An ode to aspirations

Nabarun Bhattacharya writes of times when the Kanu Sanyals, Charu Majumdaars and Che Guevaras have faded into their own parade. He writes of a city which can't move forward because its wheels have been clogged by the decaying remains of languid babudom; of a generation that has seen true revolution and can't forget, can't adjust and adapt to the changing times and move on. In many ways, Harbart is the story of Kolkata.

At the heart of the novel is Harbart Sarkar – a man born for greatness but misses it by just that much. Harbart is born to 'cultured' and properly Anglicised parents. His father made a lot of money during the war but lost it all by failed speculations in the movies – by just that much. Harbert lost out on the silver spoon in his mouth – by just that much. His father died when he was five. Few months later, his mother left him after getting electrocuted while putting out clothes on a metal wire to dry. Baby Herbert would have shared her fate had he not fallen down, getting his life back – by just that much.

Orphaned, he grew up in Beadon Street in North Kolkata – one of the older parts of the city – with his uncle. Putrid, decaying, crumbling, petty and entrenched in deep-rooted mediocrity; his surroundings represent everything that went wrong with Kolkata during the '90s. Yet there is a spark of brilliance in him, a hidden aspiration to something greater than himself and his surroundings. His sensitive mind interprets the happenings around him in his own, unique way. Sycophant followers, unsympathetic family, superstitious neighbours, opportunistic businessmen all come together to give him an extremely twisted and battered world view.

He saw dejection, loss and death at a very young age. He experienced the horrors of the Naxalite movement in the city and all of it cast a very deep impression on his mind which would remain dormant for most of his life. Hated by many, idolised by others and misunderstood by everybody, Herbert finds refuge in the roof of the attic, under the tank for collecting water from the Ganga. It is here that he develops his dissatisfaction with life, his obsession with the death and decay around him and his choice of vocation, which brings him money and instant celebrity and finally brings about his downfall.

The author takes pains to establish and then blow-up Harbart Sarkar. Though the book is about the life of one man, Bhattacharya avoids making the whole novel one single trip through the protagonist's life. Instead, he creates little circle, tiny vortexes in the flow of the novel that follow the same theme – how Harbart showed sparks that were the unmistakable heralds of future greatness and how they were snuffed out and dragged into mediocrity by his surroundings.

Bhattacharya's use of language compliments his subject well. His depiction of Herbert's 'friends' in their drunken brawling, the meticulous description of every stomach-churning detail is a powerful way to begin a story like this. His repetitive style, powerful imagery, alternate use of stiffly formal language with profanity – all bring out the story in vivid detail. One particularly impressive piece of imagery is of the time following his death, when he is cremated in the electric furnace, the explosives that were meant for and never used in the Naxal movement, hidden in Herbert's mattress explodes, blowing apart the furnace in a posthumous act of defiance against the mediocrity that did him in.

Arunava Sinha's translation, however, leaves a lot to be desired. More often than not, it feels like a word to word translation rather than a transliteration that this novel demanded. As a result, at many places, Bhattacharya's gritty, sticky, repetitive style is lost. Sinha fails to gauge the mentality of that generation, to which he obviously doesn't belong. Often, he misses out on the intentional repetitions. One glaring point is that while Bhattacharya plays upon the theme of the attic roof beautifully throughout the novel, Sinha misses it completely, using it merely as a location for the occurrences that he describes.

While the book will appeal to many who have been either born into or inherited this sense of loss, for outsiders who do not understand the milieu, Harbart under Sinha's translation might seem unnecessarily profane and meaningless.

Book: Harbart; Author: Nabarun Bhattacharya; Translator: Arunava Sinha, Publisher: Tranquebar; Edition: Paperback; ISBN: 978-93-80658-42-1; Pages: 147; Price: Rupees 195