The Autobiography of an Unknown Indian

I took Chaudhuri's autobiography along on both legs of a cross-country plane trip. Good choice: this tale of old Bengal is sufficiently remote from the cares and demands of my ordinary life, I would have been a long time getting to it at home. But the constraints of coach class are just the place to come to terms with its prickly, difficult and high-principled author. At 535 pages, the book is not short, but I don't think I would want it shorter. Chaudhuri has a big subject -- not just himself, but the whole of a culture -- and you need this breadth to capture it. Besides, it is not really one book; it is at least three. It is a bildungsroman: the story of a boy's maturation in a dark time. It's a magic-lantern guided tour through the Bengal of his youth, now irretrievably lost in the mists of history. Finally it is a shrewd and challenging--and highly personal--account of life under British rule. As they say on SNL, it's a candy mint /and/ a breath mint, a floor wax and a dessert topping.More specifically--Chaudhuri is full of (pardonable?) rage against the gobsmacking cheek of the old-fashioned British occupiers, their pretense and their presumption. But he is the product of a British education, the child of Mill and Burke, and at the end of the day, he wouldn't have it any other way. Such a dual perspective makes him at best a a reluctant and critical onlooker in the great subcontinental uprising. It positions him as a critic of even that most untouchable of 20th Century icons, Mahatma Gandhi. Indeed, far from wishing for less of a book from Chaudhuri, still when it comes to politics, I can only wish there were more (I haven't read "They Hand, Great Anarch!", his other big book, which I gather is a kind of a pendant to this one). Still, it's a gift as it is. "India has merged," he says near the end of this great work "in the stream of European expansion, and forms part of those portions of the world which constitute a greater Europe, which, as I see it, will ultimately come to mean the whole world." Maybe. At least from the standpoint of 1951 when he first published, it seems prescient. And it is wonderful to have him along as a guide.

This book will give you a perspective that was quite common amongst the "educated Indians" during the waning days of the Raj. The writing is somewhat turgid though quite colorful in parts. I read this book in small doses just to savor and reflect upon an era long gone. The descriptions of family life and personalities are delightful and vivid. This however, is not a easy read. If you expect a fast-paced juicy narrative then you will be disappointed. If you enjoy a meaty jaunt through late 19th and early 20th century India then by all means get it. A word of caution. When reading the author's opinions please realize the times from whence they spring.

This is a must book for all those who've seen Rural Bengal/Bangladesh in its true form with its summers, rainy season and winters with the human face. Description is vivid and also the dreams about Foreign Land (Bilet). NCC with one of his best novels however, with his usual opinionated and often judgemental perception which is so typically Nirad-babu. The maestro puts his experience of yesteryears with the accuracy of present day. Insights and the minute details is what makes him one of the greatest prolific writers of all time. One needs to look at the world of Nirad-babu to fully appreciate his work without marring your thoughts without your prejudices. If anyone, wants to get lost in the laid-back life of Bengal, this is where your quest should end. I wish he could have more writings in English so that more people could appreciate the master.