Bringing another India to life

FICTION: The Immortals By Amit ChaudhuriPicador, 405pp. £16.99

MUSIC PROVIDES the communal magic as well as the communal tension in this graceful tale by a writer whose fiction is as beautiful as a classical ballet. Chaudhuri’s charming fifth novel has all the feel of a command performance. This is not one of those novels that had to be written. Instead it reads as if he wrote it because he felt he should, knowing it was wanted – such is the singular allure of Chaudhuri’s prose.

Not that the book is laboured, it flows in its deliberate randomness. It could be argued that he is not saying anything particular; he is not examining world politics, there is no apparent agenda, no compulsive urgency. Instead a gifted writer is watching a small group of people pursuing their daily lives within the context in which life has placed them. If it is a novel about nothing in particular, it is because it is about everything in general.

Several of the characters are brought together by music, not that they want to perform together, it is more about their needing tuition. Other situations such as career, social status and poverty are also present.

Chaudhuri writes so beautifully it hardly matters what is he intending here, but the central message is time and what it and changing circumstances do to individual desires. The characters in The Immortalsare human; far from perfect but convincing in their individual quests. If there is any ruling presence it could well be Ram Lal, a famous musician now dead whose legacy has been handed down to his family. His shadow is broad but even broader is that of Bombay and, as is true of much of the finest contemporary Indian fiction, the noises, smells, people and sheer chaos of that heaving city ripple through the pages.

The immortals of the title could be great singers but are more likely to be the classic songs, the words of which seem to hold each aspiring artist firmly by the hand. There are so many reasons for liking this delicate human comedy of a novel, the most striking of which is possibly the way Chaudhuri refuses to explain his story to a non-Indian reader, many of the customs and social rituals are referred to in passing. It is as if we are unofficial tourists being given an unofficial eye hole to look through. There is no glossary, no footnotes, no heavy handed explanation. The characters are unselfconscious and we may as well be watching reality television.

First we meet Shyamji, the musician son of the great Ram Lal. Being the great man’s son is not easy, even if one happens to be a good singer and an increasingly sought after teacher.

“Already the Panditji was becoming a sort of myth. It wasn’t as if a large number of people knew him: but those who did divulged their knowledge with satisfaction. How well he sang Malkaums, for instance; how even Ghulam Ali hesitated to sing Malkaums at a conference in Calcutta after Panditji had the previous day. How Panditji was a man of stark simplicity, despite his weakness for the occasional peg of whisky in the evening.”

Aware of his father’s great reputation as a teacher Shyamji also knows that this reputation seems to be passing out of memory as so many of his students drifted in and out of his life. “Shyamji’s life was to be different. This was a simple determination, but it was not a conscious plan.”

Chaudhuri is possessed of a subtle intelligence; his study of people approaches the exactness of William Trevor. The lightness of touch shimmering deftly throughout The Immortalsensures that the reader is continually re-reading sentences, pausing as the full impact flows, only to ebb slightly and then return as if conceding that, for all the beauty, serious issues are under scrutiny.

Death, and particularly the threat of death, plays quite a part in this book. It is as if we are constantly being reminded that a song lives only while it is being sung, the last note returns it to death until the next voice brings it back to life.

In the company of his brother-in-law Motilalji, gifted singer, hopeless drunk and crass individual, Shyamji meets Mallika Sengupta, a middle-aged married woman who is having singing lessons with Motilalji. It only takes Chaudhuri a couple of sentences to expose the gauche Motilalji and also to give some insight into Shyamji’s personality. The scene introduces Mallika, a touching study of a woman who feels that marriage and the birth of a son with delicate health have prevented her from fulfilling her singing potential. One of the many strengths of Indian fiction is the depth of characterisation and Chaudhuri gives a master class in how to develop a character who is far from perfect yet so touchingly human.

While her dreams of singing are dominating her thoughts, Motilalji’s husband, a senior businessman with an English company, is experiencing his final managerial flourish before being relegated to impending obscurity. His career has kept the couple on a treadmill of social engagements. But now their son, having survived childhood with a heart condition, is assuming his own interestingly complex personality.

This son, Nirmalya, also harbours musical ambitions and is constantly questioning everything, especially himself, “why do I exist?” he asks.

Chaudhuri is an accomplished musician and singer, which perhaps explains the long silence since his last novel, A New World(2000). Still, from the publication of his first novel A Strange and Sublime Address(1991) which was followed two years later by Afternoon Raagand then, Freedom Songin 1998, Chaudhuri has been special. His voice is gracious, full of ease without being languid and is, above all, compelling because he has grasped the importance of nuance. Having earlier suggested that the immortals of the title refers to songs, perhaps it is worth considering that to an observer as astute as Chaudhuri the true immortals are actually ordinary people who live and hope?

Late in the narrative Mallika, having now settled for less as her husband’s career has faltered for good – perhaps Chaudhuri is here making a post colonial point? – again chastises her faithful old servant for arriving late at the new, more modest apartment. The servant really wants to resign. It is but one of many moments of realisation in a book that not only brings India to life, it considers all life and all endings.

Eileen Battersby is Literary Correspondent of The Irish Times