After “You Must Like Cricket?” and “All That You Can't Leave Behind”, both on different ways in which cricket grips national and individual consciousness, Soumya Bhattacharya returns with his third book, “If I Could Tell You” . Cricket, this time, doesn't get more than one passing, contextual mention in one chapter of the book. Even then, it's not about the cricket.
Using the epistolary form, Bhattacharya gives his novel the shape of a series of letters written by a father to his daughter. While each subsequent letter inches towards the sense of foreboding – conveying the protagonist's deepening perception of his failure as a budding writer as well as a parent – the paternal observation of the child's little whims and phases and his relationship with her are poignant.
No names are mentioned – except Oishi, the daughter – with people referred to as “her”, “your mother”, or “baba”. Oishi, incidentally, is also the name of the author's eight-year-old daughter. Bhattacharya says that's where the autobiographical ends.
“It is, in fact, very anti-autobiographical,” he says. “The protagonist has a very huge inheritance, which I don't have. He doesn't have a day job, which I need to do. He is consumed by the notion of wanting to be a writer and hasn't been published, which is not the case with me.”
The name
On lending his daughter's name to a character in the book, he says, “The reason for using the name is silly and not so silly. This is my third book and the only one not dedicated to my daughter (being dedicated to wife Chandrani). So she wanted to be in the book in some way. It served another purpose; because her name was used in the book, the first page of the novel (centred on the meaning and significance of the name ‘Oishi') wrote itself.”
Epistolary form
Why did he choose the epistolary form instead of the regular third-person narrative?
“It allows you the intimacy of the letter form. It also allows you the flexibility of time,” says the author.
If I Could Tell You keeps flitting between past and present and spaces, travelling between Kolkata, Mumbai and London, recalling past moments of perfect happiness or jumping between Oishi's vacations during boarding school and her first days at school.
“The letters also allow the narrative to be followed through the consciousness of one person. You are left wondering how much of it is true. All you see is his side of the story. The effect of ambiguity is deliberate and important to the structure of the book,” he explains further.
The narrator of the book, in fact, is conscious of the fallibility of his jottings, writing in one “letter”:
“It's not a story but the very process of setting it down, of narrating it, is an act of storificaton, isn't it? In that case, all this is only my side of the story. I am aware of the fact that I am an unreliable narrator.”
“If I Could Tell You” has been published by Tranquebar and is priced at Rs.350.
