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Honestly I'm disappointed with the poor reader/visitor feedback on my blog. Don't blame you...I'm a little dumb when it comes to being net savvy. Please email me @ ashimch@yahoo.com ....if you have something good/bad to say about my book. Your comments will help me to improve my next book which, very likely, is a sequel!
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Review in The Sunday Guardian...

http://www.sunday-guardian.com/bookbeat/the-sergeants-son-by-ashim-choudhury

Sameer Srivastava a friend who is a Colonel writes...

Dear Ashim Da,
Finished reading The Sergeant's Son last night. It is undoubtedly a wonderful piece of writing, narration which almost transits the reader to reality, sad at places but sprinkled with the Kalu's small little happy moments in his own ways.....
I think you have very aptly brought out a message that in majority of the cases one cannot override reality or 'what we are' in an exponential way.
Seeings Kalu's dreams shatter reminds every Indian of some moment in his/her life. And the fact that Samar accepts this in the end is also true because most fathers would not like to appear as losers to their kids by acknowledging their inability to fulfill their requirements.
Once again the narration, research and choice of words, anecdotes and settings comes alive, atleast to readers like me who can understand Armed forces, Bengalis, Allahabd, Mumbai, Cantonment, etc!!!
Congratulations once again!!!! My first time read of a book written by someone I know well!!!
Best Regards
Sameer

Review in the Business Standard 28 March 13

Fact as fiction

This innocent and charming boyhood tale is refreshing in that it keeps the reader's attention without going too deep into the darkness of growing up

An idyllic childhood is usually not the stuff of a great book. Without the torment of a bully or the tyranny of an abusive elder, the plot rarely thickens. Yet, this innocent and charming boyhood tale is refreshing in that it keeps the reader’s attention without               going too deep into the darkness of growing up.

The Sergeant’s Son is the story of Kalu, a boy born in the darkness ofamavasya, or a new-moon night. That is why, his mother tells him when he asks about his colour, he was born with a dark complexion. In a nation of coloured people, where fairness is coveted, Kalu is vexed at being thus singled out by nature. For us, as Indian readers, Kalu’s distress is easy                          to understand, as is his mother’s explanation. We know what he is talking about.

In fact, this is the kind of familiarity that marks most of the book. The stories about family, friends, school, the neighbourhood dynamics in a big city and a small town ring a bell. We have encountered similar people and waded through situations quite like the ones through which the author takes his protagonist. One such character is Kalu’s father, Sergeant Samar (and hence the name of the book). “Samar regularly subscribed to Desh, the leading Bengali literary journal. He would read the magazine from cover to cover. It was because of him that the children got into the habit of listening to the news on the radio both in the morning and at night.” If you belong to a Bengali family or know of one, you are sure to have met Samar, albeit under another name. Bengali men of a certain vintage are deeply nostalgic about the literary traditions of Desh and the English news on the radio.

The book takes us into a world we know. The characters are people we are likely to have met in the everyday humdrum of our lives. We are also most likely to have been in similar situations as the protagonist finds himself in or, at the very least, know of people who have been there. For example, the pressure of securing a rank in class even after firmly securing the teacher’s approbation is a familiar story. Kalu is often burdened with the need to excel in his class, even though “more than studying, his interest lay in drawing and colouring”. And then, there are those who never believe in his talent, accusing him of copying the pictures he drew from books and magazines with tracing paper. These attitudes cut deep and shape much of Kalu’s character as it develops through the rest of the book. Sceptics live among and within us, and we are sure to encounter them all through our lives. But the ones who make the most impact are those we meet when we are young; when our talent is only as good as what others say it is.

The book also gives us an insight into a world that we have long left behind. The Bombay the author describes is as far from the present as one can imagine. The travelling salesmen, selling everything from cakes to sugarcane to ice cream, for instance, are not part of the city’s landscape anymore. Nor can one imagine stealing mangoes off trees in the heart of the city. Similarly, the Allahabad that the author takes us to exists in an era long gone. It lives only in the literature of those times.

The book is faithful in the way it paints these places. It is almost as if we can see the bazaars of Allahabad with pushcarts stacked with vegetables and grain. Even though it may be impossible to find such a place in the city today, the book takes us there.

