Book Patna Roughcut by Siddharth Chowdhury Book Patna Roughcut by Siddharth Chowdhury

If you are the original Cinema Paradiso kid, you are going to love Siddharth Chowdhury. For his hero, who announcesstyle, "My name is Ritwik Ray" is that quintessential of celluloid buffs who not only dream in black and white, but who also act out their lives in short movie style riffs which pay homage to all the cinema greats.

In a chapter entitled Waiting for Godard, he even manages to throw in a line that should crack up all fervent worshippers of print and film, when right at the end, Ritwik asks, "Waiting for what? For Godard, of course."

If you have spent a major part of your life riffling through dog-eared books on pavements and never been to an art film festival, you will still love Chowdhury. You may even want to slip this slim novel into your cloth shoulder bag and head for the nearest British Council library, where you may want to settle down for a drowsy rexine covered read in a comfortable chair, in air-conditioned surroundings, taking small sips from a water cooler that actually works and thanking the powers that be for libraries such as the British Council that have allowed people like Siddharth-Ritwik-Ray a place to dream.

Or maybe they offer just the means of escaping from the stifling aridity of a small town, though post-Marquez, it has perhaps become de rigueur to come from a claustrophobic space, so that you can make the Great Escape and tumble into life by means of your art.

Technicolor Dreams: The novel is a treat for cinema and book lovers Technicolor Dreams: The novel is a treat for cinema and book lovers

It helps that Chowdhury does not come from any old small town in India. He comes from Patna. There is a certain glamour of depravity that clings to the idea of the capital city of Bihar that makes it seem almost exotic.

As the novel begins, Chowdhury sketches the outlines of what is to be the main theme of this collection, the dynamics of belonging and not belonging in two worlds as represented by Patna and Delhi-small town-big town, provincial-centre.

It is in part a tribute to Harryda, a character whose presence hovers through the collection as the idealist manque, the Don Quixote of the gutters, who regularly humps an electricity pole outside his house until his mother drags him in, every time, even after he has fallen so low that he finds it possible to live with a woman from a squatter colony.

Ritwik goes in search of him and discovers that beyond the miasma of pigshit and poverty as he describes it, the woman has a certain charm. Or as he says, "Jamuna's face was half covered with ghunghat but at close range I could see how attractive she really was. She had the full rounded body of a deity and she took me inside."

No matter how low a person from the upper class might fall, there will always be a fat and fecund woman named Jamuna waiting below to cushion the leap. Is this the way the class system works in Bihar, or merely a formula film where the dusky heroine saves the decadent, and in this case, flatulent hero?

Chowdhury's skill in this novel- with five stories that are subtly interlinked so that they seem like a tangled web of memories that reflect different facets of the truth, just as the title suggests- is to place the decadence side by side with the beauty. He holds up the image of a cut-glass decanter to signal how times have changed for the landed aristocracy who once formed the elite in a place such as Bihar.

It is not, however, just another exercise in nostalgia, though there is some hint of that as well, but equally a very delicately balanced depiction of the casual brutality that passes for everyday life in our cities.

Chowdhury has learnt to pace his stories very well. If he uses the techniques of his dearly beloved film directors to frame his every scene, or caresses his heroines in a manner and language that would do an Updike proud, it only adds to his skill and perseverance. No writer can really invent his or her world without some kind of help from another source. If Chowdhury has ranged far and wide in making his selection, it has only helped him to focus his vision with a certain throwaway wit and charm.

After this second book by Chowdhury, we might well echo the writer and ask "Waiting for whom? For Chowdhury, of course."