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And Where, My Friend, Lay You Hiding
The novel traces the story of two young men, bonded by their interest in books. While Shonjoy, the narrator comes from a well-to-do Bengali family in Allahabad, Anjani Prasad hails from a small-town, Mirpur, near Allahabad. Now, the author seems to have split his personality into two and lent diametrically opposite qualities to both. Shonjoy, like the author, comes from Allahabad and aspires to write and, like him, draws sustenance from advertising in metro cities. Anjani Prasad, on the other hand, is all Shonjoy could never be—a rustic youth making it big in the field of writing, while letting his wife slog it out for keeping house and bringing up kids. The fantasy–reality trail gets murky. While Shonjoy settles down after marriage to a convent-educated nag and fathers an equally bullied son, Anjan decides to leave his picture-perfect life to devote all his time to writing. From this point on, the improbabilities ring like frog-song on a rainy night all through the novel. Shonjoy sheds all his literary pretensions to dive headlong into moneymaking. Anjan, meanwhile, gets involved with a journalist, starts living in a filthy chawl with an ugly maid (to get a feel of his characters, he pleads) and starts drinking heavily. His wife and kids never seem to be eager to investigate his whereabouts and, for all his love for his children, he never visits them. All this while, his writing seemingly "improves" and critics and readers now shower applause on someone who anonymously writes things like "Notes from the Gutter". His love for children is now transferred to the urchins in the chawl, for whose nirvana he now runs a library, reading Manto and Premchand to them. The more Shonjoy walks the beaten path, the more Anjan goes off at a tangent. While Shonjoy wins the battle for money, Anjan, apparently, wins it for the mind, dividing the life-picture in half with neither getting all he desired. However, the narration does not plumb the depths of the characters’ consciousness, making it impossible to believe, identify or sympathise with any of the characters or their conflicts. From someone devising punch lines and one-liners for a long time, we expect a faster pace, deeper insights and more colourful word play the next time.
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THE book’s title has been
adapted from the first line of John Berryman’s poem Dream Song 32:
"And where, friend Quo, lay you hiding". The author acknowledges his
editor friend’s suggestion for the same. Unfortunately, the promise of a work
of great lyrical quality ends here.