Naz­ma Muller

"Guyana had the feel of an ac­ci­den­tal place. Part­ly it was the epic in­do­lence. Part­ly it was the eth­nic com­po­si­tion. In the slang of the street there were chi­nee, putagee, buck, cool­ie, black­man, and the com­bi­na­tions em­a­nat­ing from these, a sep­a­rate and larg­er lex­i­con. "On the ram­ble in such a land you could en­counter a sto­ry every day." And Rahul Bhat­tacharya does. The re­sult is the ex­quis­ite­ly writ­ten nov­el about the year that he spent ba­si­cal­ly lim­ing in Guyana, The Sly Com­pa­ny of Peo­ple Who Care. The rich, ri­otous prose, the sub­lime turns of phrase, the pen­e­trat­ing eye that he casts on the char­ac­ters he en­coun­ters, have led to com­par­isons–some de­served, oth­ers not–and claims that here, fi­nal­ly, is the heir ap­par­ent to VS Naipaul that the lit­er­ary world has been wait­ing for. The 32-year-old In­di­an na­tion­al, on his fourth vis­it to Trinidad, read from his de­but nov­el at the sec­ond in­stall­ment of the Bo­cas Lit Fest at the Na­tion­al Li­brary last week­end. A crick­et writer since 2000, and a con­tribut­ing ed­i­tor with Wis­den Asia Crick­et, whose first book, Pun­dits From Pak­istan, was named one of the top crick­et books of all time by Wis­den, Bhat­tacharya al­so took part in a dis­cus­sion "From the pitch to the page: the lit­er­a­ture of crick­et" at the lit­er­ary fes­ti­val.

It's im­pos­si­ble, read­ing Bhat­tacharya, not to be re­mind­ed of Naipaul–even if he weren't re­ferred to sev­er­al times in the book, con­clud­ed the New York Times re­view of The Sly Com­pa­ny of Peo­ple Who Care. But this "mon­grel In­di­an," as Bhat­tacharya de­scribes him­self, brings a sub­con­ti­nen­tal per­spec­tive to his ob­ser­va­tions about race and class in the Caribbean. "My fa­ther was Ben­gali, from the east..." he wrote in The Ob­serv­er (UK) last year, short­ly af­ter the pub­li­ca­tion of his nov­el. "My moth­er is Gu­jarati, from the west, born and raised in Bom­bay... At home we spoke a lit­tle Ben­gali and a lit­tle Gu­jarati, but out of a re­flex neu­tral­i­ty, most­ly a [lo­cal ver­sion of] Hin­di, the lan­guage of our dai­ly trans­ac­tion, and Eng­lish, the medi­um of our ed­u­ca­tion." So, when Bhat­tacharya ar­rives in the tor­rid­ly hu­mid, racial­ly dis­sect­ed world of Guyana, he is nei­ther fazed nor con­temp­tu­ous of the odd as­sort­ment of hu­man­i­ty he en­coun­ters. He mar­vels at the in­tri­cate blends of African, Por­tuguese and East In­di­an iden­ti­ty flow­ing through the vast South Amer­i­can coun­try, and cap­tures, del­i­cate­ly, how the dif­fer­ences in race and class came to breed bit­ter­ness be­tween the groups.

Here is his de­scrip­tion of the Guyanese "putagee":

"Por­tuguese had come to Guyana as in­den­tured labour­ers even be­fore the In­di­ans and the Chi­nese. They were light-skinned and in­de­pen­dent-mind­ed. They rose up the ranks, and now, small in num­ber and of high po­si­tion, they could look at race as some­thing they were not a part of."

About the peo­ple of a coastal set­tle­ment, he com­ments: "The folk at Men­zies Land­ing were black, or more of­ten red... In the di­rect Guyanese way a red per­son was a di­rect vi­su­al thing. It im­plied mixed blood and, ob­vi­ous­ly, a cer­tain red­ness of skin. Black and Por­tuguese could be red. Black and Amerindi­an could be red. East In­di­an and Por­tuguese could be red." This is not the small-is­land Naipaul set­ting foot on the sub­con­ti­nent for the first time and see­ing "an area of dark­ness," "a wound­ed civil­i­sa­tion" and "a mil­lion mu­tinies"-or re­turn­ing home, af­ter study­ing at Ox­ford, to con­clude dis­parag­ing­ly in The Mid­dle Pas­sage: "There was noth­ing new to record. Every day I saw the same things-un­em­ploy­ment, ug­li­ness, over-pop­u­la­tion, race-every day I heard the same cir­cu­lar ar­gu­ments." Bhat­tacharya, for one, is less bur­dened by race and caste is­sues, though he, too, is Hin­du and sup­pos­ed­ly of a high caste. And he's way less can­tan­ker­ous. "All man­ner of In­di­ans made up the build­ing," he writes about the Bom­bay apart­ment build­ing in which he grew up. "There were Pun­jabis, Kachchis, Sind­his, and Gu­jarati busi­ness­men of vary­ing de­grees of com­pe­tence and am­bi­tion.

