri, 169), and commented that “A
telephone in Calcutta is quite useless” (Chaudhuri, 169). The author very
eloquently refers to the age-old comic artist, “Charlie Chaplin eating a shoe
with great relish in The Gold Rush” and he wonders “what Chaplin would
have done with this telephone [of Calcutta]” (Chaudhuri, 169). This perception
of the author is no doubt highly witty and satiric. However, the condition of
the Calcutta Telephones has gradually become much more praiseworthy in the
later decades.
In Freedom Song:
Somewhat like A Strange and Sublime Address, Amit Chaudhuri’s
Freedom Song (1998), also tells the story of two middle-class families in the
city of Calcutta –– one of Khuku Biswas and the other of Mini (Supriti
Biswas). The novel describes how the members of an ordinary middle class
Bengali family, though somehow radical in mind and heart, residing in a city
like Calcutta, manages to marry off a troublesome young lad named Bhaskar.
This telling is intermingled with details of the friendship of Khuku and Mini
along with their respective families. But here also Chaudhuri has done well
with the photographic detailing of the minutiae with special reference to the
troubles of urbanity in the modern city of Calcutta. And, interestingly enough,
Chaudhuri here in this novel has dealt with a cluster of those problematic
aspects of urbanity in Calcutta that he has not represented in the earlier novel.
Problem of Generation-Gap:
Images of radical changes in life style, education, culture and the
language of daily conversations of the new generations of Calcuttans are
reflected upon in Chaudhuri’s depiction of Calcutta in this novel. A clear
difference in the culture and the life style between two different generations of
people –– the old and the new –– can be noted in Bhola and his children,
Bhasker, Manik, and Piyu in this text.
Differences between the two generations can be found in their distinct
ways of regarding the city of Calcutta as a place to live in. We are told by the
author that old people are content to stay in the city till their last breath, while
Vol. II. Issue. III 198 September 2011