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English August: Indian Story

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Imagine combining Salinger's THE CATCHER IN THE RYE with Roth's PORTNOY'S COMPLAINT and Kevin Smith's CLERKS and setting the whole story in rural India, using for a protagonist a college-educated, citified, pot-smoking, Marcus Aurelius reading, half-Bengali, half-Christian slacker whose friends have Anglicized his Bengali name, Agastya, into August. All this and more are accomplished in Upamanyu Chatterjee's hilarious 1988 novel ENGLISH, AUGUST. Whether you view it as a coming of age story or a slacker novel, this book is a comic masterpiece, THE GRADUATE in India without a Mrs. Robinson.

Chatterjee's story centers around a recent college graduate named Agastaya Sen. Known to his friends as August and to his family as Ogu, Agastaya lives the dissolute, carefree life of the privileged in Delhi, his father being the Governor of Bengal. Unfortunately, his mother, a Catholic from Goa, died from meningitis when Agastaya was just three years old, so he was raised largely by aunts. He passes seemingly effortlessly through college, acquiring a hybrid Western/Indian lifestyle that includes ample quantities of alcohol and marijuana. His major goal in life is simply to be happy, to live contentedly and not be bothered, and certainly not to fall into the rut of commuting to an office, working, commuting home, and then rising the next day to do it all again until he dies.

Having successfully achieved a high score on the national examinations for government service, however, August consents to a position in the Indian Administrative Service and a posting to a distant country town named Madna. Once there, he begins a training period and proves himself to be a heroic shirker of work, an incorrigible pot smoker, a compulsive freeloader, and an almost pathological liar. He arrives at work at 11:00 in the morning and works until lunch, then repairs to his private room for the rest of the afternoon, getting stoned, listening to music, reading some occasional Marcus Aurelius, and sleeping. Still, despite his best efforts to do little or nothing, August ingratiates himself into the local society and actually learns bits and pieces of his future job. Along the way, he develops friendships with an iconoclastic editorial cartoonist named Sethe, a good-hearted alcoholic government worker named Shankar, and Madna's police chief, Kumar. When he finally moves into a position of modest responsibility as a Block Development Officer in the even smaller and more backward village of Jompanna, August surprises himself (and us) by unexpectedly, and modestly heroically, solving the village's water shortage problem.

ENGLISH, AUGUST is subtitled An Indian Story, and indeed it is, yet it is also a universal story about growing up and finding one's place in the world, about giving up one's ideals and acceding to the tedious realities and responsibilities of adult life. Chatterjee's is a tale of India's multiple worlds, from the West itself (represented by England and America), the cosmopolitan strivers of the big cities, the ineffectual but lifetime-employed government workers, and the countless millions of Indians living in the rural countryside. Chatterjee reminds us constantly of India's many languages, of the difficulty that the people of one nation can have in understanding one another's lives as well as their speech.

No doubt the most noteworthy aspect of ENGLISH, AUGUST is its humor. Agastaya is a comic hero, wise-cracking and irreverent with regard to India's social and cultural institutions. One of his first observations in Madna is an excruciatingly ugly statue of Gandhi, with his walking staff now being used to prop up the statue from behind in a particularly unsightly manner. Each time he is asked the meaning of his given name, Agastaya, August invents (and sometimes actually spurts out) an outlandish explanation. When a frog takes up residence in his Madna room, August decides to leave him there and even gives him a name. The best of Chatterjee's observations concern India itself. He describes his father's serious approach to life as a blend of Marcus Aurelius and Reader's Digest, describes an over-Westernized college classmate as the kind of person who would love to get AIDS because "it's raging in America," and notes that "most of us seem to be so grateful that he [E.M. Forster] wrote that novel about India." Referring to an Indian movie director, August's slacker pal Dhrubo (who ultimately takes a job at Citibank) comments that "he [the director, Ritwik Ghatak] was awful until the French said he was good, and now he's a Master."

Chatterjee creates an exceptionally strong sense of place and a strong cast of distinctly memorable supporting characters (mostly male) who orbit dizzily around August's search for himself. August's boss, Srivastav, is a portly, bloviating big shot, yet a surprisingly good-hearted and efficient administrator. Another government administrator named Bajaj is described as "very tall and worryingly thin, with large woebegone eyes and a receding chin, as though his progenitors had been a female spaniel and Don Quixote." Then there is August's cook, Vasant, and Dhrubo and Sethe and Shankar and Agastaya's hilariously sarcastic uncle Pultukaku, and Mohan Gandhi with his wife Rohini, and the strange story of John Avery and his Indian wife, Sita, who set out to find the place where Avery's grandfather was devoured by a lion a half century earlier.

