BOOK REVIEW - 'THOSE DAYS' BY SUNIL GANGOPADHYAY

‘Those Days’ is a radiant historical account of a period in Bengal's history where we find cerebral, political and intellectual revolutions burgeoning among the luminous youth and feudal aristocrats of Bengal when they awaken to their societal commitment and start challenging and changing the stereotype means of the society that has enveloped the whole of Bengal for centuries. The novel is set in the time around 1820's as it is evident in the starting few chapters and stretches till 1870’s with the freedom movement of 1857 forming the milieu.

The book is the perfect amalgamation of well guised fictional characters and historical people of relevance! The intimate relationship of the two wealthiest families of that day Bengal, the Singhas and the Mukherjees who are neighbors and close friends and the lives of the scions of their families forms the essential theme of this novel. Ramkamal Singha, the head of the Singha family finds peace in the arms of his courtesan KamalaSundari and his wife Bimbabati, who is left deserted turns to Bindushekhar Mukherjee in want of a son from her womb even though her elder adopted son Ganganarayan falls for the love of Bindushekhar’s widowed daughter Bindubasini.

Despite its preponderance of great personages, I found Those Days (at least in this 588 page translation of the original 907 page book) to be basically an adulterous novel with scant respect for our present day traditions! Nauch girls, infidelity, whores as mistresses, early death, back-stabbing, mothers taking pride in their sons going to whorehouses, wives gathering more respects for their husbands after they start keeping mistresses, alcohol, epidemics and calamities- every page ensures you get a taste of some of these throughout the novel. The novel is indeed an enthralling read but it just made me think as if really this was what our society was upto in the past, if this was what our traditions permitted then how can we be deemed conservative! The gargantuan structure of the society, the excessiveness of alcohol and disloyalty even in the households, the polygamy and other social restrictions on women delineated in the novel create a schematic portrait of how different were the lives of people in Bengal then and now.

The character of Nabin Singha is claimed to be moulded in Kaliprasanna Singha’s footsteps, who amongst other acts of brilliance translated the Mahabharata into Bengali when he was so young. According to the novel, Ganganarayan along with his age group are the first generation of golden youth with such rich families and such resources at their disposal with the knowledge of English education who live to see the1857 uprising along with resisting the profane ways of the society, revolting against their families. Important characters in the novel are those of Michael Madhusudhan Dutt, another of Ganga’s friends who is homosexual, blasphemous and astray and the awe-inspiring reformer Ishwar ChandraVidyasagar.

Vidyasagar is the carrier of noble reforms in the society without a smidgen of the superciliousness of great men. Vidyasagar's social reforms like those of widow remarriage were spirited but every now and then his ideas seemed to clash with that of Nabin Singha and Madhusudan either on the topic of widow remarriage or about the concern of Bengali as a language of the novelists. He is the one who can weep at the slightest provocations yet unfailingly goes through his routine each day. He just wonders how to promote prose writing in Bengali while all Madhusudan wanted was the banishment of Bengali language, which he considered as the language of the rogue. Also Bindushekhar Mukherjee as a fictional protagonist is the major character that has been introduced as the disciplinarian of the two houses, the man who runs the show before and after the death of his friend Ramkamal Singha. He compromises his feelings and desires for so long just for the sake of his love for Bimbabati but ultimately caves in, trying to force himself upon everyone!


For me, ‘Those Days’ is a revelation in other ways too. Starvation and poverty are used as brilliant plot devices, the starvation of farmers losing their lands in the Permanent Settlement Act, the servants, poor relatives, the beggars feeding outside rich households, the starvation of the child widows on ekadasi, the poverty among the peasants that finally revolt under Ganganarayan to overthrow the white from Indigo cultivation or the poverty of Thakomoni and Trilochan. On the other hand we see the Thakurs and the Babus displaying their power by hosting vast weddings and other social gathering. The vast staff of the household saves for the old age by stealing small portions of food every day and selling it. Servants and crooks grow fat and those who suffer, gaunt. Another brilliant use is that of the pimps and benefactors, who silently reap the benefits of the happenstances, switch sides and feed off the riches and even enjoy their women like Raimohan Ghosal and Dibakar. Another aspect which was wonderful about the storyline was that there seemed no loose ends to it. All the characters were well rounded off in their lives, details about them complete to every detail and they were not left hanging for long without notice. Yes there are indeed too many characters in this smooth translation but it only increases the yearning for more of them.


The women in the novel have all been to liking of everyone. I appreciate the way author has maintained the decent line of demarcation between the women of rich households and the class of whores and mistresses. While the whores are all open mouthed, great dancers or singers, women of unparalleled charm and beauty and the ones who flaunt their bodies easily, the women of the civilized households are shown as naturally beautiful, calm and serene, subdued and faithful. Yet what connects them is their blind faith and the superstitions dominant in the traditions of the society. In one scene where Raimohan tries to explain to Heeramoni that her son could well study in the Hindu College, she gets frightened at the thought of a whoreson studying among others and is apprehensive of the idea, even though she wants the best for her child and is hated in that very society and looked down upon as the most heinous of the creatures! These faulty traditions carve a niche for themselves even in the rich households, evident from the way Bimbabati or Sarojini, second wife on Nabin fear and distance themselves from widow remarriage.


This translation of ‘Sei Samay’ is picturesque but the peculiarity is awe-inspiring. The introduction part itself proves that this translation has not disturbed the intrinsic pattern of the original novel and that the tapestry of the story contains well woven realism with the fictional characters ardently placed in between. One of Those Days’s major obsessions is the bond between the sturdiness of Bengali as a language and the identity of the people of Bengal under the British as if Bengal were the whole of India, not needing the involvement of anything else. The so little involvement of the other parts of India, barring that of Lucknow and Delhi during the freedom struggle in the whole of this marathon translation does not belittle anything, rather lets you discover the period of the Bengal Renaissance.


Navendu Shekhar
2011PH10853