Book Reviews
‘Floating Towel and a dozen Short Stories’
SK Sagir Ali
FLOATING TOWEL AND A DOZEN SHORT STORIES:
A roller-coaster ride of storms and dreams |
Short Fiction | Gautam Maitra
| Xpress Publishing (An imprint of Notion Press), July 2019 |
ISBN 978-1-64650-109-0 | pp 102 |
110
A roller-coaster ride of storms and dreams |
Short Fiction | Gautam Maitra
| Xpress Publishing (An imprint of Notion Press), July 2019 |
ISBN 978-1-64650-109-0 | pp 102 |
110
Voices of socially disempowered hegemonic positions
Gautam Maitra, a bilingual writer is a prolific storyteller in weaving stories that are a kaleidoscope to life with objective experiences only to give us a myriad vision of the Indianness that strives for existence. Set in the turmoils of South Asia, Floating Towel and a dozen Short Stories visualizes the trajectory of family relationships, disenchantment, violence, greed, the changing lifetimes and abject senselessness of fanaticism. It is a fabric of a middle-class person namely Budhu, an archetype, an epitome of normalcy – a person so deeply rooted in the attitudes, customs and feelings of a native Bengali middle-class man that it could essentially be an alter-ego of any Indian Joe. Maitra’s Floating Towel and a dozen Short Stories, a compilation of various short stories that were written across the span of two decades, is divided into twelve chapters with the life and times of the protagonist Budhu in the depiction of existential predicament, realistic treatment of socio-cultural complexities.
The titular Chapter One ‘Floating Towel’ is the story of a Samaritan who bets his life at the crossroads of the turmoil of life. Floating towel is a symbol of smiling, dancing Shark in the watery uncertainty of destiny. It represents fragility of life and humanity. The smallest ripple in the water would send it floating one way. A ripple from another side would sway it another way. It's a metaphor for the frivolous nature of humanity's need to justify violence based on whichever ripple they lean on, religion, background, social status or anything else. And as a result, the state of a floating towel captures the state of humanity in a constant way of flux and dissent. Sachin and Budhu’s pranks in swimming pool take an ugly turn when Sachin drowned in the pool of water and stands on the verge of life to live in. This picture gives us the impression of lynchings, a form of violence in Indian socio-political scenario.
Chapter Two ‘The Two Strings’ showcases social hierarchy where love-liaison between Budhu, a refugee and Meena, an archetype of beauty—the pari in affluent Seth family on the backdrop of Naxalite movement in Bengal gets affected. It is not the consciousness of Budhu that determines his being, but, on the contrary, his posh social being determines his consciousness. Wallowing in a godless world and inhabiting a realm of nothingness, Budhu falls between the idea and the reality only to culminate in a plaintive whimper. The story webs around love-romance genre experimenting with two parallel social lines of inequities where the protagonist loses the war and a fatalist acceptance of injustice but the life moves on.
Chapter Three ‘Question Paper’ makes us believe that ‘life always begins after the exam only’ and essence of securing modest marks to live life in the rat race of this mundane world. Mugging books rather than practicability of answers in terms of creativity in this time-bound reality is threatening one for students. The story has portrayed the typical examination hall with fun and fear in full glory as the time catches up and the demand for 'nouns' grow geometrically high replacing 'complete sentences' on the approaching of the final bell - the death bell.
All four fluid sub-conscious minds — Budhu, his cousin brother Tony, Hary and his own brother Roberto in Chapter Four ‘A Date with the Lost World’ bring to us the images of divinity, Madonna, Michel Jackson and Charlie Chaplin, ‘Hitler and Napoleon playing on war on Chess Board’, Gandhi’s non-violence, colonial clutches and ‘Subhas Chandra Bose during World War II’, Victor Hugo accompanied by Cleopatra, Einstein and ‘Beethoven on music’ that bodies forth a real than reality in their figments of imagination. Observations on science and fiction testify to their perspective in the surreal world through the construction of cognitive images characterized by excessive yearning for these famous personalities in the history of social science.
