Saturday 14 September 2013

Short n Sweet....A review in The Indian Express

As a Child Sees

Swetha Ramakrishnan  
Sat Sep 14 2013
Book: The Sergeant's Son
Author: Ashim Choudhury
Publisher: Rupa
Price: Rs 250
Pages: 244
Kalu, the protagonist of Ashim Choudhury's The Sergeant's Son, is a keen observer, and as he becomes the voice of the first few chapters, you get a child's perspective of a military camp in Kalina, Bombay. We learn that Kalu's family has made this difficult shift to a thriving metropolis from eastern India, that he is as close to his mother as he is distant from his father and that his interests lie in art, much to the disdain of his father, who wants him to join the Air Force. Choudhury's recreation of this little boy's world is filled with amazement and charm.
The Sergeant's Son revolves around this six-member family, Sergeant Samar Biswas, his wife Basanti and their four children, Kalu being the third. The narrative is peppered with endearing anecdotes, and one in particular stands out for containing the winning ingredient of the book — glimpses into a child's mind. During their stay in Bombay, the Biswas children are introduced to their uncle from Assam and his German wife. They are excited about meeting a white lady and their feverish wonder to see her draped in a sari is palpable. When the father dismisses their excited whispers by calling her a "daughter of an ordinary worker" in Germany, you can sense their disappointment.
As the story progresses, Kalu's familiar world disappears in his struggle. His family moves to Allahabad, which is a stark contrast to Bombay. The only constant is Kalu's timid aspiration to become an artist. Basanti constantly tries to save him from his father's wrath, which arises from his own thwarted ambitions. This is a familiar set-up and we yearn to see Kalu's own perspective and understanding. Here, the narrative is lost in a web of its own making as it tries to tie up ends introduced earlier.

Much of the story is probably autobiographical, as Choudhury himself reluctantly joined the Air Force in the 1970s. It is during his training in Bangalore that the idea for the book came along. The last few chapters in The Sergeant's Son take a tumultuous turn, leaving room for a sequel. If it can retain the sensitivity and simplicity of the original, Choudhury's future work will be something to look forward to.
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Sunday 1 September 2013

A Review in The Hindu...!

http://www.thehindu.com/books/books-reviews/narrow-little-lives/article5075510.ece
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Narrow little lives

JAYA BHATTACHARJI ROSE
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The Sergeant’s Son; Ashim Choudhury, Rupa, Rs.250.
Special ArrangementThe Sergeant’s Son; Ashim Choudhury, Rupa, Rs.250.
TOPICS

arts, culture and entertainment

books and literature

A competent tale of growing up in a military camp.

The Sergeant’s Son is exactly what the title suggests; the story of Kalu, Sergeant Samar Biswas’s son. Narrated by Kalu, the third of four brothers, the book details his life from his birth in Barrackpore till his departure to Kanpur to join the Air Force as a Radio Telephone Operator. The book, set between mid-1960s and 1977, is about an ordinary life in the Air Force. The children study in the nearest school; their mother, Basanti imposes a strict routine supervising their grooming, meal times, and homework every single day and insisting on prayers every Thursday evening. Their dour father is the disciplinarian whom they dread since he is not averse to beating the sons mercilessly, especially the renegade eldest Taposh or Borda, with a “shoe that was handy or a leather belt that been specially ordered for the purpose.”
The story documents the narrow little lives that the Biswases share with the other “migratory birds” of the Air Force station. A bunch of characters waft in and out of the book, never to appear again — many of the playmates at the station, other personnel like Corporal Dhar and his wife, Kakima, Mathew Uncle, the Vermas, the Anglo-Indian family called Sampios or the teachers like “Blanch teacher” and “Karachi teacher”, and the women who clean the bathrooms. Kalu even describes the few early sexual encounters with Bimla Devi, the maid who seduced him when he was alone at home and with his classmate Amit. Later the Std. IX geometry teacher, Mr. Shankar, assaults Kalu in a drunken stupor.
For someone who speaks and writes English well, a fact acknowledged even by his teachers, Kalu’s obsession with the language is trying. His discomfort presumably stems from the fact that his competence at the language masks his social class but his origins still make him insecure. In Bombay, Kalu and his siblings feel inferior to the five Sampio children even though they never went to school. Since they “spoke the Queen’s Language no one could think poorly of them.” In Allahabad, Kalu “was never truly part of the English-speaking gang. He hovered on its periphery — a low-caste pretending to be a Brahmin; or more appropriately, a soldier’s son trying to mix with officers’ children. The gang mostly consisted of defence officers’ children.” But he realises that his ability to speak fluent English “gave him a passport”, probably to improve his status in life.
A first novel tends to have autobiographical elements in it but the preoccupation with that seems to be the trademark of much Indian fiction in English, with the writer inevitably getting absorbed in minute details. The Sergeant’s Son is no different but it is a story told competently.
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