ENGLISH, AUGUST offers a marvelously entertaining passage to modern India, with all its complexities and paradoxes and sufferings and inanities. Along the way, Chatterjee drops little observational gems on the path, as when he observes that most Indians "would never read Gandhi, much less implement him" because "it was always much easier to deify a hero than to understand him." This is a first-rate comic novel that presents life in a country few Americans understand.

No one has captured the widening chasm between urban and rural India as brilliantly as this. An average Indian growing up in an Indian megapolis like a Bombay or a Bangalore will tell you that he feels more at home in New York or London than in a place like Madna like rural India. A host of Indian authors like Rushdie and Naipaul write books for the westen audience, but this one is written for the Indian one - in a satirical style, totally against the current trend of Indian authors who write in a moving, spiritual and philosophical way. While I find Naipaul eternally pessimistic and defeatist and Rushdie amazingly reminiscing, Chatterjee is a realist. Agastya Sen, the main character (called August), is the average Indian you meet in your everyday life. He basically cares about India and genuinely wants to make a difference, but knows that it is not his cup of tea and so accepts the reality and tries to live through it by looking at the whole experience through the prism of satire. Truly, if there is an Indian author who deserves accolades as much as Rushdie, Naipaul or the grossly over-rated Arundhati Roy, it definitely is Chatterjee. I have also read the sequel to English, August - Mammaries of a Welfare State. It is as good if not better than English, August but I had to order the books through rediff since I couldn't find them anywhere in the USA.

This funny and thought-provoking first novel by the Indian writer Upamanyu Chatterjee was first published in London by Faber and Faber in 1988, and in India by Penguin Books India. It became a best seller mainly through word of mouth and excellent reviews, and also nearly unanimous acclaim from the critics. Now, eighteen years after it was published in London, it has been published in the USA by New York Review of Books. The saying: Better late than never, is certainly true in this case. Back in 1988, The Times Literary Supplement declared: "A remarkably mature first novel", and the Glasgow Herald enthused, "Brings a breath of fresh talent to Indian fiction". Now, even the hard to please and frequently acerbic Kirkus Reviews has declared: "Excellent stuff. Let's have Chatterjee's other novels, please." Well, if they wish to read more novels by Upamanyu, three more are available: the sequel to this novel, titled "The Mammaries of the Welfare State" published in 2000, The Last Burden (1993), and Weight Loss (January 2006).
The novel is about a well educated young man named Agastya Sen, from a prosperous family. His father is the governor of Bengal. Agastya takes the Civil Service exam with the hope of joining the elite, exclusive, and high-paying Indian Administrative Service(IAS). For his training as an Assistant Controller, the government posts him to a tiny village named Madna, "the hottest place in India". The novel covers the time, one year, the hero spent in the village for his training. Writes Upamanyu in simple, elegant, unadorned and crystalline prose: They smoked. Dhrubo leaned forward to drop loose tobacco from his shirt. "Madna was the hottest place in India last year, wasn't it? It will be another world, completely different. Should be quite educative." Dhrubo handed the smoke to Agastya. "Excellent stuff. What'll you do for sex and marijuana in Madna?"
From the first sentence of the novel, a reader can sense that he is reading the work of a notable prose stylist. "Through the windshield they watched the silent road, so well-lit and dead. New Delhi, one in the morning, a stray dog flashed across the road, sensing prey." Quite a few of his sentences reminded me of the great writer Arundhati Roy, author of "The God of Small Things". "Then the rains came to Madna. Suddenly a roar and a drumroll, as of a distant war. The world turned monochromatic...cloud, building, tree, road, they all diffused into one blurred shade of slate."
There are several fascinating, memorable and well-drawn characters in the novel; bureaucrats and their snobbish wives, a visiting westerner, a holy man, and there is even a police chief who likes pornography.
This novel is hilarious and unforgettable. Long after you finish the novel, don't be surprised if you burst out laughing suddenly, when you recall an especially funny sentence, or two, from the book.
A thoroughly entertaining movie based on this novel, and directed by India's Dev Benegal, was released in 1994.

