—
Stomachs heavy, they walked down Whitfield Street. Confronting, in a few minutes, the building on Warren Street, Ananda studied it as if it were a dark castle. No lights on the first, second, and top floors. They stepped in. Almost at once, a rumbling sound. The Patels were hurtling down the stairs. A brief arrest as they saw each other. Ananda continued up the stairs, but his uncle, hamming it up, said: “Vivek! How are you? And this handsome young man is your brother, isn’t he?” As Ananda entered the flat, he heard laughter. The words, “I’m a black Englishman,” seemed to float eerily up the staircase.
—
By the time his uncle came in, Ananda was cross-legged on the sofa, grinning at Rising Damp. He didn’t care when the Patels and Mandy would make their entrance again. His spirits were high. Poetry, at this moment, couldn’t do the job (not Edward Thomas, not Larkin) that Leonard Rossiter was doing so expertly, exuding an obtuse grandeur.
Standing before him, marginally blocking his view, his uncle said: “Could you change the channel? There’s too much laughter on television. People are dying in various parts of the world, but in this culture you have to have something to laugh at.” He narrowed his eyes, awaiting a rebuke for his sermon.
But there were more squeals as Leonard Rossiter, updating the African tenant Don Warrington on English etiquette, stole a glimpse of Frances de la Tour’s cleavage.
With admirable self-control, Ananda, eyes on the small lit screen, said: “It’s hilarious, Rangamama. You may enjoy it.”
His uncle looked pained and at sea.
“But I prefer tragedy to comedy, Pupu.”
By “tragedy” his uncle meant B-grade action movies—that is, a narrative with dead bodies. Comedy alienated him because he neither followed jokes nor had the patience to stay with them till the punchline. He was terribly inattentive. His consciousness was too fluid to have a grasp on a story from start to end. How he’d shone at exams was a mystery. In action films, too, he had no time for plot and was placated as long as periodic killings occurred. The last action film he’d fully comprehended and cogitated on was probably High Noon. Given the story wasn’t the point, he could plunge into an adventure at any juncture—even midway through a movie. The occasional calamity kept him quiet.
“Or you could check if they’re showing wildlife! We could be missing the tiger, Pupu!”
This was a recurrent addiction—to gawp awestruck the great beasts in Africa, while they lolled, napped, sunned themselves, blinked at distant cameras, then pursued and devoured the lesser and stupider animals.
“There are no wildlife programmes at this hour,” Ananda assured him. “Sit down.”
Reluctantly—as if he’d rather walk a few more miles—he descended on the sofa. He began to loosen his shoelaces. Let those ankles breathe. Reaching impatiently for the remote control—he was hopeless with devices, but now had the measure of this one—he pushed both himself and Ananda into a vortex of channel-changing. Finally, calming down, he laid the remote control on the sofa, and said:
“I’ve eaten too much.”
Tamely, in accidental concord, they’d come back to laughter and Rising Damp.
“Do you want a laddoo?” Ananda was under pressure to dispense with six uneaten ones.
His uncle gave him an eloquent stare.
“Are you mad? Do you want me to die tonight?”
Though lazy and recumbent for now, he’d be off to Belsize Park in twenty minutes. What an idiotic plan Ananda had had once—that they’d share that bedsit. Not because it was too small. But you couldn’t share any space with him: to live with his uncle would be to go mad. Or at least to be changed; or sidetracked permanently, indubitably, from a traditional idea of coexistence. No wonder God, in his mercy, had withheld a spouse from him.
“In fact, I’m going to put on weight as a result of that slap-up meal,” he complained. “Anyway, my cheeks have always been too fat and my face too round.” Ananda glanced quickly away from Frances de la Tour to confirm that his uncle was describing the person he knew. While it may not have met Rangamama’s standards of consumptive narrowness, the face wasn’t round at all; the cheeks weren’t full. Yet the baritone had a way of casting a spell which meant almost everything his uncle uttered sounded true and reasonable. Half the time you argued with him not to dispute him but to fend off becoming an accomplice to his vision. “Also, my nose becomes larger when I eat too much.” Just as Ananda prepared to debate the canonical European preference for starved, phalange-like noses, his uncle observed: “You know that a large nose is a sign of virility.”
“Is it?” Given that Ananda had grown up in the world essentially in the proximity of a mother who talked unstoppably, he was quite capable of following Rising Damp and engaging in a dialogue with his uncle simultaneously. As they slipped into a commercial break, he let himself relax and consider these questions. The nose and virility: he speculated on the kind of equation being made here. It was vaguely obvious. But what reliable knowledge would a virgin have of virility? Intriguingly, experience didn’t seem to matter so much when it came to Ananda’s uncle. He always sounded more experienced than he could possibly be. As if he had recourse to some other source of information outside reading, education, and life.
“Oh very much so. You know that Christ had a big nose?”
Not that Christ was particularly celebrated for his virility. Still, Ananda found this an arresting piece of information. He hadn’t known that there were actual likenesses available—which could have attested to the feature. The Roman Catholic portrait at the reception of the Indian YMCA displayed the generic Christ, the timorous, blonde-haired, blue-eyed face upturned to the heavens, a lost middle-class student searching for guidance in an inhospitable world.
