“As a writer, I feel come, let me take you somewhere and you feel it, feel this place — you may never go there or care about it — but you feel it as you are reading the story,” says Amitabha Bagchi at the launch of his book ‘This Place’.
In ‘This Place’, Bagchi takes us to Baltimore. The story is about a man named Jeevan who manages accounts of his landlord, Shabbir, in return for a rent-free accommodation. Kay and Mathew are his neighbours. The city authorities decide to demolish a few buildings including the one in which Jeevan is staying and thus begins a conflict. In the meantime, a woman named Savita enters Jeevan’s life, making his life more complex. The book deals with various questions around morality, fidelity, masculinity, loneliness and the central theme — displacement.
Bagchi says he knew he had to write about his US experience, especially Baltimore — he has stayed there for around six years; he needed to get a few things off his chest. He had started writing his first novel in Baltimore and finished it while still in the US and he wrote ‘This Place’ before ‘The Householder’. He had gone back to Baltimore to research before writing the book, but it was more about “how the city feels” to him rather than physical research.
“Baltimore is like a child gone wrong. There is crime, drugs, prostitution... it is the inner city of America without the glamour of New York. People had been left to rot. No one cared. This book is to show that look someone cares. You can’t live in a city without getting attached to it in some way.”
Bagchi has tried to capture various hues of American life through his characters. Kay, for example, has a problem with fidelity — a common thing in the US — and she has to deal with the pressures of morality. Mathew is a failed computer science PhD student. He finds out that a problem that he had been working on has been solved by people in IBM. He gets this idea that he can improve their solution and goes on a wild goose chase. Meeting several people who had achieved more than him instils in him a sense of failure.
“Among educated middle class Americans, there are steep pyramids of achievement. While some people are extremely successful, some fall on the side. In MIT computer department, for example, only one out five joins the faculty while the other four are made to leave with a feeling that they are a failure, which is not always justified. It is true for all professions. The society is unforgiving even of its talented and educated people,” elaborates Bagchi.
Another character, a real life one, that appears in the book is Cal Ripken, a basketball player from Baltimore. That Cal would be a part of the story, says Baghchi, was something that he had decided at the inception, though it was much later that he figured out how.
“Cal was a loved figure, a high achiever; he was like Rahul Dravid. Dravid has qualities of being a man... For me, there is nothing more manly than Dravid on the field, killing balls, no boundaries... getting the job done. Someone has to take the responsibility... Cal was that kind of a figure— taking no injury breaks, went to work every day and dealing with the pressures that come with masculinity.”
Baltimore, according to Bagchi, is a working man’s town. With the moving away of industries and disappearance of jobs, the city has become a shell of what it was and it has become difficult for men to provide for their families, which, in turn, undermines their masculinity.
Bagchi was inspired by painter Edward Hopper and the influence is seen in some sentence constructions like ‘chair where the paper was read’. Speaking about the way Hopper’s paintings—landscapes – are arranged (around a slanted quadrilateral made by light), Bagchi says, “I see in Hopper the tension between humans and space. If the human is removed, the paintings still work which makes the presence of the human in that space extremely fragile. In the book, space exists independent of the character. It shows fragility of life. Hopper’s paintings try to capture that there is so much space but not enough people to fill it with; completely different from Delhi,” he laughs.
And while descriptions were inspired by Hopper, the story itself was inspired by Medha Patkar’s speeches and documentaries on Narmada Bachao Andolan and the problems related to displacement it brought forth.
“Novelists are the keepers of a species morality,” says Bagchi and adds, “I know it is naive, but I feel that novels are a moralist’s medium. You can be a moralist without moralising.”
The book was launched at MoonRiver on Saturday.
In ‘This Place’, Bagchi takes us to Baltimore. The story is about a man named Jeevan who manages accounts of his landlord, Shabbir, in return for a rent-free accommodation. Kay and Mathew are his neighbours. The city authorities decide to demolish a few buildings including the one in which Jeevan is staying and thus begins a conflict. In the meantime, a woman named Savita enters Jeevan’s life, making his life more complex. The book deals with various questions around morality, fidelity, masculinity, loneliness and the central theme — displacement.
Bagchi says he knew he had to write about his US experience, especially Baltimore — he has stayed there for around six years; he needed to get a few things off his chest. He had started writing his first novel in Baltimore and finished it while still in the US and he wrote ‘This Place’ before ‘The Householder’. He had gone back to Baltimore to research before writing the book, but it was more about “how the city feels” to him rather than physical research.
“Baltimore is like a child gone wrong. There is crime, drugs, prostitution... it is the inner city of America without the glamour of New York. People had been left to rot. No one cared. This book is to show that look someone cares. You can’t live in a city without getting attached to it in some way.”
Bagchi has tried to capture various hues of American life through his characters. Kay, for example, has a problem with fidelity — a common thing in the US — and she has to deal with the pressures of morality. Mathew is a failed computer science PhD student. He finds out that a problem that he had been working on has been solved by people in IBM. He gets this idea that he can improve their solution and goes on a wild goose chase. Meeting several people who had achieved more than him instils in him a sense of failure.
“Among educated middle class Americans, there are steep pyramids of achievement. While some people are extremely successful, some fall on the side. In MIT computer department, for example, only one out five joins the faculty while the other four are made to leave with a feeling that they are a failure, which is not always justified. It is true for all professions. The society is unforgiving even of its talented and educated people,” elaborates Bagchi.
Another character, a real life one, that appears in the book is Cal Ripken, a basketball player from Baltimore. That Cal would be a part of the story, says Baghchi, was something that he had decided at the inception, though it was much later that he figured out how.
“Cal was a loved figure, a high achiever; he was like Rahul Dravid. Dravid has qualities of being a man... For me, there is nothing more manly than Dravid on the field, killing balls, no boundaries... getting the job done. Someone has to take the responsibility... Cal was that kind of a figure— taking no injury breaks, went to work every day and dealing with the pressures that come with masculinity.”
Baltimore, according to Bagchi, is a working man’s town. With the moving away of industries and disappearance of jobs, the city has become a shell of what it was and it has become difficult for men to provide for their families, which, in turn, undermines their masculinity.
Bagchi was inspired by painter Edward Hopper and the influence is seen in some sentence constructions like ‘chair where the paper was read’. Speaking about the way Hopper’s paintings—landscapes – are arranged (around a slanted quadrilateral made by light), Bagchi says, “I see in Hopper the tension between humans and space. If the human is removed, the paintings still work which makes the presence of the human in that space extremely fragile. In the book, space exists independent of the character. It shows fragility of life. Hopper’s paintings try to capture that there is so much space but not enough people to fill it with; completely different from Delhi,” he laughs.
And while descriptions were inspired by Hopper, the story itself was inspired by Medha Patkar’s speeches and documentaries on Narmada Bachao Andolan and the problems related to displacement it brought forth.
“Novelists are the keepers of a species morality,” says Bagchi and adds, “I know it is naive, but I feel that novels are a moralist’s medium. You can be a moralist without moralising.”
The book was launched at MoonRiver on Saturday.
