English, August

Agastya Sen. Bengali eyes in an Anglicized mind. Hybrid roots, cocktail blood, confused sensibilities. The clash of cultures within the mind of one individual. Agastya, August, English, Ogu. The schizophrenic existence of a mind divided.

Product of a Bong-Goan unision, his name (as his life) completely undermines his mother’s existence. She is removed, from the story as also his mind, after having served the purpose of procreation. He is his father’s son. Nothing more, nothing less. The son of a Bengali bureaucrat, whom life ensnares within the red tape of bureaucracy. Like father like son. Or is it?

English, August is the story of one man’s journey in to the villages of Western India. The story of the conflicts of a mind torn between a cosmopolitan existence and a job that takes him anywhere but. Like many of us he finds himself torn between cities, between loyalties, between facets of his own existence.

This is a man’s story. The writer, as also the protagonist, is male. What follows therefore, is a frame-by-frame narrative from a man’s perspective. The male gaze is so obvious throughout the story; that in hindsight it irks the senses (of anyone who even remotely identifies as feminist). August is witty, even self-deprecating sometimes, but never anything more than a man. Women are, more often than not, mere objects of desire, instruments of sexual gratification, obstacles in man’s great, meaningful (or otherwise) journey, but pit stops he must make anyway. Despite himself.

All the major characters are, well, men. As can only exist in (what I can only assume) a misogynist’s worldview. The pivotal roles are comfortably male. All the characters, barring none, are irksome, even monotonous. The writer has taken too many liberties with the stereotypical images of the Indian babu, rural India, and whatever else you can think of, so much so that the narrative often borders on being predictable. The fat civil servants, the rich sarcastic journalist, the dissatisfied writer, the lonely/drunken civil servant, lecherous babus, greedy politicians, half-naked hungry urchins, the ideal bureaucrat, the rebellious/communist woman friend, barbarous tribes, selfish Naxalites, 20 something junkies who can’t decide what they want from life. This story has them all. Ready masala for a potboiler. Chaterjee knows what sells, and he has delivered.

It is one man’s struggle to stay sane (or is it insane?) when his sensibilities are assaulted by worlds that he has, heretofore, been protected from. It is an upper middle class “gentleman’s” nightmare, as seen through the eyes of a wisecracking cynic. Don’t we all love those? Funny men. Most men believe they’re funny. Very few really are. August is one of those few. He is, in many senses of the word, a rarity. And it is therefore hardly surprising that he sticks out like a sore thumb in his rather conventional choice of profession. He is very urban, typically cocooned - as most progeny of post-independence upper middle class Indians are, and he is skeptical of everything – as most 70s onwards youth have tended to be.

Agastya is Upamanyu Chatterjee’s reflection, in what (again, I can only assume) could easily be a semi-autobiographical account. The 70s angry young man who is too used to a comfortable lifestyle and is therefore too lazy to do anything about anything. All he wants is to be happy, with no clue whatsoever as to how to be it. He is too laid back to fight the system, but he has humor enough to indulge in minor subversive tactics to keep him amused. Also, he has means to stay disconnected from the life he has chosen to lead. So at most points in the narrative we find the protagonist stoned. Typical escapist ploy when one is too afraid/unconcerned/whatever to actually do something concrete to escape the present. He tries to both relive his past as also run away from it. The result of which is, predictably, confusing and leads to even more conflicts within his mind.

English, August is a fascinating journey into one person’s mind. Agastya’s loneliness is evident in everything he does. His alienation is palpable through every page of the book. A dislocation borne not only of ineptitude, but also of literally belonging to another world. A world that is safely insulated and includes only a handful people. Where ones biggest worry of the day would probably be ‘which movie to watch?’ or ‘what kind of eggs to order for breakfast?’ or ‘how to get more stuff to roll the next fifty joints?’ A world where reality has nothing to do with starving children being lowered into defunct wells in search of water, or tribal women being molested, even raped, by government officials, or doctors who make it their life’s work to help lepers live a life of dignity borne of self-sustenance.

English, August is a selfish account of one man’s discomfort with reality. Of his insistence on disconnecting with anything even remotely problematic, anything that threatens to burst the bubble of his cozy little existence. Agastya’s journey is amusing only at first impression. It is on rethinking his story that one realizes the problem. The problem is not what the protagonist would have you believe – alienation/loneliness/whatever. The real problem, in fact, is nowhere close to being that grand. It is petty, because it is selfish. The problem is Agastya’s divided self that in no circumstance finds a way to reunite into a coherent whole. So never mind where he may be, he finds himself divided. Never once realizing that the problem does not lie outside of him – in his immediate surroundings where he continues to search – but inside his own mind. Where he is more torn than he would like to acknowledge, or even know.

The story is a mere fragment of Agastya’s life. It is but an account of one year of his journey. What we do know is that despite no conviction, Agastya sticks it out to the end (of, at least, his training). We know very little of what came before, and nothing of what comes after. The story has no definitive end. It has cleverly been left open to interpretations and conclusions. The hopeful among us will tell ourselves that he finds some balls in the time he takes off of work to ‘think’, and that he finds a path more suited to his inclinations, or at least a general direction towards that end. The cynical among us will know that he doesn’t. Because he doesn’t bother. It’s just so much easier to disconnect mentally than to put any real effort into disengaging from an unwanted alternative. That between aimless wandering and flights of fantasy, many choose the latter. Because escape is easier than confrontation. Because never mind what one may ‘have to do’ in life, nothing can imprison ones thoughts. Because a Utopia of the mind is more easily attainable than any that reality will ever be able to offer.