Chapter Five ‘A Bizarre Talking Competition’ provides us with the celebration of human speech in the event of Talk- Fair in Kanjio, a city of greed, envy and amorality. Such talking competition is arranged to make the community more cohesive; unfortunately it leads to unprecedented murkier situation ‘haunted by the terror of talk’ that gripped the city. People jitter and stay away from the incident lest they fail into the lurking swamp of vices, greed and ego.
Chapter Six ‘The Land of the Blue River’ is all about the longing to return to Sundarbans, the native land of Samrat. He lives on to survive on stringent means on a land of different culture, habits and dialects as an ‘imagined community’ having a collective communitarian adherence only with a dream to return one day to the land of the blue river at this point in history.
Chapter Seven ‘The Search for Oasis’ highlights the obscurity and prominence in getting a modest job in the oasis of hope. Budhu suffers in the hands of the corridors of powers since ‘Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely’. He also projects a moral dilemma of fighting with the system and structures of nepotism in securing a job or to show some sort of malleability in the long run to live life in a syndicate.
‘Reflections’ that constitutes Chapter Eight gives us the impression of the ‘metaphysics of presence’ through the life of Budhu and his family.
‘Economy Class Traveller’— Chapter Nine befits the class hierarchy of Indian social system where the march of capitalism towards a market-oriented way of life bereft of values that bind humanity together in a mutually benefitting order brought about conditions of disarray and destruction and became a threat to the planet Earth. It also explains how economic inequality in India is not pure but graded inequality that follows a caste hierarchy. According to Dr. Ambedkar, glaring inequalities are a threat to democracy as well as to the liberty of the individual.
Chapter Ten ‘Just Two Days, More!’ is soaked in pathos as the unending human saga of human desires haunt the life till death. The vividness of presentation of Budhu’s afterlife through Hindu mythology takes the reader in confidence to see their wishes in mundane life. Time-bound life of the protagonist is consummated through the device of magic realism that adds glory to it in fantastical terms.
Next Chapter ‘A Ghetto’s Cab’ deciphers the fact that these days we can see a movement ‘from an uncritical acceptance of the category of “religion”, towards a critical interrogation of “religion” as a category’. The complexity of the conflation between religious and faith-based identifications can be understood by means of the way identity is itself subject to stereotyping and monologic representation. It explores ‘Fundamentalism is not about religion, it is about power’ through the conversation of Budhu and Chugumu.
The last Chapter ‘Revelation’ prefixes the idea that brittleness and fragility is the quintessence upon which our familial ties are cemented on and a person's sense of identity is under utter uncertainty in expected aims in society.
Gautam Maitra in his book Floating Towel and a dozen Short Stories imbibes progressive ideas and investigates new genres, language, narrative techniques, psychological portrayal of characters, details of subalternity, depiction of existential predicament, realistic treatment of socio-cultural and historical issues, incorporation of western theoretical insights into native social complexities could be seen as both modernity’s proximity to regional writings that incorporates the broader concept of sectional differences. The book is beautifully woven with an introduction that brings out the multiple facets of traditional, parochial impressions, regional genealogy, gradual march towards modernity, interface between modernism and regional writings and the politics of representation as we witnessed today. Through the panoramic view with novel style and technique, Maitra writes under the discourse-dominated complicit social ideology. The central argument traces an alternative interpretation of the relationship between regional issues such as village vignettes and collective communitarian life with the preoccupation of developing life and times as witnessed in his sensitive depiction of emerging labyrinth of human relationships’. His voices are the voice of socially disempowered hegemonic positions. It emphasizes the creation of active and conscious agents who could call for whatever was advantageous in tradition and modernization and focuses on subaltern agency with the theory and praxis of social realities with a re-vision under the structural conditions outdated the figures of silence. His oeuvre suggests a radical humanist approach with legacies of realism about indigenous modernity under the influence of cultural amnesia. Embedded in the respective local cultures and world-views, Maitra attests to the developing a consciousness critical modernity. Floating Towel and a dozen Short Stories is a wide spectrum of issues evocative of theories and insights and wonderfully stimulating essays bring out the multiple layers and intersection of non-ethnocentric and diverse strands of cultural and social influence ingrained in Indian literature. What emerges from this book is a unique vantage point that deciphers the layered, nuanced, and complex phenomenon and pluralities of life.
