Discover heartening stories from remote corners of India in Amit Sengupta’s ‘A Sudden Golden Smile’
We continue to be ‘The Children of Violence’ in the 21st century. Doris Lessing used this as the title of a five-volume series she wrote in the 1950s, but the world has only become more cantankerous since. We were visited by a pandemic and despite our state-of-the-art vaccines, people died. This bloodletting was thought insufficient, for wars continue. Ukraine shows no sign of let-up and the front that was smashed open in Gaza is no longer new. In our homeland, Manipur burns. Recently, war cries were heard in India, and there is an uneasy ceasefire for now. All this brings us to the overwhelming question: what do we do now as flies on the wall, who can neither start a war nor stop it?
The answer perhaps is to draw back from the banal everydayness of life, and read. In a world that is creating collateral damage on a running wheel, only fine writing can allow for other perspectives, reflection and a hope in the possibility of better things. Fifty-five essays by Amit Sengupta provide us this opportunity. Setting up a narrative through facts and figures, he gets to the heart of a story. His writing documents the happenings in our world, often speaking truth to power.
Sengupta has a poignant essay on the rebuilding of Warsaw after it was gutted by the Nazi army and a detailed discussion on the decimation of the Osage community, through Martin Scorcese’s introspective film, ‘The Killers of the Flower Moon’. He discusses how the blockbuster ‘Kantara’ harks back to films made before the 1970s that focused on rural India. He draws attention to the sensitive ‘Yours Truly — Shreedharan’, which gives the lie to ‘The Kerala Story’, which fabricated lies to project a demonic portrayal of the minority community. His discussion of these films allows you a glimmer of hope that cinema need not be Bollywood dross, but can be re-calibrated as a powerful medium.
His account of the violence and gruesome rape and hostilities between the Kukis and the Meiteis overseen by the state in Manipur, and the unending civil war in Myanmar is factual and yet, somehow, his essay strengthens your resolve to listen to what is being said, instead of rushing away from the narrative and finding refuge and solace in something lighter. Is this because, as a good journalist, he excels at his metier?
He takes us through arduous journeys to tribal communities in remote parts of UP and MP, and allows us to listen to the voices of ordinary humans struggling for access to basic amenities. Yet, we do not see victimhood, but vibrant and brave groups of survivors, willing to fight for their shrinking spaces. In the middle of great adversity, their strength comes from the magnificent forests, mountains and rivers that they live by, and the fields, trees and land that nurture them. The reader is both captivated and nourished by these descriptions, and the discoveries of the simple pleasures, such as a green field, or a gurgling spring, or affectionately cooked food and everyday gestures of warmth.
Discovering heartening stories from remote corners of India that attest to its plurality and diversity allows the reader to break into sudden golden smiles, upon realising that one is part of an enormous world that allows for hope and possibility.
— The reviewer is professor of English at Sri Venkateswara College, Delhi
Book Review