A Song of Freedom in the Real Time, New World

With around seven major titles to his credit and a host of glittering awards in his kitty, including the prestigious Commonwealth Writers’ Prize, the Los Angeles Times Book Prize and the Sahitya Akademi Award, eminent writer, poet and singer, Amit Chaudhuri, comes across as a modernist with a natural bonding with the old, the conservative and the nostalgic. Satarupa Ray finds about issues close to the author’s heart.

You were born in Kolkata and brought up in Mumbai. You have also spent quite a few years in London. Why did you choose to settle down in Kolkata?
I used to visit Kolkata during holidays. The Kolkata I knew then was the area around Bhawanipore. I found the city very vibrant. As I grew up, those intimations of vibrancy never left me. As a child, I felt rather alienated from Mumbai. Besides, in the early nineties, London was homogenised by the market because of globalisation. The city reached a creative dead end and I did not want to live there.

What do you dislike about this city?
In Kolkata, there is an air of vision in all and sundry that social or political action is not going to bear any fruit. People have little faith in the system. They feel nothing is going to change here.

Then what keeps you going in this city?
It is the discovery of interesting people, buildings and such things that keep me going here.

What memories do you have of childhood?
I wrote a lot of poems but that was a well-kept secret! My experience of school was traumatic. I was also shy and introvert but I socialised outside school. Although I never liked traditional forms of company, for instance going to parties and clubs, I always felt the need for company.

Is your passion for Indian classical music just to do with your genes or is there something more to it?
(Smiles) Let’s say the combination of romanticism and classicism fascinates me.
My mother’s teacher Late Pt. Govind Prasad Jaipurwale became my guru later on. I would also listen to Pandit Bhimsen Joshi and Smt Kishori Amonkar.

Do you think Indian classical music enjoys popular appeal today?
You see, the age of great light music is over and dead. The only people singing in tune these days are the better of classical musicians.

Does this mean career prospects are opening up in Indian classical music?
It is difficult to make a career in Indian classical music because it is a corrupt and closed world.

Corrupt and closed world?
Yes. Through your performance, you have to please and genuflect people. You are not rewarded for talent but for other things.

How effective are the words of a writer in today’s ‘corrupt’ world?
I don’t really know. Over the past two decades, nothing has changed in hierarchical societies. I feel intellectuals should be more self-critical of their own societies.

How would you describe the varied experiences of writing in four different genres – fiction, non-fiction, poetry and short stories?
Poetry gives me great pleasure. My passion for form and desire for compression and obliqueness made me indulge in this literary form. This is not the case in writing fiction. While writing essays, the considerations are different. I think about what I am writing, and in what climate I am writing, what does writing mean to me and whether it is conducive or not.

Why is poetry not popular these days despite the fact that we have so many budding poets?
Receptivity to poetry is probably impaired. Reading poetry also requires patience and reverence for the very notion of literature. The reverence for word is no longer there. Besides, publishers and magazines are hardly keen on poetry today.

So… is writing as commercial as any other profession?
Writing has always been commercial. It is just that good spaces have ceased to exist.

What about the pros and cons of such a notion?
A fairly good writer can live his life when his writing is gauged by commercial success. But such an idea brings about timidity of expression and therefore the lack of freedom.

Are writers motivated by a competitive spirit when they write?
Oh Yes! Absolutely. A writer like me makes connection with like-minded writers.

Who are they?
Pankaj Mishra, Sunetra Gupta and Arvind Krishna Mehrotra.

How do you justify the omission of writers like Arundhati Roy, Rohinton Mistry and Gujarati and Marathi authors as the editor of The Picador Book of Modern Indian Literature (2001)?
People should read the book for what’s in it and not for the omissions. There is a connection between the selected authors. The book creates a narrative different from the post colonial and post-Rushdie narrative. It explores the narrative of modernity that occurs most powerfully in Indian languages.

Are you writing anything now?
Yes. I am writing a novel on music.