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Journalism of Courage
Death at 101 is not an entirely unexpected occurrence. But no one really expected Nirad C. Chaudhuri to die. Born in the last century, he imperiously strode his way through this one and somehow it seemed only right that this blithe spirit, more sparrow than nightingale, was at hand to greet the next. Certainly, it is very unlikely that Chaudhuri himself expected to die. He seemed to have arrived at a pact with his creator, one in which he promised to keep the world enthralled with his wit and outrageous perspicacity in return for eternal life. 8220;Survival of the unfittest,8221; Chaudhuri would chuckle in reply to anyone who had the temerity to express astonishment over his astonishing agility at the age of 90 or 95 or whatever age he happened to be at that point of time. Alas, the hand of the great anarch will eventually lay low even the fittest amongst us, it seems.
In many ways Chaudhuri inhabited the cusp between Empire and Colony, between East and West, between Tradition and Modernity. If he fell in lovewith his wife the moment she displayed her ability to spell 8220;Beethoven8221; on their wedding night, he was equally stirred by the solemn strains of Rabindra sangeet. If he could expound at length on the right wine to be served with smoked salmon, he was also known to be partial to macherjhol fish curry. If he took pride in his bowler hat and tweed jacket, he was equally at ease in his starched dhoti-kurta. And although he left Calcutta for Delhi in 1942 and Delhi for Oxford in 1970, it was never a radical rupture. Memory, Chaudhuri would later argue, is a product of interest in life. And Chaudhuri never lost interest in the land of his birth as was apparent in the fact that he never paused in his project of pouring scorn on it. The decadence of Bengali culture or the inscrutable ways of Indian babudom, or the filth on the streets of Indian cities conspired to work up a Swiftian rage in his frail five-foot frame.
