English, August: An Indian story - Upamanyu Chatterjee

Title: English, August: An Indian story.
Author: Upamanyu Chatterjee.
Publisher: Penguin Books in association with Faber and Faber limited.
ISBN: 0-571-21876-8
Copyright: © Upamanyu Chatterjee, 1988

Dhrubo exhaled richly out of the window, and said, 'I've a feeling, August, you're going to get Hazaar fucked in Madna.' Agastya had just joined the Indian Administrative service and was going for a year's training in district administration to a small district town called Madna.

'Amazing mix, the English we speak. Hazaar fucked. Urdu and American,' Agastya laughed, 'a thousand fucked, really fucked. I'm sure nowhere else could languages be mixed and spoken with such ease.' The slurred sounds of comfortable tiredness of intoxication, '"You looked hazaar fucked, Marmaduke dear." "Yes Dorothea, I'm afraid I do feel hazaar fucked" - see, doesn't work. And our accents are Indian, but we prefer August to Agastya.

That is how the book starts.

---

Agastya Sen, Ogu (as his family calls him), or August (his name among his friends) is a young civil service trainee posted to a town, Madna. He, according to his father, belongs to 'the generation that doesn't oil it's hair'. He is out of place in Madna and in the bureaucracy. His boredom and feelings are expressed in his actions, thoughts and once in a while seeps through the letters that he writes to Dhrubo, Neera, Pultu Kaka and his father. He also notices the same frustration in other characters at Madna and elsewhere, some of them getting used to it, a few compromising and rest busy creating a very conducive environment for others to get frustrated.

"August, English: An Indian story" is an account of Agastya Sen's experiences in Madna.

Funny incidents like ...

• Chairs on the lawn, Urdu ghazals from two speakers on side tables, peons flitting, Kumar standing in front of two seated victims, pulling up his pants and describing something with a zest seemingly not shared by his audience, Srivastav was even serving booze, Joshi in flapping safari suit flitting with the peons, two bridge groups, the women sitting in one large formal circle, painted and perfumed, kids racing around. Shipra, Srivastav's daughter, saw him first, 'Bungaali Uncle has come! Bungaali Uncle has come!' She ran shrieking to her mother. Her friends followed, repeating her chant. In some delinquent mouths it changed to 'Pumbaali Kunkal has bum.' Wondering how to strangle them all, Agastya went after them to say hello.
  
  [scene change, talking to a foreign couple] 'You were away on holiday?' asked the Englishman.
  
  Agastya wondered for a second if he should lie, then said, 'Yes'.
  
  Shekhar, Srivastav's son, ran up, hit Agastya on the arm, said, 'Pumbaali Kunkal has bum,' and scuttled away. Shrieking.
  
  'What on earth did he say?' asked the wife.
  
  'It's a popular tribal prayer of this area,' said Agastya. 'It means, roughly, May God grant me fertility. It is used most often by those tribal groups in the district that worship snakes. These tribals practice esoteric fertility rites with cobras.' For an instant he contemplated getting sexual in his fabrications; no, it was too early. 'That's very Indian, you know,' he said graciously to the Englishman, 'like cattle dozing or chewing cud sitting in the fast lanes of the streets of Delhi, very Indian. The children probably learnt it from their ayah. I hope Mrs Srivastav doesn't get to hear them. I should think she would be quite angry.' The wife looked appropriately nonplussed at this unexpected information.

About his name:

• 'Agastya? What kind of a name is Agastya?' asked the engineer, almost irritably. He was a large unpleasant man, the owner of a trunk that wouldn't fit below the lower berths, but on which he wouldn't allow anyone to place his feet.
  
  'He's a saint of the forest in Ramayana, very ascetic. He gives Ram a bow and arrow. He's there in Mahabharata too. He crosses the Vindhyas and stops them from growing.'
  
  The engineer looked dissatisfied, almost suspicious, as though Agastya had just sold him an aphrodisiac.
• Srivastav smiled at Agastya. His sideburns were like right-angled triangles, the hypotenuses of which looked like the shadows of his cheekbones. 'So? Agastya, what kind of a name is Agastya, bhai?'
  
