topics: |  fiction | india

A rather grim tale set in Calcutta, the "foulest and most crime-ridden city
in the world: filthy, stench-ridden, crawling with vermin both human and
otherwise"

The story unfolds with an American protagonist who has come in search of an
elusive author, and soon finds himself embroiled in a 19th c. colonial story
of human sacrifice and other intrigues related to the worship of Kali.

The western gaze on the east's loathsome ways is a modern colonial
narrative, quite despicable from the Indian p.o.v.  But the story is
certainly a page-turner.

Incongruous against this gory stereotypical background, the book has a
number of well-done translations from prominent bengali poets. 

Excerpts

	they are the admiration of the
	rest of the mud-sprung, famine-knifed,
	street-pounding, war-rattled,
	difficult, painstaking,
	kicked in the belly, grief and
	cartilage mankind, the multitude,
	some under a coal-sucking Vesuvius
	of chaos smoke, some inside a
	heaving Calcutta midnight, who
	very well know where they are.
		— Saul Bellow

	Why, this is Hell; nor am I
	out of it.
		— Christopher Marlowe

--
   "Dum-Dum Airport," I read aloud.
   "Yes, yes. It is here they made the bullets until they were outlawed after
World War Number One," said Krishna. "This way, please."

[krishna escorts them to the city]
we were surrounded by a dozen porters clamoring to carry our few bags. The
men were reed-thin, bare-legged, draped in brown rags. One was missing an
arm.  Another looked as if he had been in a terrible fire: his chin was
welded to his chest by great wattles of scar tissue. Evidently he could not
speak, but urgent sounds gurgled up from his ruined throat.

The air was weighted with moisture, as dark and heavy as a soaked army
blanket. For a dizzy second I thought it was snowing, as the air appeared to
be swirling with white flecks; then I realized that there were a million
insects dancing in the beams of the terminal spotlights. Krishna

The streets were flooded. Water stood two and three feet deep in
places. Under tattered canvas, robed figures sat and slept and squatted and
stared at us with eyes that showed only white in orbs of shadow. Each alley
gave a glimpse of open rooms, starkly lit courtyards, shadows moving within
shadows. A frail man pulling a heavy cart had to leap aside as our bus roared
past, throwing a curtain of water across him and his load.  He shook his
fist, and his mouth shaped unheard obscenities.

We were approaching the center of the city. Rotting residential slums gave
way to larger, even more decayed-looking buildings. There were few street
lights. Vague flickers of heat lightning were reflected in the deep pools of
black water that filled the intersections. Every darkened storefront seemed
to hold the silent, sheeted forms lying like unclaimed bundles of laundry or
propped up to watch us pass.

Ahead, a boy stood atop a crate in a black circle of water and swung what I
took to be a dead cat by its tail. He threw it as the bus approached, and it
was not until the furry corpse bounced hollowly off the windshield that I
realized it had been a rat. The driver cursed and swerved toward the
child. The boy leaped away with a flash of brown legs, and the crate he had
been standing on splintered under our right wheel.

	Calcutta, Calcutta, you are a night obsessed field,
	infinite cruelty,
	Serpentine mixed current, on which I flow
	to who knows where.
		— Sunilkumar Nandi

--ch 9

	Calcutta, you sell in the market
	Cords for strangling the neck."
		— Tushar Roy

"Notice the children?" asked Amrita quietly. I hadn't, but I did now. Girls
of seven and eight stood with even younger children on their hips. I now
realized that this was one of the most persistent images from the past couple
of days — children holding children. As the rain came down they stood under
awnings, overpasses, and dripping canvases.