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

More documents

Recommendations

Info

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
www.the-criterion.com The Criterion: An International Journal in English ISSN 0976-8165 the young ones are anxious to leave the city for one cause or the other. Thus has Khuku’s son, Bablu gone to America (California) to complete his research in Economics, while Bhasker’s second son and Bhola’s brother, Manik has gone to Germany to obtain his graduation degree from there. And the author anticipates that he (Manik) will never return to Calcutta because: Recently he’d written from Germany that he wanted to study management in America once he’d graduated . . . (Chaudhuri, 400). On the other hand, the older generation returns back to the city after retirement. Khuku, Bhola’s sister, thus returns to Calcutta from Shillong with her husband, Shib after his retirement. “The young leave this city if they can;” she says, “the old, it seems return to it . . .” (Chaudhuri, 453). Moreover, Khuku also anticipates that Mohit, her late elder sister’s grandchild, will also leave Calcutta within two years for America: But he would not be here long. Little did he know that two years from now he would be in America. Around him, the city decayed … It would give way to a brief adolescence and then he would be gone to America, where his uncle [Manik] was. Before long he’d sit for his Scholastic Aptitude Test (Chaudhuri, 360). Contrarily, Bhasker’s father, Bhola, “a German-trained engineer” (Chaudhuri, 402) has a special fascination for the city of Calcutta. The author’s extent about Bhola’s love for Calcutta is noteworthy: Her husband loved this city [Calcutta]. He loved its fish, rui and katla and koi [different varieties of fish] with black oily scales, and during the monsoons he would cry out a truism that he repeated with great ardour at this time every year: ‘Ilish is the king of fishes!’. . . Thirty years ago, he had come to this city and got married. Since then, its air had changed, till now a nimbus of smoke and dust and fumes surrounded it always. But he loved it as one who had come here and made his life here. Here he had launched his small business, here he had had his children, Bhasker, Manik and Piyu; . . . and in them, in the way they spoke and in what they spoke of, he saw Calcutta more truly than himself; they were the children of this city (Chaudhuri, 325). But this vision of the city of Calcutta in Bhola’s eyes is however shattered: But three children had become ghosts as three children had grown up, and only he [Bhola himself], it seemed, had remained the same. Who was he? Time and Calcutta seemed to pass through him like water (Chaudhuri, 325). It is for this reason that he feels depressed. Immigration from a city like Calcutta to other places including foreign countries for some specific purposes is an important and well debated issue that appears as an iterating image Vol. II. Issue. III 199 September 2011
Page 1 and 2:
www.the-criterion.com The Criterion
Page 3 and 4:
Page 5 and 6:
Page 7 and 8:
Page 9 and 10:
Page 11 and 12:
Page 13 and 14:
Page 15 and 16:
Page 17 and 18:
Page 19 and 20:
Page 21 and 22:
Page 23 and 24:
Page 25 and 26:
Page 27 and 28:
Page 29 and 30:
Page 31 and 32:
Page 33 and 34:
Page 35 and 36:
Page 37 and 38:
Page 39 and 40:
Page 41 and 42:
Page 43 and 44:
Page 45 and 46:
Page 47 and 48:
Page 49 and 50:
Page 51 and 52:
Page 53 and 54:
Page 55 and 56:
Page 57 and 58:
Page 59 and 60:
Page 61 and 62:
Page 63 and 64:
Page 65 and 66:
Page 67 and 68:
Page 69 and 70:
Page 71 and 72:
Page 73 and 74:
Page 75 and 76:
www.the-criterion.com 6 The Criteri
Page 77 and 78:
Page 79 and 80:
Page 81 and 82:
Page 83 and 84:
Page 85 and 86:
Page 87 and 88:
Page 89 and 90:
Page 91 and 92:
Page 93 and 94:
Page 95 and 96:
Page 97 and 98:
Page 99 and 100:
Page 101 and 102:
Page 103 and 104:
Page 105 and 106:
Page 107 and 108:
Page 109 and 110:
Page 111 and 112:
Page 113 and 114:
Page 115 and 116:
Page 117 and 118:
Page 119 and 120:
Page 121 and 122:
Page 123 and 124:
Page 125 and 126:
Page 127 and 128:
Page 129 and 130:
Page 131 and 132:
Page 133 and 134:
Page 135 and 136:
Page 137 and 138:
Page 139 and 140:
Page 141 and 142:
Page 143 and 144:
Page 145 and 146:
Page 147 and 148: www.the-criterion.com The Criterion
Page 197: www.the-criterion.com The Criterion
Page 249 and 250:
Page 251 and 252:
Page 253 and 254:
Page 255 and 256:
Page 257 and 258:
Page 259 and 260:
Page 261 and 262:
Page 263 and 264:
Page 265 and 266:
Page 267 and 268:
Page 269 and 270:
Page 271 and 272:
Page 273 and 274:
Page 275 and 276:
Page 277 and 278:
Page 279 and 280:
Page 281 and 282:
Page 283 and 284:
Page 285 and 286:
Page 287 and 288:
Page 289 and 290:
Page 291 and 292:
Page 293 and 294:
Page 295 and 296:
Page 297 and 298:
Page 299 and 300:
Page 301 and 302:
Page 303 and 304:
Page 305 and 306:
Page 307 and 308:
Page 309 and 310:
Page 311 and 312:
Page 313:
show all

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

Create successful ePaper yourself

Delete template?

Save as template?