An Escape into Silence

Despite the brisk breeze from the south and loud Hindi film songs on the radio, a gust of cold wind blows from the lost rivers of the land in an uneasy reminder of a sneaky winter. The tyranny of the emergency rule is over. There is hope of a renewal. And still all that is not over. Marxist street-fighter Bachchu Sen returns to Barasat. Things begin to happen. Unable to make sense of his situation, a sensitive young writer drifts dangerously into two conflicting worlds. What follows is a confrontation between a traditional tolerant society and ruthless politics of indoctrination, a secluded past and searing present, between two ways of life. The antagonistic poles acquire their faces—beautiful Behula of the ancient folklore on an impossible journey to bring alive her dead husband, and Stalin in his menacing military fatigue. Bappa meets his girl on the sidelines of a writers’ gathering. Just when he begins to find the moorings of his life, Bachchu Sen discovers the young writer’s importance for his own survival in politics. Events hurtle down towards a devastating end. The girl who believes that writing is actually an escape into an exulted, sublime world, withdraws into her own solitude, leaving him completely baffled and adrift. In a significant way the story follows the love-loss-reconciliation trajectory of the old tales. That girl after all comes back to the young protagonist one wet, wispy winter afternoon. But where it daringly breaks free of conventions is in its attempt at building a parallel between the terrible happenings in the outside world and the troubled, tortured state of an adolescent mind. The imagery, atmosphere, legends, language—all merge into the central search for an invisible link between the craters and cracks in man’s inner world and the convulsions in the street.