Review of Rajat Chaudhuri’s ‘Hotel Calcutta’

by Shikhandin

Rajat Chaudhuri is unafraid to tether his narratives to the realities that slide in between the comfort zones of our everyday world….He writes like a painter, says Shikhandin, in her review of Chaudhuri’s book, ‘Hotel Calcutta’ that revolves around a century-old hotel in Kolkata.

Hotel Calcutta: Rajat Chaudhuri

Publisher: Niyogi Books
222 pages.
Price: Rs 350

During the 14^th century, seven women and three men sought refuge from the plague in a villa far away, and sanctuary in stories. That was Giovanni Boccaccio’s The Decameron, and possibly the most well-known example of the “frame story”. In Rajat Chaudhuri’s book Hotel Calcutta, it is modern day Kolkata, where a similar fleeing is enacted, and a similar sanctuary is sought. This time round, the plague is not the Black Death borne by rats. This is a plague brought on by land sharks – real estate dealers whose appetite is as endless as the schemes they hatch to grab property. The target is a century-old hotel, a heritage site that is also a prime piece of real estate. The victims are the owner, an Englishman called Mr Stuart and his employees headed by the manager Peter Dutta, and also the guests, both resident and casual, of the hotel. Unlike The Decameron, in Chaudhuri’s book, his characters try to flee, not away from, but into the very place of pursuit; they escape into Hotel Calcutta itself, gathering at the bar, the lounge, the garden, seeking refuge in stories, just as the monk, who happened to be there at the bar, sipping Apple Soda, and listening to Peter’s tale of woe, told them, in fact urged them to do:

“Build a wall of stories around Hotel Calcutta and no one will dare touch it. Stories will protect the past. Every tale, like a mantra, will strengthen the foundation of memories on which you stand…Even if you get busy, tell a story. Tell it here or out in the garden or anywhere in the hotel. Get others to listen. Even if it has been a hard day, remember to tell one story. Remember – one story everyday.”

Thus the premise of the book of tales within tales is set, with the first story being told by the mysterious painter. And then, with the passing of each day, with enthusiasm and faith rising, the band of storytellers and listeners alike begin to grow, luring in new guests along with the old.

Chaudhuri is a writer with a keen eye and wide-ranging interests. It is obvious that he is a well-read writer. He takes his readers easily, and lucidly through places set wide, and also apart, from Amsterdam to unknown South Indian hill stations, from the by-lanes of Calcutta of yore to a corner of present day New Delhi, from the London of an era long gone to London now; and then he plunges his reader into the meandering streets of Calcutta-Kolkata. And, just as easily, his characters come and go, in a seemingly endless parade, a series of tableaus where ordinary people are thrown into strange situations, and extraordinary people exhibit their oddities with an élan that says it is business as usual. Chaudhuri entraps them all, the characters and stories in a web that is both classical and new: classical because his style harks back to the days of robust, and at times Gothic, storytelling, when television had not been invented and the imagination of men was a trustworthy thing; new, because his narratives embrace modern day ethos and sociological structures wherever and whenever the stories require them to do so.

What’s more, Chaudhuri is unafraid to tether his narratives to the realities that slide in between the comfort zones of our everyday world. It could be a chess player and his unorthodox opponent, a queen bee and her paramour, a book shop owner’s mysterious history, a man driven by his fetish for lingerie, a sleepy thief, a man’s gift of hearing (to put it mildly!), a scientist’s experiments with genetically modified narcotics, kleptomaniacs, or a writer so lost in the web of his own story, in the journey of his character, that time curves until both writer and character involuntarily step out of their individual zones. This last, is my personal favourite; in this story, I felt that Chaudhuri has surpassed himself by creating an atmosphere so compellingly surreal that when I emerged from the story, my three-dimensional reality seemed as liquid as Dali’s time pieces.

Chaudhuri writes like a painter; it is difficult not to stop and admire the pictures that so many of his passages create. To cite an example or two –

The Life Cycle of Bees – The Tale of the Forbidden Land: “Mist was already rising from the valleys wrapping the silver oaks in a grim embrace. The smoke-white blankets curled around the silver-white trunks of the evergreens, slowly hiding them away, as if there was a secret there which needed to be kept away from curious eyes.”

Longest Night – The Time Traveller’s Tale: “Through the broken skylight, pale sunbeams had let themselves in, pushing back the walls of darkness.”

The Night Watch – The Tale of Beauty and the Beast: “Empty beer cans and crushed cigarette packs lay scattered; memories of time fleeting by – conspiring endlessly against the imagination of man.”

There are however jerky moments in the book, where present, past and future tenses are left to grapple with each other in a single sentence. These mar the flow of Hotel Calcutta in places. A finer editorial eye would have ensured a seamlessly shimmering Hotel Calcutta. Apart from that, this collection of stories captured with a steady hand, and panning disparate characters and situations with dexterity against a common framework, makes for more than mere interesting reading. The stories sway and hiss like carnivorous plants when you’ve closed the book and switched off the light, and you are just turning in to sleep, because it is after all a quiet and ordinary night, except…Except for that unbidden replay in your mind.

Erstwhile ad person, Shikhandin as she is increasingly known has been widely published in all five continents. In 2012 she won the first prize for her flash fiction in the Anam Cara Writer’s Retreat Short Story Contest. Lifi Publ;ications India is publishing her novel “Culling Mynahs and Crows” and a book of her short stories “The Vanishing man and Other Imperfect men” in 2013. Her poem “Cleavage” was in the long list of the Bridport Poetry Competition 2006 and also a finalist in the 2010 Aesthetica Creative Arts Contest. Her poem in Cha: An Asian Literary Journal was nominated for a Pushcart (2011) and also for the Best of Net Anthology. One of her stories – “Ahalya’s Valhalla”- was among the notable stories of 2007 in Story South’s Million Writers’ Award (USA). She has been featured in an exclusive anthology edited by Jayanta Mahapatra. She guest-edited the April 2013 issue of The Four Quarters Magazine.