Upamanyu Chatterjee’s
latest book is a tale of brothers separated at birth, and his spin on the
overused plot point. Anyone familiar with Chatterjee’s work would agree that
his books are not the sort of easy-read varieties made for journeys, but they
require the readers to spend a lot of time thinking about the words they read,
as much as he spent writing them. Fairy Tales at Fifty is no different, but it
is ultimately less rewarding than any of his other works, partly due to the
choice of his protagonist, but mostly due to the lack of exploring the plot to
its potential.
Nirip, on the verge of his
fiftieth birthday, realizes that his parents are not his actual biological
ones, and he ponders on the alternative life he could have had. Anguli, or
Jhabua, the separated twin leads a vagrant life wandering across cities,
killing people for fun and games. They meet at the start of the book and open
up to each other, mostly coz no one else was interested in them. The first 43
pages, where Anguli narrates his tale, are a breeze, aided by Chatterjee’s macabre
wit and detailed observation of the grotesque, which also lets the anticipation
grow higher going ahead.
When it comes to Nirip’s
turn the tale loses its steam, and instead indulges in intensely labored
rumination of his life and the things he has surrounded himself with. The best
parts of Nirip’s tale are the curious family ties that he unravels, and how
much of them he misunderstood over his fifty years. In fact, the family tree of
Pashupati (the patriarch) is one of the most intriguing and weird ones I have
come across.
There are important plot
points in his tale like the staging of his own kidnap to get back at his
father, the violent cricket match where the players get killed according to the
whims of its organizers, his father’s blood and flesh trade, and his
relationship with his half-male, half-female sister Magnum (getting the rawest
deal of them all), but they are discarded as quickly as they are brought into
the story. Once Nirip gets kidnapped, the narration gets even more tedious
detailing of the surroundings he finds himself in and the quirks of the men who
kidnap him. It doesn’t help that every one of his kidnappers is called Scruffy
with different second names, making it difficult to identify them or tell them
for the other.
The underlying philosophy
seems to be, also spelt out in the book, as we grow old, we become ourselves
and life becomes as pointless as it has always been, but we chose to grind it
out, since death seems a worse alternative. The nothingness and tedium of old
age has been explored earlier by the author in his previous books on Shyamanand
and Barfi (The Last Burden and Way to Go), and he does not add much to it,
thankfully, since this is supposed to be a fairy tale. The scatological
observations are also toned down, but Chatterjee’s prose is as impeccable as
ever, commas and hyphens intact.
I was waiting for a new
book by him ever since I read Way to Go, yet I came across this book only by
accident, and was surprised not to find any publicity about its release. I’m glad
I read it and will keep it in my collection for a future re-read, once I think I’m
equipped enough to handle his works, but I don’t think I would recommend this
book to many.
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