The strength of the book is that it deals with the known. It does not take an unfamiliar turn. But, in a way, that is its weakness too. At no point does the book make us wonder, “What next?”. The father’s stoicism, the mother’s frustrations, the rivalries that colour sibling relationships, and the sexual forays of a repressed adolescent do not bring any surprises. The author works with stereotypes; while there is no denying the fact that these are real people, it may not have been imprudent to sketch in a few edges to their personalities. Fiction does give one that liberty and the author may have done well to exercise that.

THE HINDU

March 21, 2013

Scenes from childhood

BUDHADITYA BHATTACHARYA

Ashim Chowdhury tells BUDHADITYA BHATTACHARYA about his debut novel, and the long, arduous road to its publication

One of the introductory quotes to Ashim Chowdhury’s debut novel The Sergeant’s Son (Rupa) is taken from William Wordsworth’s “Immortality Ode”, which contains the poet’s best remembered lines - “The Child is the father of the Man”. Simply put, it conveys the poet’s belief that a child’s way of viewing the world carries its trace into manhood and is worth preserving.

“The Sergeant’s Son” is essentially a novel about childhood. It tells the story of the Biswases — Samar and Basanti and their four sons. Samar Biswas is an employee in the Air Force, who hasn’t quite lived up to his wife’s, or his own, expectations of his career, moving from one posting to another without any real material advancement. He is predictably bitter, and often violent towards his wife and children. Kalu, the third son, is the narrator’s focus, and the family’s middle class trials, tribulations, and simple pleasures are often seen through his eyes.

The book is divided into two parts – Bombay and Allahabad, corresponding to his father’s posting in these cities — and the over forty chapters therein record moments of his life as also aspects of his family, friends, neighbours and neighbourhood. What emerges is a portrait of a child, on the throes of manhood, caught in the unfair transaction between his dreams of becoming an artist and his father’s desire to mould him in his own image, as an officer in the Air Force.

Like Kalu, Chowdhury joined the Air Force reluctantly. He dreamt of being an artist, and still does. The novel is a semi-autobiographical account, drawn from his own days in Bombay and Allahabad. The idea for the book came during his Air Force training in Bangalore in 1977. “It was a very crowded place but I felt very lonely. I used to spend a lot of time in the library and it was there that I read Dom Moraes’ My Son’s Father. After finishing it, I thought I could also write,” he says.

But he didn’t, not until 1994 anyway, when he was working with the United Nations Development Programmme (the book wouldn’t have happened without Peter Godwin, his English boss, who allowed him to carry home his office laptop, he writes). He finished the book in two years, and even though publishers expressed interest, nothing came of it. The manuscript reached his present publishers (for the second time) in 2011, and was selected for publication. The period in between could have been punishing, but the author gives credit to Shashi Tharoor, whose comments and suggestions on the book instilled confidence in him.

Although art remains his first love, he rues not having done much with it.

“Although I am not very prolific, I hope to have a few solo exhibitions of my landscapes,” he says.

Interestingly, Chowdhury has also been a cartoonist during his career as a journalist in Delhi.

At the moment, he is working on a sequel to “The Sergeant’s Son” and a collection of short stories.

He also hopes to get the novel translated into other languages, so that ordinary readers (those like his protagonist) can read and find resonances in their own life. “I wish I had written it in Hindi,” he says.

Finally...!

Presented a copy of The Sergeant's Son to Shashi Tharoor. "Handsome" is how he described the cover and  feel of the book.

With the IITans...

Was @ IIT Mandi!
As a guest speaker at EXODIA, the annual fest of IIT Mandi....It was a humbling experience talking to the brightest minds of India. The book-reading and questions went off very well considering that many of the students had never read a book (novel) before! "We're reading all the time...!" one of them said, referring to course books...But I was glad that at the end of it I was able to convert a few to reading literature, borne by the fact that many of them bought their Author-signed copy of The sergeant's Son.
Many asked probing questions on how one becomes a writer...  
The high point of the visit, however, was Sunday evening when the entire Mandi hills rocked to the songs of EKA music the rock band from Delhi led by Benny Pinto, Hitesh and Lokesh Madan!
Who says IIT wallahs don't know how to rock...!
Thank you IIT Mandi!