Middleman

Shankar Mukherji Mani

Description

1970s Calcutta. The city is teeming with thousands of young men in search of work. Somnath Banerjee "1970s Calcutta. The city is teeming with thousands of young men in search of work. Somnath Banerjee spends his days queuing up at the employment exchange. Unable to find a job despite his qualifications, Somnath decides to go into the order supply business as a middleman. His ambition drives him to prostitute an innocent girl for a contract that will secure the future of Somnath Enterprises. As Somnath grows from an idealistic young man into a corrupt businessman, the novel becomes a terrifying portrait of the price the city extracts from its youth. Sankar s The Middleman is the moving story of a man torn between who he is and what he wants to be. Stark and disquieting, the novel deftly exposes the decaying values and rampant corruption of a metropolis that is built on broken dreams and morbid reality. The evocative prose and vivid imagery in this first-ever translation successfully capture the textures of the Bengali original.

Sujets

• India

Informations

• Publié par: Penguin Books Ltd
• Date de parution: 15 décembre 2013
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9789351185864
• Langue: English

Extrait

Sankar

THE MIDDLEMAN
Translated from the Bengali by Arunava Sinha
Contents
About the Author
Dedication
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Afterword
Follow Penguin
Copyright Page
PENGUIN BOOKS
THE MIDDLEMAN
S ANKAR (Mani Sankar Mukherji) is one of Bengal s most widely read novelists in recent times. He also has several non-fiction best-sellers, including a biography of Swami Vivekananda, to his credit. Two of his novels, Seemabaddha (Company Limited) and Jana Aranya (The Middleman), were turned into films by Satyajit Ray. He lives and works in Kolkata.
A RUNAVA S INHA is an Internet professional by day and a translator of classic and contemporary Bengali fiction by night. His translation of Sankar s Chowringhee won the 2007 Crossword-Vodafone Award for Best Translation. His other translations include Buddhadeva Bose s My Kind of Girl (2009). Born and brought up in Kolkata, he lives in New Delhi.
To Tulsidas Bandhyopadhyay
I am willing to believe that at the beginning you did not realise what was happening; later, you doubted whether such things could be true; but now you know, and still you hold your tongues.
The blinding sun of torture is at its zenith; it lights up the whole country. Under that merciless glare, there is not a laugh that does not ring false, not a face that is not painted to hide fear or anger, not a single action that does not betray our disgust, and our complicity.
Jean-Paul Sartre in the preface to The Wretched of the Earth by Frantz Fanon
1
It was the sixteenth of June, the first day of the month of Asadh. Somnath stood by a decrepit, discoloured lamp post at the crossing of Chitpur Road and CIT Road in Calcutta. His full name: Somnath Banerjee.
The traffic was an alarming snarl of rickshaws, handcarts, buses, trucks, taxis and private cars. The ageing driver of the ancient tram caught in the middle rang the bell loudly in his desperation to get from Lalbazar to Bagbazar. To Somnath, it looked like an enormous yet frail dinosaur from a prehistoric era, banished from its safe haven to the human jungle of Calcutta, emitting howls of helplessness.
Somnath felt sorry for the beast and wondered what quirk of fate had brought it to Calcutta s Rabindra Sarani of all places. A few years ago, he might have been inspired by these circumstances and, jotting down his thoughts in a notebook, he would have turned it into a poem- A prehistoric dinosaur in the human jungle of Calcutta . To be read out to Tapati the very next day. Somnath shook his head; there was no point thinking about all that now. Poetry had left him forever.
With what intent was Somnath Banerjee loitering near Tiretti Bazar? Where was he headed? If someone were to ask him these questions, Somnath would be at a loss for words. Had it been any other day, he would have lied with elan. But how could he overlook the fact that it was the sixteenth of June? Some poet long ago had immortalized the date by expressing an exiled demon s grief of banishment. The seventeenth, the eighteenth, the twentieth, the twenty-fifth, the thirtieth-Kalidas could have chosen any of those dates in June to give voice to the pain of separation, leaving the sixteenth for Somnath alone.
The sixteenth of June was Somnath s birthday. He had been born twenty-four years ago at the Silver Jubilee Maternity Home. Faithful Indian subjects of George V had built the hospital to commemorate twenty-five years of the king s reign. And now the baby born in Silver Jubilee Maternity Home was about to observe his own silver jubilee.
Somnath thought of his mother as he gazed at the streaming human traffic on Chitpur Road. Be good on your birthday, she used to say, don t be jealous, don t harm anyone and don t lie. Therefore, on that complex June afternoon on Rabindra Sarani, Somnath would not lie and, if someone were to ask him, he would admit that he was looking for a whore.
Strange and sordid though it may sound, it is nevertheless true. That civilized, cultured, well-educated young man-Somnath Banerjee-was looking for a whore, known by some in Calcutta as prostitutes, and as call girls by others.
