Answers From Long Ago

The Final Question By Sharatchandra Chatterjee Ravi Dayal & Permanent Black Price: Rs 395

Bengalis living in Agra. It’s pre-Independence India. You think you wouldn’t hear a woman squeak. Meet Sharatchandra Chatterjee’s protagonist Kamal. She is single in the city, gorgeous, wears her sex on her sleeve and (in spite of this handicap) becomes the most respected person in her community. She is liberated enough to put Germaine Greer in the pale. Yes, we are still talking pre-Independence India.

The setting is upper middle class, the living high-brow. The epicentre of the community is elderly Ashu Babu’s rambling bungalow. There are motorcars, horse carriages, elaborate meals, music evenings, the hostess in attendance, the magistrate, philanthropists and college professors as guests, and servants who lift the specks off spotless dhotis as their wearers read the Pioneer. An Amrita Shergil self-portrait hangs in a room, a view of which is on the cover of the book.

They think they are modern. Ashu Babu has lived in England, his daughter Mani has passed marriageable age, her fiance Ajit has just returned from England and rich Harendra runs an ashram to convert poor boys into brahmacharis who will save/serve the country.

Enter Shibnath. God’s gift to women and soulful singer. Before Ashu Babu and

Chatterjee’s heroine is liberated enough to put Germaine Greer in the pale. Yes, we are talking pre-Independence India

Mani can embrace him, they are informed about his heinous character. He has left his ill wife to live with a maid’s daughter (“I did it for her beauty,” he admits), he has taken over his deceased friend’s business and has been, therefore, thrown out of his job as a varsity professor.

Shibnath gives this set something to talk about, he outrages their moral order. People are curt to the point of rudeness. At this juncture, when the anti-Shibnath wave is at its crest and the righteous Bengalis are drowning all conversation with their clucking, his ‘wife’ Kamal steps in. They hear her lucid, logic-strapped arguments and it leaves them stuttering, if not tongue-tied. Read the book for a completely radical take on why Shah Jahan built Taj Mahal. (‘‘The Emperor was contemplative and poetical. With his power, wealth and patience, he built this immense and beautiful object. Mumtaz was only the accidental cause. He could have built such an edifice around any other occasion.’’)

Except for Ashu Babu, all begin to sharpen their knives.

With her incisive arguments, she cuts open the fabric of the community: ‘‘I’m not that kind of person. I don’t accept something just because many people have repeated it for a long time.’’ From marriage, nationalism, tradition to a woman’s role and identity, she rips every possible presumption that Ashu Babu and his clan utter.

The book is a translation by members of the Department of English in Jadavpur University. The conversion has left static in the text. Odd words, phrases have the reader doing a frequent double-take (‘‘it was as if someone had poured ink over Ajit’s face’’). Those who are in the habit of skipping the introduction will find The Final Question peppered with funny italics. ‘‘Jadu, take this gentleman to my bathroom.’’ The translators have left their footprints, all English words used in the original text (it was published in Bengali as Sesh Prashna in 1931) have been treated. Ignore the mess, and the book is a classic.

Chatterjee’s views were clearly radical for his times. The indefatigable, clear current of logic that he gives his heroine is evidence of his passion for these views. When the book was first published, he had to wage a similar war with his readers, the kind that Kamal fights and so effectively wins.

—Sonu Chhina