Book review: 'New Market Tales'

Book: New Market Tales
Author: Jayant Kripalani
Publisher: Picador
Pages: 206
Price: Rs299

In 1874, in a bid to appease British citizens and ensure that they don’t mingle with the ‘natives’, New Market was built in Calcutta. Here, you could find anything, from old RPM records, kites, second-hand books to sparkling crystal ware.

In New Market Tales, television actor-director Jayant Kripalani introduces readers to his memories of the historic market, weaving in nostalgia about the place into short stories about its inhabitants. If the measure of a place can be judged by the people who inhabit it, then Kripalani’s New Market is as colourful as the market’s rich red facade. There’s never a dull moment and it is, of course, just a bit eccentric.

Among New Market’s inhabitants is the beautiful Sati G, who serves more than just drinks at her nightclub Zacks, causing the bejewelled Sindhi ladies to label her “dishonourable”.

She doesn’t care, intent as she is on living a life that isn’t boring. Another establishment that has its fair share of detractors for its questionable patrons, is the bar 11 to 11 in ‘Harish’. In the story, Harish becomes so fed up with his routine life that he gives it up to serve people drinks and listen to their troubles. In ‘Mesho’, Hari Prasad Condoo, the proprietor of the largest crockery and cutlery shop in the market and a passionate subject of the Queen, also wants to give something up: his life. The ensuing drama and chaos that follows his decision to go on a samadhi — crying, lamenting, beating of breasts – fails to deter him. In ‘Rathikanta’, the only thing Rathikanta Chatterjee is determined to do is sleep whenever he gets the chance. This earns him the nickname “Atiklanta” (loosely translated to ‘extremely tired’). You wouldn’t expect such a man would (unknowingly) help blow up government vehicles, but he does and so Atiklanta becomes Bahadur Singh.

The most eccentric, and easily the most lovable, is Homi. A “mother-hater, misogynist and non-gay dog lover”, he lives in a dilapidated building at Dharmatala Street with his mother and her seven cats. To avoid this entourage, he gets a dog and locks himself up in one corner of the house. Homi wants his life to turn into a one-act play. He’s somewhat outraged when a friend tells him his life can be summed up in a minute and that he needs to live a little.

Outrage at anything the Bengali milieu might consider out of the ordinary is a running theme in New Market Tales. This outrage is of a peaceful variety: almost no expletives, no physical violence but lots of intelligence and verbal torrents.

In ‘Gopa’, the young daughter of Ganguly Gainjeewala (also known as Binod Brawala), expresses dissatisfaction at how her father’s hosiery shop has no female salespersons.

When Gopa, known for her misguided attempts at bringing about social change, says women are burning bras to claim their rights, her father blandly replies, “Good for my business”. The mild-mannered bhadralok, Anustup in ‘Anustup and Mamlu’ turns sarcastic on being asked for a cigarette by a man who regularly scrounges one off him. “Borrow a cigarette! What are you going to do after you’ve smoked. Return the ashes to me?”
New Market comes across as a confusing, crowded place full of shops, lanes and buildings. A map would have been helpful for non-Bengali folk not acquainted with the place.

If news reports are to be believed, this book was originally intended to be the script for a television serial, but the project fell through. We don’t bemoan this because this twist of fate has afforded us Kripalani’s charming lines like this one about a nightclub singer named Deadly Dawn: “All of us full of pre-adolescent fantasies, would dream about ‘waking up at the crack of Deadly Dawn.’”