Gautam Maitra, a bilingual writer is a prolific storyteller in weaving stories that are a kaleidoscope to life with objective experiences only to give us a myriad vision of the Indianness that strives for existence. Set in the turmoils of South Asia, Floating Towel and a dozen Short Stories visualizes the trajectory of family relationships, disenchantment, violence, greed, the changing lifetimes and abject senselessness of fanaticism. It is a fabric of a middle-class person namely Budhu, an archetype, an epitome of normalcy – a person so deeply rooted in the attitudes, customs and feelings of a native Bengali middle-class man that it could essentially be an alter-ego of any Indian Joe. Maitra’s Floating Towel and a dozen Short Stories, a compilation of various short stories that were written across the span of two decades, is divided into twelve chapters with the life and times of the protagonist Budhu in the depiction of existential predicament, realistic treatment of socio-cultural complexities.
The titular Chapter One ‘Floating Towel’ is the story of a Samaritan who bets his life at the crossroads of the turmoil of life. Floating towel is a symbol of smiling, dancing Shark in the watery uncertainty of destiny. It represents fragility of life and humanity. The smallest ripple in the water would send it floating one way. A ripple from another side would sway it another way. It's a metaphor for the frivolous nature of humanity's need to justify violence based on whichever ripple they lean on, religion, background, social status or anything else. And as a result, the state of a floating towel captures the state of humanity in a constant way of flux and dissent. Sachin and Budhu’s pranks in swimming pool take an ugly turn when Sachin drowned in the pool of water and stands on the verge of life to live in. This picture gives us the impression of lynchings, a form of violence in Indian socio-political scenario.
Chapter Two ‘The Two Strings’ showcases social hierarchy where love-liaison between Budhu, a refugee and Meena, an archetype of beauty—the pari in affluent Seth family on the backdrop of Naxalite movement in Bengal gets affected. It is not the consciousness of Budhu that determines his being, but, on the contrary, his posh social being determines his consciousness. Wallowing in a godless world and inhabiting a realm of nothingness, Budhu falls between the idea and the reality only to culminate in a plaintive whimper. The story webs around love-romance genre experimenting with two parallel social lines of inequities where the protagonist loses the war and a fatalist acceptance of injustice but the life moves on.
Chapter Three ‘Question Paper’ makes us believe that ‘life always begins after the exam only’ and essence of securing modest marks to live life in the rat race of this mundane world. Mugging books rather than practicability of answers in terms of creativity in this time-bound reality is threatening one for students. The story has portrayed the typical examination hall with fun and fear in full glory as the time catches up and the demand for 'nouns' grow geometrically high replacing 'complete sentences' on the approaching of the final bell - the death bell.
All four fluid sub-conscious minds — Budhu, his cousin brother Tony, Hary and his own brother Roberto in Chapter Four ‘A Date with the Lost World’ bring to us the images of divinity, Madonna, Michel Jackson and Charlie Chaplin, ‘Hitler and Napoleon playing on war on Chess Board’, Gandhi’s non-violence, colonial clutches and ‘Subhas Chandra Bose during World War II’, Victor Hugo accompanied by Cleopatra, Einstein and ‘Beethoven on music’ that bodies forth a real than reality in their figments of imagination. Observations on science and fiction testify to their perspective in the surreal world through the construction of cognitive images characterized by excessive yearning for these famous personalities in the history of social science.
Chapter Five ‘A Bizarre Talking Competition’ provides us with the celebration of human speech in the event of Talk- Fair in Kanjio, a city of greed, envy and amorality. Such talking competition is arranged to make the community more cohesive; unfortunately it leads to unprecedented murkier situation ‘haunted by the terror of talk’ that gripped the city. People jitter and stay away from the incident lest they fail into the lurking swamp of vices, greed and ego.
