Word: chaudhuri
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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DIED. NIRAD CHAUDHURI, 101, Indian-born author critical of the New India promoted by Gandhi and Nehru; in Oxford, England. The Autobiography of the Unknown Indian (1951) cemented his reputation as an astute chronicler of the knotty relationship between England and India. Born into the Bengal Hindu aristocracy, he rued the decline of the Bengal Renaissance, a movement he hoped would establish India as the Western country of his dreams...
...readers fascinated with the South Asian culture, this read is vastly more enjoyable than the standard history text. Chaudhuri demystifies Indian exoticisms, transporting us into his rag-tag world where everything revolves around the late afternoon nap. This novel's evocative imagery is on par with Indian director Saityjit Rays' films in de-cloaking the mysterious world of the subcontinent...
...compiled his collegiate memories, loosely and occasionally associating them with his former music teacher's amazing vocal ability (a connection just as random as it sounds). While Chaudhuri claims the novel attempts to reconcile the English world with the protagonists Indian childhood, the pages read more like an inventory of incidents enveloped in a romantic haze...
Jumping to a third unrelated topic,Freedom Songinvestigates the complex relationships of two families whose patriarchs are brothers. Chaudhuri's snapshot technique works against him in his attempt to create art from this cobweb of genealogical entanglements. He jumps from character to character without ever presenting the full picture. This confuses an already befuddled reader who has enough trouble sorting out the foreign names of the members of the families. Unlike the first novel where Chaudhuri acts as a benevolent guide, this story assumes a knowledge of Indian marriage matchmaking rituals and cultural customs that the lay reader simply does...
...While Chaudhuri's lyrical, descriptive passages are a refreshing change from the ready-made, movie script-like popular fiction of Elmore Leonard or Sidney Sheldon, he overstays his welcome by dragging out this style for over 400 pages. The reader becomes bewildered by the barrage of foreign names of the characters, especially in the last story where relationships amongst them are never clearly explicated. Even more puzzling is the reason for stringing the three novels in one giant volume in the first place. No solid connection among the stories is ever made, despite the obvious presence of an Indian protagonist...