Author: Dhruva Chak
Publisher: Stellar
Year: 2005
Language: English
Pages: 277
ISBN/UPC (if available): 8187107308
Description
It is almost the exact middle of the twentieth century. The Raj has seen its last days, but the memories of its glory are still fresh & its remnants abound in a country, which has been in its grip for over 300 years. Never more so than in the metros & state capitals of India. Hiren Chatterjee is born in this twilight zone, where the future beckons & the past still lives.
The novel courses through a nostalgic journey traversing five cities in India, a Lucknow full of magnificent buildings & gardens & the vibrant world of the Anglo-Indian, an Allahabad as earnest as the grave, an Ahmedabad where state-of-the-art Management education is imparted in a building riddled with intriguing holes, a Bombay which smells of fish & freedom & a Calcutta based on Club life & the pleasures of Park street, a city where time has stood permanently still. This backdrop provides poignant & sometimes startling snapshots of what constitute a life for Hiren, a lad born to privilege but never comfortable with it. And sensitively portrays the yearnings of a youngster to make sense out of a life that seems to run on in directions over which he has no control. No wonder, he goes through life at times incredibly facile, at others frightfully difficult. Who is the real Hiren? The little boy who wanted so badly to be good or the enigmatic Chatterjee Babu who is a perennial source of mystery to Ted Slater, the young Englishman, who has vowed to fix him.
You are almost lost in a maze of old world charm, catching the last glimpses of the dying Raj, the magic of Hiren’s internal world, a world caught between the demands of the future and the allures of the decadent past. Is he Lord Chatterjee, the magnificent, or just Gungadin the goodest of people, or just plain, weak Hiren born to failure? The answer has a chameleon-like quality depending on where you come from. But meanwhile, there is much to be savoured in the journey Hiren takes, step by bewildered step, to the most important decision of his tormented life.
Contents
PREFACE
1. The Dance of Kali
2. Shaam-e-Avadh
3. Slater Serving
4. All Good Things
5. Advantage Chatterjee
6. Where Three Rivers Conflue
7. The Blooding of Slater
8. And Quiet Flows the Gomati
9. Ripples in the Hooghly
10. Of Holes and Wholes
11. Slater is Curious
12. Aashoon, Hiren Babu, Aashoon
13. Slater Investigates
14. Oh Calcutta
15. The Scarlet Pimpernel
16. Goddamerung
17. Aashi Bandhu, Porey Dekha Hobey
(See You Later Friend)