ENGLISH AUGUST - UPMANYU CHATERJEE Review

I finally polished up English, August by Upamanyu Chatterjee. It was a hazaar f*cked up book(as so often mentioned by the protagonist in the novel) and I realized this somewhere in the middle of it, but

I ploughed on nevertheless, because I have been leaving just too many books in the middle that it is getting discomforting!

It had been years since I had been meaning to catch this. The theme of a big town guy hooked on to joints, booze, women and the good life cracks the IAS, and is posted on to an obscure district called Madna, where he can’t understand the ways, the life, the people, and the single most important reason, of why is he there at all. The theme was just so romantic and so reminiscent of what has happened to me, and shall repeat in the near future that I just had to plough on for SOME spark of inspiration and shared resonance.

Apart from going to meetings stoned 10 am in the morning, lying profusely about everything .. cooking up an imaginary wife with cancer being one of them....and masturbating while looking at the lizards copulating on the ceiling, Agastya Sen, Ogu, or English distinctly disappoints. All the more, because it could have been just so much more.

The only saving grace was that though predictably he leaves the service at the end, he doesn’t do it of a sense of nirvana, or some advice. He does that, because he just wants to.
The author also interestingly brought out many more perspectives about his friends. August’s friends in lives that he would want to be in, trying to appear for civil services, because their own life seems artificial, and so many others, no one of whom is happy at what life has dished out.

Sigh!

Too romantic and true a theme.

Update 23 April, 2006: Almost a year hence, this book just refuses to recede from memory. I have gone on to read ’Mammaries of the welfare state’, which incidentally is much better in a very different way. However, English August for me has been a book very much like say the movie- The Blair Witch Project. The first time I saw it at 2am, I didn’t feel nothing. It actually looked like a bull load of a hoopla for something this tame. But then one week hence, i started thinking about it. And it just refuses to recede even now, ages hence.

For everyone who has ever felt uncomfortable about life, English, August should be required reading.