Talking with author Amit Chaudhuri is a little like reading his work. Quiet, subtle and unassuming at first, the impact of his words take a while to strike home.

Charming, soft spoken and erudite, Amit Chaudhuri, award winning author and acclaimed singer spoke to a roomful of readers in Concord, MA last week. Hosted by Mr. Partho Ghosh in his gracious home in Concord, MA, the meeting was sponsored by Boston Pledge, a group advocating grass roots level global development. .

To hear from a skilled and stylized writer, what inspires and motivates a body of work is priceless to a receptive audience. Bemoaning the sad truth that these days, writing has become more a money making endeavor than anything else, Chaudhuri, 40, insisted that his agenda was not to churn out a novel a year but to follow his own heart and pace out his work.

Chaudhuri’s works have been met with some success in India and abroad.  He has written four novels, his latest publication is Real Time, a collection of short stories published by Farrar, Straus and Giroux. He has won may awards and prizes, among them the first prize in the Society of Authors’ Betty Trask Awards, the Commonwealth Writers’s Prize for best first book, the Southern Arts Literature Prize, the Los Angeles Times Book Prize for Fiction 2000.

Choudhuri is one of London Observer’s 21 writers of the Millenium and the Knoff Omnibus edition of Freedom Song was a New York Times Notable Book of the Year. An accomplished vocalist as well, he divides his time between Britain and Bombay.

What attracts this reporter and book lover is Chaudhuri’s uncluttered, lean undecorated style and his languid love of detail  . Instead of huge, violent, or overwhelming changes, Chaudhuri’s writings record a gentle and more intimate part of our consciousness. His carefully-refined language unlocks is the universe of a bourgeois Indian sensibility as it negotiates a transition from the old to the new.  His language has been called balletic—slow and artful, and at the same time, arresting and precise.

He claims D.H. Lawrence "opened his eyes to (his) own temperament"

Answering every question with patience and infinite charm, he soon endears himself to the rapt little audience.

We manage to get in a few questions.

Chitra: Does the success of Indian writing in English stem from its cosmopolitanism? Also, is there something very localized about Indian Vernacular writing that might pose linguistic and cultural problems for translations?

  Amit: As long as the writer is true to his work, does not deliberately try to be obscure, most readers will tolerate or enjoy the learning process. I myself read many translations from all languages and found that I enjoyed the varied experiences. Readers, in my experience, enjoy and read such work with comprehension and pleasure. All Indian languages have been hybrid all along, not just the Indian novel in English.

  Chitra : Bombay and Calcutta are settin gs for most of the stories in Real Time. But one does not see much mention of the religious or political conflicts of the land represented in his body of work.

Amit :  I believe in writing about localities as opposed to about Ideas, for instance, India to me is an idea whereas Bombay and Calcutta are locales where I grew up and experienced life. Regional writing is more sensuous. It suggests India by ellipsis , There is an undercurrent of the socio economic time in my work; I don’t want to politicize my work just to be ‘in’ with the times.

Chitra :  Is it important for you, as a writer to be read or is the creative process adequate in itself?

Amit : Every writer, however in isolation he might be, wants, ultimately to be read, for his work to be available for other eyes. I am no different. While I may not pander to every reader’s taste, ultimately I would like my work to be accessed by as many readers as possible.

  Chitra : How much of your work is autobiographical?

Amit : (Laughs) I draw from my experiences, my memories of Bombay and Calcutta and the people I encountered are found all over the stories I tell.  I think we all draw from that indefatigable source, memory.

  Chitra: What do you think of the current crop of Indian writers writing in English?

Amit: I think very highly of them. With such rapid strides in technology and communication, these works will reach a wider audience.

Chitra : Your books have a tranquil quality, untouched by trouble or passion. Does it reflect you?

Amit : I'm always attracted to serenity and tranquility. I think the more the inner turmoil , the more there is a tendency towards or an attraction for the expression of something tranquil. Satyajit Ray once said conflict and drama is at the core of western music. For me, the equanimity of classical Indian music, or some of the poetry that came out of India, Japan, or China, in which the most unimportant moment in time becomes important, is more attractive. In modern writing this is connected to the urban world, the colonial city. Like Joyce who sets his epiphanies in Dublin, the presence of a colonial city is important to me.

Chitra : You use Bengali words liberally. Do you worry about using English to express an Indian context?

Amit : You can write a novel in classical English prose and be more Bengali than when you throw in pidgin for effect. I always check to see which word has more aesthetic life of its own.

Chitra : Thank you for talking to Lokvani.

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