A Dickens Kind of Love

Most of us first met Dickens in our English textbooks. We tried hard to understand Miss Havisham’s heartbreak,Pip’s persistence and Estella’s cruelty. We made notes in the margin,tore through the chapters between our economics and math classes. But snuff-inhaling,mild-mannered Madge met Dickens through his dentist. “It was the ’60s,at that time even dentists read books,” he says. Unimpressed by his patient’s dental reports and his English skills,the good doctor urged him to read Dickens to “catch the spirit of the English language”.

And thus began a lifetime’s affair. In 1992,Madge went to Canterbury to attend a Dickens summer school. Inspired by a few Japanese participants who ran a Dickens fellowship in their country,Madge decided to start the Indian chapter in Pune the same year. Admiring Dickens for maintaining a “bounding vitality despite bitter experiences,” Madge organises monthly discussions and readings. While he doesn’t like admitting a favourite book,he confesses he has read Bleak House every summer vacation for the last 30 years. He likes the opening description of the fog,“Fog everywhere. Fog up the river,where it flows among green aits and meadows; fog down the river,where it rolls defiled among the tiers of shipping and the waterside pollutions of a great (and dirty) city.” For Madge,while this description creates the city,it also reveals the rot in the judiciary system.

Others have their own Dickens stories. Some cherish him for the children he immortalised,others the cities he painted or the social systems he critiqued. Prolific novelist Anita Nair has a holiday tradition of reading from a special edition of Christmas Carol every year. For her,Dickens shines on because he “catches the pulse of the place” and dwells on the world outside rather than the rumblings within his characters.

Nair,who is participating in What Would Dickens Write Today,a series of live events organised by The British Council,India,believes that Dickens would indeed be capturing the urbane cityscape if he lived today,not that of the rich and walled-in,but of the poor and walled-out.

To be a Dickensian author today carries a badge of praise. It implies a diligence of research and a dedication to reality. It means looking at the world from inconvenient angles,to stare filth in the face,to ferret the streets,comb the industries and scrutinise the people. But to be Dickensian also requires having a good measure of fun and a peerless skill with language. Cruelty and absurdity,deprivation and humour inhabit Dickens’s streets in equal measure.

To be Dickensian is also to entertain. For author Amit Chaudhuri,the Bollywood mafia movies “capturing urban flux and sharp characters in a magical and unexpected way”,are Dickensian. Nair considers writers of crime fiction like Ian Rankin,with his rich atmospheric stories where the city plays a character,Dickensian.

Back in 1857,the British novelist wasn’t too polite about India,believing the race ought to be exterminated for their abominable atrocities. But if he were to rise from his grave and be shown the folly of his ways like Ebenezer Scrooge,he might actually exult in all the stories India throws up.

Believing modestly that the secret of his success lay in “keeping his eyes open”,Dickens would have flourished here. One can picture him starting his adventures at the New Delhi railway station,scribbling notes,which he will later decipher in the company of his pet raven Grip. He watches the taut neck muscles of a coolie as he lifts a suitcase to his head. He studies the rivulet of sewage flowing down the tracks. A bright-eyed bandicoot darts from one dark orifice to another and Dickens wonders if a Mr Bandicootis could star in one of his books one day.

He follows a boy up the tracks,watching as he picks discarded plastic cups and water bottles. He finds that he sleeps in a shed behind the electric transformer. His only belongings are a tattered mat for himself and a mud bowl,filled with milk and floating biscuits for his dog. The boy earns daily wages but saves none,choosing,instead,to spend all his earnings on movies in theatres,glue to sniff and drugs for forgetting.

In 2012,as we remember Charles Dickens by reading him and re-reading him,let’s celebrate him by keeping our eyes open and seeing the city he would have seen.

‘He could empathise with the people he met’

Lucinda Hawksley,the great great great granddaughter of Charles Dicken is a non-fiction author,based in London,who writes on travel,art,history and literature. She recently wrote Charles Dickens,a guide to the person and the author,commemorating her famous ancestor’s bicentenary. In this email interview,she talks about Dickens’ secrets,and hazards a guess on what might have interested him in India. Excerpts:

On Charles Dickens’ 200th anniversary what are your thoughts on him? What has been his chief contribution to literature?

He was a man of exceptional talent,because he could empathise with the people he met and observed and that comes across so vividly in his literature. He “speaks” to his audience and that is why I believe people become so wrapped up in Dickens’s worlds. I am also very proud that he was not only an author but a prolific and passionate campaigning journalist,he really changed the world in which he lived and people of our time owe him a huge debt of gratitude for the campaigns he led.

Can you share a family anecdote on him that has passed from one generation to another?

I’m afraid they’re all in the public domain! When I was researching my biography of his daughter (Katey: The Life and Loves of Dickens’s Artist Daughter),I discovered that when her brothers were teasing her for her nervous habit of going around the room touching every object a certain number of times (she suffered from an obsessive compulsive disorder,at times of stress particularly),Dickens told his children,”I used to do that too”. I found that fascinating,I’d never realised that before.

You spent three weeks travelling around India in 2011. Where did you go?

I went to Mumbai,Delhi,Kolkata and around Rajasthan. I had a wonderful time and particularly fell in love with Udaipur.

If Dickens were to come to India,what do you think he would write about? Where would he find his characters?

I think he would write about the social problems,the poor and the disenfranchised and the corruption — as he did everywhere he went. I think he would be devastated by the huge gap between rich and poor,it is similar to the London Dickens knew in that sense. I think he would find his characters all around him,just as he did in everyday life — he was a keen observer of human nature and would have travelled around India with a notebook at the ready.

Were you surprised by the interest in Dickens in India? What do you think is the reason for it?

I was surprised and touched by it. I was especially pleased to see how many children and teenagers loved Dickens in India. I think the reason Dickens transcends time and geographic regions is because he wrote about things that are still so relevant today.

Dickens’ son Walter died here. What were your thoughts when you found his grave in Kolkata?

It was surprisingly moving. I hadn’t expected to feel so emotional about a relative who died in 1863. I found myself thinking about how very young Walter was,and how alone,with all his family so many thousands of miles away.