'Clouds' review: The unbearable heaviness of clouds

Here’s a frolicking talent with a great comic touch, binding himself down to ‘big’ themes

Chandrahas Choudhury’s second novel, Clouds , is really two novellas in a single volume. One features Dr. Farhad Billimoria, a 42-year-old South Bombay psychotherapist, about to shift to San Francisco, where he cannot wait to immerse himself in the “sky above and the skin below.” The other tracks the sayings and doings in a room somewhere on the outskirts of the city, where Rabi, a young Odiya tribal, has been deputed to nurse two old people, the so-called Eeja and Ooi. They are father and mother, respectively, of a high-caste friend of Rabi’s, who is busy fighting for the tribe’s holy mountain, against a mining company, in Odisha’s ongoing elections.

These two storylines are not connected even by the setting, because Rabi and Co. are only notionally in Mumbai. They are linked simply by talk about clouds, which Farhad occasionally muses on, and which Rabi’s tribe venerates.

Disruptive forces

But ignoring, for the moment, this curious juxtaposition, the strengths of this book are readily apparent. Choudhury’s writing has a great comic touch, his dialogue is colourful, he delineates situations clearly, and has the energy to see them through from start to finish.

In his quotability and vivacity, Choudhury is more than a little reminiscent of P.G. Wodehouse. Nevertheless (or perhaps for that very reason) Clouds is ultimately a disappointing book, for in it we perceive a frolicking talent being forcibly bound to ‘big’ themes — and all at the behest of low impulses. Thus, Dr. Billimoria, though he may be enchanted by Zahra’s can-do spirit, or impressed by the serious feminism of the other woman in the plot (Hemlata), seems to care only for his own sexual gratification.

The forces, both disruptive and transformative, that are working on the modern Indian woman — which really do call for a writer’s attention — are here reduced to foils for a man to humble-brag, time and again, about his sex appeal in general, and the size and potential of his genital organ in particular.

This strain of megalomania, for that is what it resembles, likewise spoils the other story. Such major themes as the traditions of worship of tribal minorities vis-à-vis the promises of capitalism, as well as caste relations in Hindu sociey, are flagged prominently.

What drives the writing, however, is the compulsion to exalt the intellect of the Brahmin man, Eeja. His wife dotes on him, and Rabi, the tribal boy, waits on him hand and foot, while meekly listening to condescending comments about his place in Hindu hierarchy, which recur (like Billimoria’s genital obsession) so frequently as to dominate the narrative.

Unconvincing portrayal

Of course, we are given to understand that Eeja and Ooi are ‘difficult’; that these are just characters portrayed ‘as they are’; but this is unconvincing — indeed, it comes off as Eeja-like verbiage disguising an actual impulse of casual cruelty and self-glorification. Therefore, while much is made of ‘Cloud-maker’ (the god whom Rabi worships), this myth is recounted so glibly that its flimsiness becomes obvious (there is presumption in the very act of ‘writing up’ such a myth). Just as the women are to Billimoria, Rabi and his people become a foil for Eeja’s entertainment, and in order that he may allot them their place in Hindu dharma, which, we are informed, “is one continuous, self-sustaining system, comprehending all life, all matter, all time, all dimensions.” Ultimately, then, apart from exhibiting the writer’s range, there is no reason for Clouds to consist of these two separate stories. The ‘cloud’ motif is simply not strong enough to bear such narrative weight.

One hopes that in future books, Choudhury will not subject his talent to artificial burdens — even though he may then be deemed insufficiently ‘literary’. Wodehouse once said: “I believe there are two ways of writing novels. One is making a sort of musical comedy without music and ignoring real life altogether; the other is going deep down into life...” But if, with a gift for the former, one insists on being regarded as the author of the latter, the work is botched.

The writer is the author, most recently, of The Outraged: Times of Ferment.

Clouds; Chandrahas Choudhury, Simon and Schuster, ₹699