A newspaper had run a story about Somnath s father some years ago. Somnath had clipped it out of the newspaper himself, and Kamala-his eldest brother s wife-had pasted it in the family album. Dwaipayan Banerjee had earned the government s praise for his selfless service to the nation, whereas Somnath, the youngest son of that superannuated gazetted government officer, was about to begin his search for a whore.
He gazed upon Rabindra Sarani, decaying under decades of neglect, and wondered who had come up with the awful idea of linking the dirty Chitpur Road with the name of the poet of eternal beauty. What kind of creatures were Calcutta s citizens-not a murmur of protest? What sense of satisfaction were they enjoying, having consigned Mahatma Gandhi to the garbage of Borobazar and Tagore to the smelly black hole of Chitpur?
An agitated Somnath felt his ears go red as he waited impatiently for Natabar Mitra to arrive. Mitra was familiar with the whores in Calcutta. But where was he? What was taking him so long?
Troubled, Somnath looked up at the clear blue sky. If only it were overcast, if only one could say, here comes the rain, Somnath would drown his past in a torrential downpour. But far from forgetting it, he was reminded of a great many things as the past and the present commingled into a gigantic rain-bearing cloud in his mind s sky.
Let us leave him waiting right there while we travel into his past, and acquaint ourselves with his family.
2
Somnath woke up in his bedroom on the ground floor of the red, small, two-storeyed house next to the water tank in Jodhpur Park. He lay in bed, in his striped blue pyjamas and singlet, hugging his pillow, his eyes shut. The dining room was on the other side of the door. The soft clinking of bangles that he heard told Somnath that the elder of his two sisters-in-law was already up and about, dressed in her usual cotton sari and her feet encased in red Bata sandals. He could hear crockery being laid out, which meant that Kamala had already put the kettle to boil on the stove.
It was an unwritten rule that one of the two daughters-in-law of the house would have to make the morning tea for Dwaipayan Banerjee, who couldn t bear to have his tea handed to him by a servant or a maid. It occasionally fell upon his younger daughter-in-law, Dipannita, fondly called Bulbul, to brew the morning tea.
Why should you be the only one to have to wake up at the crack of dawn to make the tea? Bulbul s husband Kajol, the younger of Somnath s two brothers had asked Kamala. Bulbul should take turns with you.
Though Kamala hadn t objected, she had smiled mischievously. Bulbul was a notorious late riser. It was near impossible for her to get out of bed early in the morning and make tea before the clock admonished her. It was Monday-Bulbul s turn, but those weren t her bangles that were clinking. Somnath wondered for a moment before he heard the door to Bulbul and Kajol s bedroom creak open and the clinking of Bulbul s bangles joined in.
Bulbul s voice carried across the dining room to Somnath. I m so embarrassed; I overslept.
He could hear Kamala too. Never mind, go wash your face first.
If he hadn t woken me up, I d have still been in bed, Somnath heard Bulbul admit.
Kajol is keeping you on a tight leash, I see doesn t even let you snatch a few extra minutes of sleep in the morning, Kamala laughed. Neither of them realized that Somnath could hear their conversation.
Bulbul hadn t been married for very long, and was yet to overcome her natural awe of the hierarchy in the family she now belonged to. Thank goodness you woke up early enough, she told Kamala. How terrible it would have been to have kept baba waiting for his tea.
I woke up at quarter to six as usual, it s become a habit now. When I didn t hear the kettle being put on even at quarter past six, I realized you weren t up.
I just can t fight off sleep in the morning.
Kamala wasn t a person of many words, but she had a sharp sense of humour. Why blame sleep? If you stay up till all hours of the night whispering sweet nothings to your husband, sleep will barge in only when it can-in the morning.
Somnath smiled to himself, wishing he could see Bulbul s expression. After all, she used to be his classmate in college.
Honestly, didibhai, we were asleep by ten-thirty last night. We re hardly newly-weds any more, you know.
Don t tell me you re pretending to be an old couple within two years of marriage, Kamala replied, not ready to give up just yet.
No, I Bulbul was about to protest, but she gave up. No matter how smart she was, she was still nervous with older members of the family.
Somnath heard Kamala say, There s nothing to be embarrassed about. It s your right to spend time with your husband in bed. And I m sure Kajol wants you by his side when he wakes up-what can you do if he doesn t let you leave?
I m sure dada doesn t want to let you go either in the morning, Bulbul retaliated.
Kamala did not respond immediately. Somanth wondered if it was her turn to be embarrassed or whether she was just taking her time to serve the tea. But then she was back in control, threatening her young sister-in-law, I ll write to your brother-in-law in Bombay right away; I ll tell him you wanted to know.
Bulbul was clearly discomfited now. Please, didibhai, if you tell dada it ll be impossible for me to ever face him. Please forgive me, I promise to wake up on time from now on She would have said more, but