Baltimore blues

If there is one unerring skill that Amitabha Bagchi possesses, it is the one he uses to home in on characters whose actions are immoral by social standards but peculiarly ethical from their own standpoint. His second published novel, The Householder , was a splendid unravelling of this theme. In its successor in bookshops, This Place (it is actually the second novel Bagchi wrote), this is what drives Shabbir Ahmad, the Pakistani immigrant in Baltimore, who insists on making a living by repeatedly straying across the line of moral acceptability. And yet, when looked at as a means for a representative of the Third World to play the system in the US and come out a winner, there’s something grudgingly justifiable about his tactics.

Bagchi’s forte is to make the reader understand — if not actually cheer for — such people. This Place is set in Baltimore, which becomes a suburban confluence of itinerant individuals in search of that something which will make their lives more meaningful than living the American dream of having two cars in the garage. Tellingly, none of the characters in the novel besides Shabbir seems to possess a car. 

There is Jeevan Sharma from Delhi, who has drifted into the city after giving up a career as a taxi-driver elsewhere, trading in his mathematical skills for a life of helping people with their taxes and accounts. There is Sunita, whose husband, thrust upon her by her mother in Meerut, sleeps with other women and beats her. There are Kay and Mathew, neither happy with their work, thwarted from their true calling in life and pursuing dreams that they know can never be realised. And there is Miss Lucy, the embodiment of the older world order that the drifters are both dismantling and protecting.

The actual drama in their lives comes to a flashpoint around the possibility of Miss Lucy being evicted from the home in which she has lived, loved and lost. But this is just a setting for the people to play out their uncertainties, inner journeys and moral conflicts through a marvellous unspooling of dialogue and dilemmas. Bagchi’s ear for conversation is so good that it almost compensates for some of the clichés in his characters: for instance, Kamran, the second-generation Pakistani, is inevitably caught in a cultural no-man’s land, while the handicapped Henry has the proverbial heart of gold. 

The precision of the structure of this novel belies the chaos that passes for real life. The characters, too, are etched not in all their complexity, but as figures representing specific qualities. And at least one of the tracks, featuring Jeevan and Sunita, is simplistically romantic to the point of maudlin in places. There is no high passion or dramatic collision of wills or perspectives here, but there is a tenderness between people that makes the world seem human again. Although This Place is set in 1997, when the Wall Street-funded American excessive living was peaking, it captures ways of life that are neither ostentatious nor fuelled by greed. 

Bringing together as it does Indian and Pakistani immigrants and middle-class Americans, this novel might appear to be treading on Jhumpa Lahiri territory. But it seems more reminiscent of Hanif Kureishi’s screenplay for Sammy and Rosie Get Laid , in which, too, sex becomes a metaphor for individuals trying — and mostly failing — to impose their control over the anarchic progression of events in their lives. Perhaps it is more than a linguistic symbol that the one character who seems to do least in the entire novel, only responding to the true north of his moral compass in each of his encounters, is Jeevan, whose name, obviously, means life.

Bagchi’s people are neither heroes nor villains, though their choices can make them appear that way. But his ability to stand scrupulously clear of judgement makes his book both uncomfortable and warm. The first, because, denied the opportunity of approving or censuring, the reader can see the uneasy contours of herself or himself in the one or two heightened qualities of the characters here. And the second because, almost as though this is an urban parable, there is peace and acceptance in the story, even if no one actually gets what he or she has been seeking, even if some of the lives seem bound for tragedy and the others, for nondescript contentment.

This is a book about personal failure, and the attempt to rise above it through kindness and integrity. This is a book about the roots that even a person perpetually on the move can set down in a seemingly alien land. This is a book about the kind of experience that lies at the core of our lives, but all too well camouflaged by the sensory overload that our daily existence has turned into. This Place is not the perfect novel, but reading it is a reaffirmation of faith in the story as the best way to tell truths about human lives.

The author translates classic contemporary Bengali fiction non-fiction into English

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