Some writers of fiction cannot but remain a presence within their stories, and one is palpably aware of their voice interpreting the world of their characters. Others have the gift of being able to dissolve themselves into their creations so that, after guiding the reader by the hand for a while, they suddenly appear to have vanished into thin air. Where have they gone? Their characters, like unruly tenants, have taken over the story: the unfolding of events is presented as if filtered through their consciousness, not that of an observer from outside the action. The total communion with the world of a character that this provides is one of the greatest satisfactions a reader of fiction can experience. This capacity for narrative empathy, for depicting a scene the way a character might see it, is everywhere apparent in A Strange Attachment and Other Stories, and this, combined with Bandyopadhyay’s many other qualities, make it one of the most satisfying works of vernacular Indian fiction to appear in English translation in years—a kind of late gift, like a parcel arriving in the post years after it was sent, from the author of Pather Panchali now dead 55 years. Bandyopadhyay allows his narrative voice to be coloured by his characters’s point of view most clearly in his stories about children (whose way of looking at the world, as readers will remember from Pather Panchali and the story of Apu and Durga, he could reproduce with remarkable fidelity). In “Dalu Gets Into Trouble”, a huge lumber boat drops anchor at the village of a small boy, Dalu, and his younger brother Santu. Spellbound by the boat, the two brothers spend hours everyday gazing at it. One day a sailor invites them aboard, but much as he wants to go Dalu demurs, worried that someone will see them in broad daylight and tell their mother. He decides that they will come back after sunset, under cover of dark. Bandyopadhyay tells us: “Santu wasn’t overjoyed at this new plan. How could anyone dare to go down to the river’s edge after dark? What about the witch living in the tamarind tree on Cinte the Bagdi’s land? She pounced on little boys and dragged them to the very tip-top of the tree. No, sunset was a bad time of day. Santu told his brother his fears.” Bandyopadhyay’s courtesy towards his character here lies in the way he imports Santu’s concerns into the narrative without any indication that these are specifically Santu’s thoughts. Here we see fiction authentically carrying out its pledge to the reader, which is to give us new eyes.