  When you were in your mother's lap, you ignoramus, he said silently, drooling and piddling, didn't she make your head spin into sleep with the verses of some venerable Hindu epic? 'Agastya' is Sanskrit he wanted to say, for one who shits only one turd every morning. But the Collector didn't really want any answer. Staccato conversation, while he rushed through his files.
• 'Yes, I've heard about you. But I can't call you Sen, that's for my husband' Here a half smile at Srivastav. Agastya was reminded of Joshi's room on the first day, and Ahmed's voice dropping to a hush to pronounce 'Mrs'; to all the admission of conjugality seemed a cause for embarrassment. 'What's your full name?' Mrs Srivastav was wearing a black bra beneath a yellow blouse. Agastya sneered at Menon (startling him a little), that would be a hilarious dress sense in Trinity, but it's OK in Madna, no?
  
  'Agastya', half-ready to answer the next question with, 'It's Sanskrit for one who turns the flush just before he starts pissing, and then tries to finish pissing before the water disappears'.
  
  'That's even worse. Most Bengalis have such difficult names.' Mrs Srivastav had a nice smile. 'I'm sure your parents or friends don't call you that. What do they say?'
  
  'Ogu and August.' He thought of lying but couldn't immediately think of anything but obscenities.
  
  She laughed. 'August. That's nice.'
  
  'August?' asked Srivastav, abandoning his children who scrambled off the divan and crowded around Agastya. Perhaps you would prefer another month? asked Agastya silently.

Agastya is bored, really bored and he lies to people, trying to shock them at times:

• 'How old are you, Sir?'
  
  'Twenty-eight.' Agastya was twenty-four, but he was in a lying mood. He also disliked their faces.
  
  'Are you married, sir?' Again that demand that he classify himself. Ahmed leaned forward for each question, neck tensed and head angled with politeness.
  
  'Yes.' He wondered whether he should add 'twice'.
  
  'And your Mrs, sir?' Agarwal's voice dropped at 'Mrs'; in all those months all references to wives was in hushed, almost embarrassed, tones. Agastya never knew why, perhaps because to have a wife meant that one was fucking, which was a dirty thing.
  
  'She's in England. She's English, anyway, but she's gone there for a cancer operation. She has cancer of the breast'. He had an almost uncontrollable impulse to spread out his fingers to show the size of the tumour and then the size of the breast, but he decided to save that for later. Later in his training he told the District Inspector of Land Records that his wife was a Norwegian Muslim.
• 'Aha, Sen,' said Menon, 'glad to meet you. When did you come?' They sat down. Again Agastya was asked to categorize himself, and again he lied, although cautiously.
  
  'I see,' said Menon, 'so you're from Calcutta. Good. Education?'
  
  'Yes, I'm educated.'
  
  'No, no, I mean, of course, you are. But where were you educated?'
  
  'Uh ... Cambridge.'
  
  'You don't say! I was there myself - Trinity. Went there for my BA.'
  
  Oops thought Agastya, 'Uh ... Cambridge, Massachusetts.'
  
  'Oh, yes, of course, they have one over there too.'
• An urchin handed Agastya a place. On it were laddus, samosas and green chutney. He could almost hear the chutney say, 'Hi, my name is cholera, what's yours?'
  
  'No, not for me.'
  
  The urchin said, 'Hayn?'
  
  Agastya turned to the hooligan beside him. 'I can't eat anything today. My mother died today.' The man looked puzzled again. 'I mean, this is the anniversary of my mother's death, and I fast.' For a moment he contemplated adding, 'In penance, because I killed her.'
• 'How's your wife, Sen?' asked Kumar.
  
  For a second Agastya wondered what to trump up. 'I'm not married yet, sir. I would've been married long ago, but my father disapproves of her, she's Muslim.'
  
  'You aren't married? I heard you were, that your wife is dying of cancer in England.'
  
  'Me? My wife? No, sir, there's some confusion. That's my cousin.'

I particularly liked this book for its unexpected humour and nice language. The style of writing is as if all the thoughts (yes, all the thoughts) in the character's mind have been put down on paper, which is one of the very important contributors to the humour.

The book is quite entertaining. I would recommend it to anyone who thinks s/he can enjoy good humour, and possibly, can also relate to a city - town transition and cultural shock that one goes through.