for many years now, since I laid my hands on literature from the world beyond India and the older writings of its colonizer, I have complained that there is rarely an Indian writer worth recommending. those who were born here also needed to cover miles and settle abroad, swap their citizenship, to write as if they cared. probably Manu Joseph is the only one (I used to say) who remains here and is worth reading. of course my judgement is limited to Indian writing in English, I am incapable of reading other languages and haven't chanced upon many translations, although I have gifted Perumal Murugan to someone else, influenced by compelling reviews and the plan that I would borrow the gift back after the person was done reading.

it was also unusual that I would read any of K's cricket-writer recommendations, given I live in a world that could very well never have played the game. however, this guy wrote a book about Guyana and about the biharis who had been taken there so long ago as indentured labor and how they had assimilated and resisted assimilation to become the people they are today. and K kept repeating lil stories from the book. it was inevitable that I would pick it up as soon as he finished it.

the writing blows my mind. and the stories do too. also the openness of the narrator, who seems heavily based on the author himself, traveling to Guyana to live there for a year in order to escape his own country, India. even if the writing weren't so goddamn precious, his sentiments reflect my own in many ways, the escapism, and rejection of one's country, the need to find oneself as separated from it. but I would never have mingled the way the author did with the place and its people, I would never have given up my comforts to sleep in a hammock in mosquito-ridden jungles with almost-strangers who I would never have trusted. despite my liberal attitude, at heart I am easily disgusted and self-protective, often at the cost of others. but that's why The Sly Company Of People Who Care is written by Rahul Bhattacharya and not me. although I did look up almost every song mentioned in the book on youtube, and referred to wikipedia and google to understand local concepts, fruit, foods, slur words, towns and their geographical constraints; I am very much a living-room adventurer that way, especially when faced with grubby adventure prospects.

but the writing is precious (not just in this book, but also his journalistic pieces). like this for example:

"Her ambition was different from mine, not the flimsy ambition of journeys but of destinations. In five years I wasn't sure if I would be anywhere, but she probably would. She was formidable. She knew childbirth. If we were in battle I suspected I would lose.

She was prepared to tackle the world because the world to her was not absurd. To think the world absurd is a privilege. Those who do so consider themselves enlightened. In fact, it only means their struggles are shallow. Sooner or later the real world will rain down upon them. That, or we shall go slowly mad, or seek recourse in meditation, narcotics, writing."


!!!

as one ambitious of my journeys, as one wont to sometimes think the world absurd, as one also sometimes to acknowledge and self-criticize my privilege (that I am afraid I couldn't bear to live without), these words feel like those I would want to write but could never have written.

P.S. hope to spend more time on this old and familiar part of me, now that I am forcing myself the lesson that people do not need to see every cool image I witnessed and bothered to click; although I do still use facebook on a browser and still cannot stop sharing cool writings and movies and my ideologies, epiphanies, and unwanted advice on it.