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Lines on the Face: It's
a Long Road to Freedom
The way Chakraborty delves into 'lives' of ordinary people in modern, urban settings. He focuses on the mutual need to find solace by reviving old friendships and the unusual ways in which love and understanding can cure one's contradictions. The Bengali setting and lifestyle is true to the author's upbringing and exposure to Bengali culture. There is also, invariably, the "international" perspective to these engrossing tales — the parallel American/western background and life-pattern into which the characters are placed and which impinges on their relations back home. The East-West encounter and its complications invariably form part of the structure she builds around the narratives. Growth and its accompanying pain, the fact of ageing and the despairing sense of loss, wasted life and its terrible consequences, loneliness and the need for love and understanding are recorded and interrogated. In Gullies and By-Lanes, a young girl, while on a trip from America to India, finds herself in a neglected, gloomy, mysterious house in Kolkata where she is to live as a paying guest for a few months. The central figure, Rohini, the owner, used to look like Madhuri Dixit in her younger days, the girl is told. Rohini has had a disturbing past that has left her devastated. The girl makes friends with her, while she waits for her boyfriend from America to join her. Finally she is revealed the shocking truth that over the years Rohini has turned an alcoholic, trying to overcome the depression of her wrecked life. Leaving India and returning with her daughter after a gap of 10 years from Chicago, the girl finds no trace of the middle-aged Rohini or the house, which has been pulled down to make way for a multi-storied complex. In Doctor of Philosophy, the ageing Prof. Sadhin Bannerji, 57, looks back at his academic achievements wistfully, while alone in his house. Bannerji has seen turbulent times of the nation; the post-Nehruvian era disappointments, the Naxal movement, the student unrest, the sagging economy. In his twilight years , his favourite daughter Urmi, married in America, is on the verge of divorce. Determined to pursue a Ph.d, Urmi ignites in Bannerji his own sense of vacancy, in not having pursued his own doctorate. He realises the value of Urmi's freedom and in the end, becomes her comrade and friend to protect her dignity and self-respect. In The Reunion, two childhood friends Vidya and Tia meet after decades in Chicago to open up to their respective past experiences, their frustrations, disillusionments and defeats. Vidya, who has walked out of a suffocating Bengali marriage, is now married to an American. She carries the scars of sexual violence, indignities and insults at the hands of a cowardly husband and traditional in-laws. Tia, on the other hand, has her own set of harrowing memories. Though now a successful short film maker, she has had an uncomfortable time at the Pune Film Institute. It is loneliness, sadness and boredom that brings together the long-lost friends who now enjoy a semblance of freedom after a life of despair. Lines on the Face leaves the reader with a consciousness that we are "reading" ourselves in them, desires and meditative moments everyone lives with, whether young or old.
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