Excerpt From ‘Letters from the Asylum: A Novel of Art, Madness and Memory’

• Chowdhury’s novel is written in the epistolary form.

• It delves into various themes, including caste politics in Bengal, mental health, literary gate-keeping and the agony surrounding creativity.

• Cinema, poetry and scars of the Partition are also important elements of the narrative

                                                            Prologue

The year is 2015, and as always, the world seems to be falling apart, while I, Ina Chakraborty, a photojournalist, find myself sitting like a thief, inside a dilapidated dead poet’s house surrounded by an overpowering darkness – the kind, one witnesses only in small towns. Terror had struck in Paris. Thousands of Syrian refugees had fled their war-torn country. Closer home, Bangladeshi hardliners had been killing numerous secular bloggers one after another in cold blood for raising their voices against religious hardliners. Khabar, the magazine where I work, recently introduced an exclusive section for political photo essays, for which I had been asked to travel throughout the larger Bengal hinterland. My job involves listening, as much as watching others unfold. It takes me through places that are not always scenic, pleasant, or even safe. Numerous times I’ve had to squat down with bare buttocks on the red earth, hoping not to attract ants or snails. I’ve also sat through situations like this, where the pall of dark is your only friend and shield, the only truth in a world full of unknowns. In moments like these, I’ve asked myself the question again and again, about why I do what I do.

And yet, this was different. Sitting here in the dark, memory felt like an ally, or a Tarkovsky film flashing in front of my eyes.

I was jolted out of my reverie, by my own mumbling. Why did a talented well-known poet die lonely, how did he go mad, and how did a poor poet have such a beautiful house to himself where he had lived alone till time took him out.

Had there been a mirror, I might have seen myself covered in cobwebs, with streaks of moonlight playing around the eyes from a broken window on the opposite wall. The little chair I had found in one of the bedrooms turned out to be broken. Heavy dust had settled on the racks where books once used to be. I looked around at it all now in silence, amazed at what time had reduced a poet to.

I could hear a few voices outside, and craning my neck saw a few people walking outside the gates. Probably neighbours taking an evening stroll, I thought. A tad nervously, I reminded myself that snakes, ghosts, and small-town drunks often sought shelter in old houses – I prayed that none of them would find their way in here. Slowly I stood up, and followed my own shadow from one room to the other now, the wavery moonlight guiding me through. Here Binoy had slept, there he had sat down after his lunch, on the small cot now dismantled, he had rested. September winds carried the damp scent of the Ichamati river inside. A dog barked nearby, and the staleness of yesterday’s urine clung stubbornly to the walls tonight.

In the garden, away from the main house, was a small library, where Binoy had once spent lot of time, while his parents were still alive. On the veranda, an open light bulb hung from the ceiling, a cycle was parked next to the wall, and a dog slept peacefully close by. After a few minutes, convinced that there was no one lurking around. I cautiously stepped out, and broke into a run.

I could see very few lights in the neighbourhood, I wondered why. I half-walked, half-ran in the dark. I needed to be cautious; this was volatile territory, Thakurnagar had been the focal point of tremendous caste politics for a while now.

I wobbled and almost fell in the dark, my stiff legs had probably given in. I cursed silently, and immediately checked the packet in my hands. To my horror, I realised that I had almost fallen into a slush pond. I felt like screaming … all this felt terribly crazy … the events of the day had taken a toll on me. I could have been back in the 1960s where it had all begun, but then Binoy Majumdar was dead, and I, like a thief, now lay beyond his backyard with his never-before-seen diary clutched over my breasts.

But I digress. Let us begin at the beginning.

(Maitreyee B. Chowdhury is a poet and a writer. She is the author of Uttam Kumar and Suchitra Sen: Bengali Cinema's First Couple, Where Even the Present is Ancient: Benaras, One Dozen-Hasan Azizul Huq [trans], The Hungryalists, I Walk Instead and Letters from the Asylum. She is the editor of The Bangalore Review and organiser of the Bengaluru Poetry Festival.)