“If you think Christ looked the way they show him in films,” said his uncle, gazing straight at Ananda, as if he’d caught him out indulging in exactly such an irresponsible misconception, “you’d be wrong. Christ wasn’t European: he was from the Middle East. It is said that he had a large prominent nose. The way you see him today is Western propaganda.”
He leaned back on the sofa, unarguable, his nose radiating a new power, looking like he was in no hurry to leave. The next moment he got up.
“Small job,” he clarified.
He shuffled off to the neighbouring bathroom.
A thunderclap. The Patels. Or was it Mandy? Back earlier than expected. Ananda steeled himself. Another bang—below him. Mandy. You had to feel for her, actually. Solitary homecomings. From Paul Hogan draining a can of lager in the outbacks—such were the images (caricatures of epic voyages) that flashed before you as the day drew to a close—Ananda looked behind him at Warren Street, the pale torches of the sodium vapour lamps that would keep him company through the troubled sleep to come.
Tandoor Mahal: bright and desolate. A lone jacketless man before it. Was it Mr. Alam?
His uncle returned to him with the fretful air of one who’d not only been pissing but deeply pondering.
“When Annada Shankar Ray came to Europe in 1931,” he said, “he predicted a time would come when everybody will be famous. Well-known people will rise as thick and fast as bubbles in the air.”
Ananda wondered whether this might be some kind of comment—a parting shot before his uncle made his way back—on the futility of Ananda’s unspoken but undeniable ambition. That Ananda, through no real fault of his own, had simply been born too late, when becoming a successful poet didn’t actually mean that much: not because success was less desirable now, but because everyone had a right to it today. This might explain the disbelieving feeling he had when he watched This Is Your Life or Cilla Black or Stars in Their Eyes.
“Shudrer yuga,” said his uncle, as if pronouncing a verdict, tucking in his shirt very slowly. “The final epoch, according to Vivekananda. The age of the shudra.”
Terrible word: doomed menial, untouchable. Fixed in servitude for eternity. Brahman, Kshatriya, Vaishya, Shudra. The lowest of t
he low. His uncle had assumed each of these incarnations in the course of a single life: philosopher, warrior, merchant, beggar. Surely it wasn’t the actual shudra he was speaking of? For was the shudra anywhere near finding dignity and freedom? It seemed not. Then in what way the age of the shudra? Unless it was some allegory he meant…Of course—then it made sense, as an insane cosmogony. The caste system could serve as a metaphor for the epochs succeeding each other since the dawn of time. Ananda was momentarily happy to go along with the scheme. The first age, of Brahman, was (decided Ananda proudly) India’s—the Brahman not being the pusillanimous priest with the sacred thread, but the spiritual man, who could have any provenance whatsoever, emerge from any caste: the sage and renunciate. The second age, of the Kshatriya, the warriors and aristocrats, was Rome’s. The king and the notion of Empire was then supreme. It was the aristocrat who fostered and nurtured value and beauty and the arts. When the aristocracy went to seed the third age came into being, of the Vaishya—the merchant. You had to grant that epoch to the English: the ascendancy and rule of the shopkeeper, the burgher, who might possess an Empire but whose outlook was essentially humdrum, middle-level, and suburban. (Amazing how the allegory fell into place.) Finally, the last age: the shudra’s—in which the man on the street was illusorily empowered. (For power invariably deceives those it passes on to.) It was a toss-up whether—if you subscribed to the metaphor—the epoch belonged to Russia or America. It would seem America. For this would be the epoch nominally of the common man, but really of capitalism and popular culture. Everyone would be famous. And after this final phase (Ananda hoped it would take another century to truly arrive)—what?
“Pupu.”
Ananda looked up.
“It’s after eleven…I’d better head off before the tube closes.”
Yet another outing! Could he be sprightly, setting out now for Belsize Park? At least it was warm. Better than those chill nights on which he’d dutifully make his way homeward from his nephew. Ananda nodded, briefly and fiercely hating the peace and quiet that came at the end of everything. Mandy was very still, as if she were in hiding. Yet be grateful for the peace before the Patels are back again—and for this indecisive lull before his uncle declaims on a detail he’d forgotten about in his rush to depart. He was loitering: clearly not about to say goodbye just yet. Never say, “I’m leaving.” Always, “I’ll be seeing you.” “ ‘Jachhi’ bolte nei, Pupu, but ‘aschhi.’ ”
“So—do I see you on Monday then?” enquired Ananda of the hovering figure.
Acknowledgements
I’m fortunate to have the belief and support of a group of great readers who also happen to be my agent and publishers: Peter Straus, Chiki Sarkar, Rosalind Porter, Sonny Mehta, Diana Miller.
My mother continues, as ever, to inspire me: this book is for her too.
Rinka embraced the idea when I put it to her: I procrastinated, and she brought me round.
