The Immortals by Amit Chaudhuri is a storytelling feast about two families, one of which, sometimes half-heartedly, dedicates itself to India’s great music tradition and the other, also with some qualifications, dedicates itself to business. The families form a complex alliance when the matriarch of the business family, Mallika Sengupta, takes singing lessons. Bombay in the 80′s, Mumbai, bursting with new wealth and a millenarian cultural confidence, is the setting.
If I were to tell you that it was Amit Chadhuri’s extraordinary narrative skills that made me fall for him as a writer; you’d probably get it wrong. You’d might think: plot with a nuclear family and some neighbors at the most. But Chadhuri presents his characters in the setting of their extended families and with networks of social connections. You walk into the Sengupta’s spacious, light-besotted condo. The pattern of the Persian carpet, Jamesian in its aesthetic and moral complexity, seduces your attention away from everyday life amd you’re swept away.
In New York, I’m used to turning a sharp corner and finding myself in new neighborhood, a different world. AC can tell a story that way…with in-laws sometimes shifting the angle of vision. Motilalji, who half-heartedly gives singing lessons, takes his brother-in-law, Shyamji, to the home of his upscale student. Motilalji wants bragging rights and embarrasses the hell of out of Shyamji by treating the wealthy Mallika as his familiar.
Chaudhauri holds a black belt in segues. Up to this point we have been hearing about the clan of musicians. But now, like a thick leaf in an old book turning, the whole novel shifts towards the business homestead.
Mallika is always taking singing lessons. She wants recognition. She is talented. But she also loves her life as the wife of a CEO. She loves the lavish condo. She is so used to traveling in chauffeur-driven cars that she can’t imagine getting around Bombay in any other way. The Senguptas are always trying out restaurants, going to parties and buying knickknacks.
Her teacher, her family, her husband’s business colleagues, are always telling her what a promising singer she is. But can you be promising for twenty years? Shyamji is gifted too, the son of an iconic classical musician. But he has bills to pay and a family that wants to live a comfortable life. So he emphasizes the easier music that everyone loves. He neglects his craft as much as Mallika does. Half-serious about your craft…once I get more comfortable, once I’m better established financially, then I’ll devote myself to my skills but not now.
It’s Mallika’s son, Nirmalya, who is the pole star, not a particpant so much as an observer, set apart from this constellation of poseurs. But he’s also like the ball still spinning on the roulette wheel. We wonder where he will end up.
I was once dragged by my friend Gene to a
Ravi Shankar concert at Lincoln Center. I wasn’t sure I’d like it since all I’m into is western classical. But I learned that there’s a dazzling Indian classical tradition
There were a lot of pieces played at the concert that you could tell were designed to appeal to the plebs. They had 3,000 seats to fill. But then the musicians performed a classical raga without diluting it for the crowd. Its form was like a pond filling up with with water. Just as the pond was nearly overfull…about to spill over…the music stopped. I’ll never forget that piece. And since I’ve read
The Immortals; I’ve bought
The Raga Guide A Survey of 74 Hinustani Ragas by Joep Bor. It has four CDs. I’m going in.
The mortals become immortals; the immortals become mortals. – AC quotes
Heraclitus. There’s a Platonic siren song playing in Amit Chaudhuri’s
The Immortals. It’s an invitation for the characters to reach for something better than their mundane selves, to leave their comfort zones…or maybe it’s just a reminder that we’re all too human.
Is that a fiction…to think that through art…or religion…or philosophy, a spiritual home is available for us floundering human beings? Henry James, in his journal, called it “the Eden of art”. If that’s a fiction, then it’s great fiction.
-DH
The Immortals by Amit Chaudhuri is a storytelling feast about two families, one of which, sometimes half-heartedly, dedicates itself to India’s great music tradition and the other, also with some qualifications, dedicates itself to business. The families form a complex alliance when the matriarch of the business family, Mallika Sengupta, takes singing lessons. Bombay in the 80′s, Mumbai, bursting with new wealth and a millenarian cultural confidence, is the setting.
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