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!

I think rereadin such a book always brings about a more mature pov ...thats not because of the ten year gap..i mena i read it a couple of years ago and read it again a week back..so you see the time gap wasnt there..but then having read it once before, and not feeling tinkled by jokes like hazaar fd..i actually could get to the real stuff and that was staying away frm home, first job, stupid lonely guest houses, soceity telling us what we tink we want..and the stuff..Upamanyus other novels like mamaries are just the same..hidden behind sarcasma are the real life..

I think MoSF was a less than average book. He couldn't create the ache of EA. He tried too hard.

To be hazaar fucked in Madna - was someting an entire generation could relate to. That growing gap between the city and the village, and in between that gentle Mofussil. An entire generation born between 1974 (around Emergency) and 1984 (assasination of Indira Gandhi) were born into a cusp of sorts. Alienation and drifting by were our roots.

An entire generation of hazaar fucked. A certain conflict. Post everthing, and pre everything. Yes - A cusp.

-Cloud Messenger