Gather The Lives Of Others Prepared By Neel Mukherjee Version

of all, many, many best wishes and congratulations to the author, Neel Mukherjee for his book, The Lives of Others getting nominated in the Longlist for this year's Man Booker Prize.
And secondly, a huge thanks to Neel Mukherjee and his publicist, for sending me over a copy of his book, in return for an honest review.
Yes, I definitely feel overthemoon and proud for getting this opportunity and I'll always be grateful to the author, Neel Mukherjee.


Supratik says,
"Ma, I feel I live in a borrowed house, It's time to find my own, "
in his letter addressed to his Ma mother, thereby embarking upon a journey to the land of red earth where the colour red dominates over green and blue, leaving behind the very comfort of his cocoon of love and security.
They why does Supratik call his home as "borrowed"

Neel Mukherjee, an Indian author, residing in London, has entranced us with his novel, The Lives of Others where he has introduced us with the face of every Bengali joint families in Kolkata Calcutta, through the medium of his very own created, "The Ghosh Family".
Being ast century, Bengali girl, I must confess that the concept of joint family has become very much extinct in Calcutta and it is the ubercool trend of generation of nuclear families.
Although the author has timetravelled to the lates to craft this tale of his, still after reading this book and about all the flaws of a joint family, it leaves you with a slight nostalgia and impression about the very concept of joint families.


Auguste Napier, an American author has said,
"In each family a story is playing itself out and each family's story embodies its hope and despair.
"

Similarly, in "The Ghosh Family", each character has their own story to tell which altogether manifest a riveting chronicle in their fourstoreyed house in Bhowanipore, Calcutta.
From Prafullanath, being the head of the family, by standing up his own business to his wife, Charubala, in supporting her husband's business through thick and thin, to his four sons and one daughter, Adinath, the elder brother, who gave up his dream in being an engineer and harvested an awful habit in the dark alleys of Calcutta, Priyonath, the second most elder brother, who allied up with his only sister, Chaya, and loved her like his soul mate, Bholanath, the third most elder brother, who harvested the "talented"

under his wings and finally, Somnath, the youngest brother among thesiblings, who had never distinguished the good from bad and gladly followed on to the path to selfdestruction, each character had their own agenda to secretive animosity to personal grudges amongst each other.
But why Well, as said by Prafullanath about his paper mill business that the first generation builds up the business, the second generation exploits it with their jealousy and with the third generation being just the meagre audience.
From the outside, "The Ghoshes” tried to depict themselves as one strongfamily standing united, but in the inside, without even their knowledge and realization, the earth was slowly moving away due to rage, hatred and jealousy with each passing day.
Meanwhile, amidst of "The Ghoshes" internal wars, Adinath's elder son, Supratik, leaves his home to join the extremist political activism of Bengal called the Naxalite movement, where a bunch of young men sacrificed their home, family and material needs in order to fight for those who cannot make a stand in the face of the world and remains illfated for the rest of their lives, thereby changing the world and providing equality to the peasants and the farmers class.


"The Ghosh Family" has proved that the politics of the family are the politics of a nation, Just as the authoritarian family is the authoritarian state in microcosm, the democratic family is the best training ground for life in a democracy.
Neel Mukherjee has blended and portrayed both the external politics in West Bengal and the politics in a joint family very strikingly.
With the choice of his eloquent words, the author has hatched a powerful tale which shows us the fractures in the Calcutta society and the desiccation in the soils of West Bengal.


The author's prose is poetic and simultaneously depicted anger amongst the dysfunctional Ghosh family, What I loved the most is how honestly and vividly the author has unfolded the blight of "The Ghosh Family" with each of the psychologically flawed members of this family.


The Lives of Others weaves the differences between social and political, rich and poor, young and old, tradition and modernity and how compassionate steps should be nurtured among every strata of individuals in a society to bridge these differences.
"Masterful
An unforgettable portrait of one family riven by the forces of history and their own desires, "
That is how the Daily Telegraph described this book,

Hmmm, perhaps it would have turned out to be unforgettable, but I abandoned it after a series of stopstart attempts.

Maybe it was because the prose was heavy going monotonous even, or that my flow was impeded by having to reference Bengali words every so often
Or maybe it was because I was only ever on the side of the downtrodden and the impoverished
Or perhaps it was because I had started to dip into Isabel Allende's spectacular novel The House of the Spirits She does this sort of thing so much better.


I tried, I really did try, and I adore exotic tales based in India, but life is too short to waste on novels that don't grip or entertain.


It is with a heavy heart that I write this, The author must have expended an inhuman amount of effort and I'm convinced that less curmudgeonly readers than myself will absolutely love it.


Besides, it was shortlisted for the Booker Prize, so what do I know As I read this, especially while feeling bogged down halfway through due to all the minutiae it's not worn lightly, my mind drifted to other novels I felt did this kind of story better.
. .

For one, I was reminded of sitelinkA Suitable Boy, a book that atpages I could read again, while this one atpages, I found too long.
For another, sitelinkThe Lowland, though my least favorite sitelinkJhumpa Lahiri, covers some of the same time period, as well as a somewhat similar family situation with a widowed daughterinlaw.
While Mukherjee delves into the Naxalite movement in more detail, I find Lahiri's prose style more congenial and her characters more developed.


Mukherjee is an intelligent writer, but I was never fully invested in his characters or in his story, not even with a scene near the end that's obviously supposed to greatly affect the reader.
At that point all I could think of is a comparable scene in sitelinkAnthony Marra's sitelinkA Constellation of Vital Phenomena that's more effective.


With an epigraph from sitelinkWar and Peace and the alternations between a family's life in Calcutta and a grandson's revolutionary activities in the field, perhaps Mukherjee intended this to be his War and Peace.
I sincerely apologize to him for thinking of other books not to mention sitelinkMidnight's Children, sitelinkThe Raj Quartet and sitelinkThe God of Small Things while reading his novel: I couldn't help it.
It is not often that I find myself agreeing with each and every blurb of a book, And this one of those rare instances, There are so many ways to describe things happening to and around us, and how we and others react to them.
"For what can be more interesting than the lives of others" And this cannot be more true when it comes to a Bengali that eternal creature of intrigue.
Coupled with that, a Bengali business family faced with a crumbling empire, This was so common an instances in the decades spanning the sixties and seventies, Yet this is not a story that has been told very often by an Indian writer in English, And then of course is that ever looming presence of that spirit animal of so many Bengali families during that period of time Naxalism.
A spirit animal that every haunted them in the worst possible ways and manifested itself in their history for years to come.
Neel Mukherjee's brutal description of this and more is why this book stands out, At the same time, there are comical descriptions of the nuances that permeate nearly every Bengali household since eternity, The helpings of rice and the spices used for a curry are those tiny details that so many of us Bengalis have ingrained in our psyche, even when we move away from our homes to distant shores.
Sure, Mukherjee is not the first writer of Indian origin writing about Bengalis, in English, Giants like Amit Chaudhuri, Amitav Ghosh and Jhumpa Lahiri have straddled this domain for a while, But while Ghosh has delved into realms of history and science and Lahiri has been the flag bearer of Bengali emigres, with Chaudhuri more or less mastering the art of short story telling, Mukherjee could probably be the first one, or among the first surely, bringing to the fore a more than comprehensive picture of the warps and wefts that make and bring down a Bangali bhadralok.
The Lives of Others is something like a Ray movie with a lot of subplots and branches of narration, unflinchingly yet honestly telling the tales we have heard but may not have read.
At times this book may read like a translation of a Bengali story itself, for readers like me, yet it does not fail in its brilliance of keeping you engaged till the very last word.
.