Beyond All Heavens By Jayabrato Chatterjee HarperCollins Price: Rs 295Jayabrato Chatterjee loves to travel. So much so that even his book traverses many landscapes, countries, through many decades in a search for one’s roots, for love, for home; a home that is found after a riotous journey on a long and winding road. Along this trip we meet maharanis, poets, theatre actors, eunuchs, sadhus, revolutionaries, widows — every character you can possibly imagine living from here to England up to France! In this epic-type tale of an English journalist’s attempt to put the demons of her past to rest, what’s interesting is the structure.The book begins in the long past of the mid-1800s and effortlessly comes to the present, a violence-ridden India of 1947, only to return to the past, telling many stories that begin to converge and become one by the end. The passengers on this journey that crosses international boundaries frequently learn difficult lessons at a huge personal cost, losing their loved ones along the way, but are eventually rewarded by the rediscovery of love in their lives.Another interesting feature is the intimacy between England and India, specifically the volatile Bengali atmosphere, whether it is a passionate affair between an English woman and an Indian youth or the friendship between the English journalist and an Indian eunuch.Or then it may be English lifestyles being adopted by educated Bengalis, as shown in an incident about an English doctor being employed to deliver a baby because the Bengali man doesn’t have faith in the old midwife system. This causes a huge protest in his family, and his mother leaves the house forever without even seeing the face of the grandson born to her. When this baby grows up he is sent to London to study law at a time when legends like Oscar Wilde are getting punished by the law for “deviant” behaviour.This coming together of the colonised and the colonialist is good to read; also because of the irony in it. The very tools acquired by the Indians from the English, the learning, the knowledge, are all used against their own autocratic rule. Of course, in 21st century India, these ironies become even more resonant for me because much of the logic given by the freedom fighters in the book for their aggression is the same used by those fighting to “liberate” Kashmir from “Indian rule” today. These lines, for example, are uttered by an activist at a student meeting: “Why should a mother be insulted again and again and why should her children not protest? The worst form of bondage is that of despondency where progress is hampered at every step with insult and imprisonment.” This is followed by cries of “Vande Mataram!”The language and style the book is written in, however, are drawbacks. It’s important for a writer describing cultures of a hundred years ago to consciously avoid using archaic forms of expression. The devices of description should be new, of today, to give a story pace, a lightness of manner, a certain state-of-the-art tone so that the reader may absorb the plot faster and be left with only the emotions to feel and experience. Chatterjee doesn’t always allow his characters and their pain to speak; all too often they pronounce axioms thrust upon them by the author.Jayabrato Chatterjee transports us boldly to many places and many ages; but to truly reach beyond all heavens, if such a place exists, a storyteller has to do something much simpler, something closer to home; he has to make us cry.Tanuja Chandra is a Mumbai-based film-maker.