Lastly, there’s Radha, to whom I am grateful for—among other things—thinking I am funny.
A NOTE ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Amit Chaudhuri is the author of several award-winning novels and is an internationally acclaimed musician and essayist. Freedom Song: Three Novels received the Los Angeles Times Book Prize for Fiction. His many international honors include the Commonwealth Writers’ Prize; most recently, he became the first recipient of the Infosys Prize for Humanities—Literary Studies. He is a contributor to the London Review of Books, Granta and The Times Literary Supplement. He is currently professor of contemporary literature at the University of East Anglia and a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature.
An A.A. Knopf Reading Group Guide
Odysseus Abroad
by Amit Chaudhuri
The questions, discussion topics, and reading list that follow are intended to enhance your reading group’s discussion of Odysseus Abroad, Amit Chaudhuri’s captivating and elegantly crafted novel about two Indian men living in London—a daydreaming college student and his eccentric bachelor uncle—and how they cope with feelings of isolation and alienation in their daily life.
Discussion Questions
1.Discuss the concept of “exile” in Odysseus Abroad as related to Homer’s The Odyssey and James Joyce’s Ulysses. What parallels can you draw among the works? Are there any similarities among the protagonists and their attitudes towards isolation?
2.Discuss the Jorge Luis Borges epigraph that opens the novel. How does this quote relate to the content of Odysseus Abroad? How does the “right to…tradition” factor into Ananda’s experiences as an outsider in London?
3.At several points in the novel, Ananda discusses his family’s trip to London in 1973. How did his experiences during this trip shape his understanding of the city? What, if anything, about the city has changed since his earlier excursions?
4.On this page, Ananda reflects on his experience in London in comparison to Bombay, thinking, “But we were colonised by them…How is it that our cities are so different? How come I’m so little prepared for here?” How does this attitude reverberate throughout the novel? What aspects of his former life emerge in his London life? What comforts of home is he afforded, if any?
5.Discuss the contentious relationship between Radhesh and Ananda’s mother. What are the roots of their conflict? How does Ananda contend with his uncle’s behavior and attitude towards his mother throughout the novel? Do you think he has a clear picture of their relationship prior to his birth?
6.On this page, Radhesh is described as a “world-conqueror,” but with a bit of a wink to the reader. Discuss Radhesh’s self-aggrandizing personality. How does Ananda deal with his uncle’s boastfulness throughout the novel?
7.How would you characterize Ananda’s mother? This page states that Ananda doesn’t “know what he’d do without” her. Discuss Ananda’s relationship with her, and how she aided him while she was in London. Does his dependency on her stunt his own growth?
8.Discuss Ananda’s attitude towards the British. How does he perceive them? What aspects of their culture is he most surprised by?
9.Wealth, or the relative lack of it, is a theme throughout Odysseus Abroad. How does Ananda get by as a thrifty college student? How does his uncle’s wealth come into play throughout the novel? How does Ananda’s understanding of wealth—and class—change when he moves to London?
10. In chapter 2, Ananda’s schooling is discussed at length. How would you describe Ananda as a student? How is his identity shaped through his literary interests? Contrast his lack of interest in schooling with his ambitions. Given his conversation with Nestor Davidson about his poetry, do you think Ananda has realistic hopes for his future?
11. On this page, Ananda describes how the “stubborn conflicts— between Indian and Chinese, Pakistani and Indian—melted and became irrelevant” in the cultural atmosphere of London. How does life in London cause Ananda to have a heightened awareness of his racial identity? How is his “otherness” explored throughout the book?
12. Ananda’s sexual identity and proclivities are discussed throughout Odysseus Abroad. How would you describe his attitude towards women? Discuss his interactions with Mandy, with Hilary Burton, his predilection for porn, and his longing for his cousin. Were you surprised that he had questioned his heterosexuality?
13. On this page, Ananda’s mother says that “man’s made in his maternal uncle’s mould.” How is Ananda similar to Radhesh? Does Ananda acknowledge these similarities?
14. Despite Ananda’s sometimes gloomy mood, Chaudhuri infuses a wry sensibility into Odysseus Abroad. What scenes did you find to be the most humorous? How does Radhesh provide comic relief?
15. The narrative of Odysseus Abroad takes place over the course of a single day, yet the reader gets a rich sense of characterization and history through Ananda’s lengthy ruminations. What does the structure and narration of the book assert about “the capriciousness of memory,” as the Dan Jacobson epigraph mentions? Can you compare the structure and
narrative progression of this book to that of The Odyssey? Other literary works?
16. Discuss the concept of the “journey” as a literary trope. How is Odysseus Abroad a play on this concept? Does Ananda’s journey through London provide him with any new insight into his life? Into his relationship with his uncle?
17. Discuss how a sense of place works in the novel. How is “place” expressed not only through the setting, but also through the characters’ physicality, as well as through the book’s style and language?
Suggested Reading
Joseph O’Neill, The Dog
Amit Chaudhuri, Freedom
Vikram Chandra, Love and Longing in Bombay
Odysseus Abroad Page 17