"We had a rub­ber baron from Ker­ala and a strict joint fam­i­ly from Ut­tar Pradesh. We had a Chris­t­ian naval of­fi­cer, a Par­si har­mon­i­ca teacher, a Ma­ha­rash­tri­an air host­ess and a hum­ble Iran­ian fam­i­ly whose chil­dren for no rea­son oth­er than that of dif­fer­ence were damned with ill re­pute."

Al­though he has al­ready won The Hin­du Lit­er­ary Prize for The Sly Com­pa­ny of Peo­ple Who Care and made the short­list of the Man Asian Lit­er­ary Prize, the an­nu­al award giv­en to the best nov­el by an Asian writer, ei­ther writ­ten in or trans­lat­ed in­to Eng­lish, Bhat­tacharya re­mains out­ward­ly hum­ble and self-ef­fac­ing (char­ac­ter­is­tics that Naipaul, if he har­bours them, al­so hides them well.) When asked how, per­haps, he thought the con­tem­po­rary re­la­tion­ship that In­di­ans in the Caribbean had with In­dia af­fect­ed their in­ter­ac­tion with blacks, Bhat­tacharya looked star­tled–and slight­ly alarmed. "Well," he re­spond­ed slow­ly, "That's a re­al­ly big ques­tion, eh." Nei­ther of his books looked at In­di­an mas­culin­i­ty, he has­tened to clar­i­fy, even though they're both from the per­spec­tive of a young In­di­an man. While The Sly Com­pa­ny of Peo­ple Who Care with male­ness on a broad­er lev­el, with the world of men, their in­ter­ac­tions, bond­ing, how they per­ceive and treat women, es­pe­cial­ly when it comes to mat­ters of sex, their boast­ful­ness, and "very of­ten the dis­re­spect that you en­counter in males all over the world to­wards women," he em­pha­sised.

He was re­luc­tant to make any grand state­ments on race and In­di­an­ness in the Caribbean. In truth, his own In­di­an­ness seems rel­e­vant on­ly as it al­lowed him eas­i­er ac­cess to in­ti­mate, open in­ter­ac­tions with Guyanese In­di­ans. His af­fec­tion for the mu­sic of the re­gion, for in­stance, is un­bri­dled and un­bi­ased. He rev­els in Son­ny Mann's Lotay La as much as Pe­ter Tosh, Toots and the May­tals and a pan side. Here's how he de­scribes the Neal and Massy Steel Pan Or­ches­tra play­ing Woman on the Bass, which he has named as part of a mu­sic playlist that re­lates to The Sly Com­pa­ny of Peo­ple Who Care: "A gen­tle shake--- three-minute so­ca is turned in­to 11 min­utes of op­er­at­ic, or­ches­tral pan­de­mo­ni­um. Steel­pan, de­vel­oped by the poor of Trinidad from dis­card­ed bis­cuit tins and oil drums, is the ul­ti­mate cel­e­bra­tion of Caribbean artistry cre­at­ed from des­per­a­tion of cir­cum­stance. I was re­mind­ed of this spir­it every time the pan coursed through my bones." While writ­ing his nov­el back home in Del­hi, Bhat­tacharya says "To es­cape the ce­ment mix­er and the wail­ing ba­bies and the Del­hi fights over car-park­ing, and to en­ter the world I was writ­ing about, I would put on my head­phones. Mu­sic pen­e­trates deep­est in­to Caribbean re­al­i­ty. "It catch­es every­thing, the bru­tal­i­ties of the tor­tured past, the ca­su­al vi­o­lence of the present, the wit and com­e­dy of the street, the pol­i­tics and politricks of high of­fice, the rever­ies of Car­ni­val, rum and gan­ja, and the gor­geous vul­gar­i­ty, the dut­ti­ness and slack­ness of dai­ly life." In that state­ment alone, he dis­tances him­self from Naipaul, who de­clared ir­ri­ta­bly that Port-of-Spain is "the nois­i­est city in the world." As Bhat­tacharya suc­cinct­ly summed it up, when asked what he had learned on his jour­ney through Guyana: "Well, the Brits screwed all-a uni­ver­sal truth."

• The Sly Com­pa­ny of Peo­ple Who Care, pub­lished last year, is avail­able at all lead­ing book­stores.