In Chaturvedi's Alipura, we remember what our lives are made of

Perhaps one of the best works of translations that I have read, so much so, that I truly think that this is a new piece of work. One thing would suffice as regards the idiom, and that is, as Agha Shahid Ali’s poetic tradition brought the subcontinental phenomenon into the English language, thus creating a completely new literary language, so does this translation of Chaturvedi’s work. For instance, the translation of idiomatic language like “lotus feet,” does two things, it keeps alive Chaturvedi’s humour and also becomes immediately recognisable to the lay Indian reader;

But after one quick and preliminary thought about the translation, I would like to dive right into the book.

Alipura, ah we have forgotten what India is like until we have seen Alipura. All those images of dirt, squalor, idleness, intensity, hard work and a taste of the what it would be like when one would belong to the coveted middle class, all of this and Chaturvedi’s engrossing narrative techniques make the story of the Alipurians come forth in a very real yet at the same time literarily smooth portrayal of India’s small town life.

“Damn right, A government job has an aura.”

How can I vouch for this? By elaborating a simple instance that took place when I went to get my second vaccine shot for free. Two police officers in their early twenties were in charge of the official registration. On asking for a verification of whether I had gotten my first shot or not, I produced a private hospital’s receipt. What happened next was something I could only relate with Alipura. Unabashed cackles on seeing that I had paid for my first shot (i laughed inside, too) when majority of the population got it for free, in that moment, that playfulness of young cops could only remind me how most people still got jobs here, not on merit, therefore seriousness, but powerful connections.

The mechanics of the book aka the lives of Alipurians work as if a default setting of sorts, with every scene reinforcing every other 80s Bollywood movie and at the same time, every little town that still exists somewhere in an India that is traversing in a looping time.

Amma, the mother, has faith that her kids would better her condition, her kids have faith in the Bundelkhandi corruption and honour to make it in the world, and Bundelkhand has faith that it will survive as long as all of them dream, no matter how “chootiyatik” it may seem to even the dreamers.

Nothing says life goes on better than Alipura and its characters, a quintessential belief in posterity and, therefore, a quintessential belief in the future. Made me think of all the times the West meant serious business when they used green agendas as their political dictum for the future, but that is of no big concern here. Here, here as Jhumpa Lahiri said, life always comes in between;

" A year, a mere slice of time, butts in and the landscape is upended. The father dies, a court case is lost, cholera takes the son in his prime, the gathered harvest catches fire, the daughter's engagement is broken, the father is suspended from work, the thanedaar's eye falls on the wife, the blaze at the teasel office consumes the land records, ...."

Lalla, Gucchan, Chandu, Binnoo and Chuttan, all sons and daughter of the ambitious Amma but all resigned to the fate of the way of the world. What is life then, it’s bureaucracy, it’s society and its posterity. A pretty suffocating way of living it seems, but it is living still. Everybody needs liberation from the fiction and the reality, but no one knows what life is made of, so they listen to others and figure out all possible ways of life, so does everyone in Alipura straddling between tradition and the upcoming world of modernity.

In any case, so many situations are a given in the book, they are how they are and nothing much can be done about them, sorely realistic, sorely caustic; deaths at weddings, last-minute monetary admissions before the bride and groom walk around the holy fire, doomed entrepreneurial endeavours, an ageing yet educated daughter and lastly, two sons , one lawfully and other through bribery fated to stay in jail, what hope can one expect from a book like Alipura. What hope can a 26-year-old on the brink of losing here marriageable age expect from a book like Alipura?

Well, the hope is simple, it’s life. It’s Berlant’s Cruel Optimism of the day becoming better after every other day. When reality will become fiction, and fiction, reality.

Thus Alipura, thus our chootayatik though not unreal obsessions with dreams.