I was given a copy of Upamanyu Chatterjee’s novel ‘English, August’ (EA), which was recently reissued under the NYRB Classics imprint, a few weeks ago along with that strange book of short stories by Etgar Keret, about which I had raved here already. Thank you Senor C for your kind, and timely gifts.

I had read EA for the first time, almost ten years ago, after having signed up to receive it on a list for brand new books (yes, there were other crazy consumers of print with whom I had to tussle with for just off the press fiction) in the hostel library. And as most of my reading activity went at that time, this book too was duly stuffed into my word gullet as quickly as I could manage, in big large gulps. I think in my reading world view then, there were too many books and authors who were awaiting my urgent finger ministrations.

And now ten years later, given that quantity of unread, barely scanned, and half read books I have scattered around me on my bed, I seem to have gone all soft on this business of literary triage. I read slowly, weave in and out of too many books, which implies books get finished only if they manage to sustain my interest.

However looking at the upside of this change in reading styles, I would like to think I have become, if not a better reader in the Borgesian sense, then at least in a more reflective one. This then was my method in reading, or more accurately, rereading EA, twenty or so pages every night for the past few weeks, with my trusty red pen in hand.

The most interesting thing I have discovered about EA is that EA is not a funny or comic novel at all. And my memory of it as being this hysterical novel, full of kinky jokes, for example the constantly recurring black bra (as donned by the collector’s wife, Mrs. Shrivatsav)) visuals, is ‘hazaar fucked’ (i.e., thousand fucked, to borrow the only phrase I did remember from the novel all these years)

EA is actually a very serious novel with the jokes masking a great degree of sadness as well lucidity about the existential confusion people of certain kind (including myself) suffer from, all of this which I completely missed as I read this book as a much younger person. This altered reading experience, perhaps, lends support to the thesis that certain novels, if not all of them, have inbuilt timed release mechanisms, very much like certain drugs, and that the reader will be able to respond to them at an appropriate (deeper?) level only when he too attains a certain vintage.

So those of you kind readers, who might have read this novel when it came out many years ago, you should revisit this book once more soon. And for those of you, who have never read it before, go get it now!

The plants of the lake saw you one morning. The stones the goats the sweat exist outside of days like the water of the lake. The lake remains unmarked by the days' pain and clamor. The mornings will pass, the anguish will pass, other stones and sweat will bite into your blood— it won't always be like this. You'll rediscover something. Another morning will come when, beyond the clamor, you'll be alone on the lake.

You also are love. Made of blood and earth like the others. You walk like one who won't stray far from your own front door. You watch like one who waits and doesn't see. You are earth that aches and keeps silent. You have bursts and lapses, you have words — you walk and wait. Your blood is love — that's all.

Translated from the Italian by Geoffrey Brock