Chapter Six ‘The Land of the Blue River’ is all about the longing to return to Sundarbans, the native land of Samrat. He lives on to survive on stringent means on a land of different culture, habits and dialects as an ‘imagined community’ having a collective communitarian adherence only with a dream to return one day to the land of the blue river at this point in history.
Chapter Seven ‘The Search for Oasis’ highlights the obscurity and prominence in getting a modest job in the oasis of hope. Budhu suffers in the hands of the corridors of powers since ‘Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely’. He also projects a moral dilemma of fighting with the system and structures of nepotism in securing a job or to show some sort of malleability in the long run to live life in a syndicate.
‘Reflections’ that constitutes Chapter Eight gives us the impression of the ‘metaphysics of presence’ through the life of Budhu and his family.
‘Economy Class Traveller’— Chapter Nine befits the class hierarchy of Indian social system where the march of capitalism towards a market-oriented way of life bereft of values that bind humanity together in a mutually benefitting order brought about conditions of disarray and destruction and became a threat to the planet Earth. It also explains how economic inequality in India is not pure but graded inequality that follows a caste hierarchy. According to Dr. Ambedkar, glaring inequalities are a threat to democracy as well as to the liberty of the individual.
Chapter Ten ‘Just Two Days, More!’ is soaked in pathos as the unending human saga of human desires haunt the life till death. The vividness of presentation of Budhu’s afterlife through Hindu mythology takes the reader in confidence to see their wishes in mundane life. Time-bound life of the protagonist is consummated through the device of magic realism that adds glory to it in fantastical terms.
Next Chapter ‘A Ghetto’s Cab’ deciphers the fact that these days we can see a movement ‘from an uncritical acceptance of the category of “religion”, towards a critical interrogation of “religion” as a category’. The complexity of the conflation between religious and faith-based identifications can be understood by means of the way identity is itself subject to stereotyping and monologic representation. It explores ‘Fundamentalism is not about religion, it is about power’ through the conversation of Budhu and Chugumu.
The last Chapter ‘Revelation’ prefixes the idea that brittleness and fragility is the quintessence upon which our familial ties are cemented on and a person's sense of identity is under utter uncertainty in expected aims in society.
Gautam Maitra in his book Floating Towel and a dozen Short Stories imbibes progressive ideas and investigates new genres, language, narrative techniques, psychological portrayal of characters, details of subalternity, depiction of existential predicament, realistic treatment of socio-cultural and historical issues, incorporation of western theoretical insights into native social complexities could be seen as both modernity’s proximity to regional writings that incorporates the broader concept of sectional differences. The book is beautifully woven with an introduction that brings out the multiple facets of traditional, parochial impressions, regional genealogy, gradual march towards modernity, interface between modernism and regional writings and the politics of representation as we witnessed today. Through the panoramic view with novel style and technique, Maitra writes under the discourse-dominated complicit social ideology. The central argument traces an alternative interpretation of the relationship between regional issues such as village vignettes and collective communitarian life with the preoccupation of developing life and times as witnessed in his sensitive depiction of emerging labyrinth of human relationships’. His voices are the voice of socially disempowered hegemonic positions. It emphasizes the creation of active and conscious agents who could call for whatever was advantageous in tradition and modernization and focuses on subaltern agency with the theory and praxis of social realities with a re-vision under the structural conditions outdated the figures of silence. His oeuvre suggests a radical humanist approach with legacies of realism about indigenous modernity under the influence of cultural amnesia. Embedded in the respective local cultures and world-views, Maitra attests to the developing a consciousness critical modernity. Floating Towel and a dozen Short Stories is a wide spectrum of issues evocative of theories and insights and wonderfully stimulating essays bring out the multiple layers and intersection of non-ethnocentric and diverse strands of cultural and social influence ingrained in Indian literature. What emerges from this book is a unique vantage point that deciphers the layered, nuanced, and complex phenomenon and pluralities of life.
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