The best book read lately by an indian author.The kind of life the main protagonist,Agastya Sen leads in Madna,is perhaps what most of the people of my generation go through when they are put in situations similar to what he finds himself in.The author has used satire and wit extremely well to disguise the catastrophes ensued by the cultures and traditions in this country.The sheer variety of languages within a few blocks of a town,makes it very difficult to communicate,leave alone trying to administer a whole state. Upamanyu Chatterjee shows great promise as this being his debut work.I would not have believed this to be anybody's first novel if I had not known otherwise.The characters written by him are so real and detailed,that while I was reading the book,I could recall meeting the Srivastav's and Sathe's and Shankar's at some point of time in my life.The absurdity of imagination through out the novel totally had me bowled over.Never before have I seen any hard tragedy,so concealed in humour.As you turn the pages,you really find yourself in Madna,breathing amongst the cows and rickshawallahs and all those government officials. I believe any Indian who has been brought up in the cities of this country faces the problem of blending in with smaller districts due to factors like language,convinience,prejudice and even because he has no knowledge of the place he is in.Has happened to me many times. I really recommend this book to any person intrested in knowing thr intricacies of Indian Administration and the literal meaning of the term "Unity in Diversity". It is tough to get it out of your mind. Brilliant book by a brilliant author.

I read this when Faber published this in 1988 and its effect has lingered since. This wonderfully atmospheric novel -- a sort of Indian slacker novel -- still has the same power. There are lines and passages which are so bloody funny that this novel deserves the cult status of films like Withnail and I and Clerks. Thank God, NYRB have brought out a US edition; almost twenty years after! I hope they publish more of his work here.

The erudite dude that I am, i read the book before the movie was a glimmer in Benegal's eye. Probably the best ever contemporary novel from the Indian subcontinent ( and that includes Ms A Roy) Unpretentious, cynical, funny, tragic, Mr Chatterjee tells the tale of a young Indian beureaucrat from an urban Indian milieu posted to an obscure Indian village. A foreigner in his own country although still part of it. Stoned to his back teeth he finds that sometimes in India, keeping up appearences IS the job done. Existentialist questions are as important as ' when should I have my next joint?.' Holden Caulfield seems downright normal compared to Agastya Sen................ Read it.

Here's a slightly over-the-top review I wrote a few years back...

This, by far, is one of the best books I have ever read in the English language, and not just by an Indian author. It's based on the author's experiences in the first few months of being an IAS officer when he is posted to a small township in the middle of nowhere (Looks like AP in the movie based on the book). This autobiographical background gives authenticity and depth to the novel. Not surprisingly, a major theme of the book is the isolation the author experiences, and the impossibity, considering he's a city boy, of his coming to terms with his new rural status.

The book has a deliciously irreverent air about it, about life and the IAS, which is what makes it such compelling reading. It's the first job the protagonist has ever had and one finds it very easy to relate to the dilemmas and challenges he faces therein. The book is a welcome change from pretty, pansy-ish works of fiction written by ex-pats sitting in the US or UK whose descriptions of India, in my opinion, border on magic-realism. The example that comes to mind is Rohington Mistry (Such a Long Journey, I think was the book) writing about Parsis in Bombay - found the description too sanitized and artificial - maybe not being a Bombayite makes it difficult for me to appreciate it. This book on the other hand has character and a very 'real' feel to it, it scores high on originality, everything about it feels new, the author seems to be covering ground not covered before by any other author.

The book is quite critical about the bureaucracy and some of the characters the author mocks are easily recognizable, I am told, as being based on real people he encountered when he was in the town that serves as the model for Madna. No surprise then that the book caused quite a few ripples in the IAS circle when it came out, which is of course another reason to read it! Upamanyu Chatterji, while on the subject, has apparently left the IAS and is a full time author now - a decision that has my full support based on the reading of this book. No wastage of talent happening here.

The book is incredibly funny (I feel it's tough to make people laugh and this book manages to quite well), even through the dark parts (unfortunately, there's plenty of that too) there is this wry humour thing going on which surprisingly makes the protagonist's lows a more endurable shade of blue. Another interesting thing about the book is that it seems to have been addressed to those of us who are well on our way to having 'good' careers but are not really sure if that is what we really want to do. And how this uncertainty forces us to ask ourselves what our purpose for being here is. The book doesn't answer these questions but gives legitimacy to these questions, and suggests this phase of questioning ourselves is one that all of us must pass through at some point in our lives. August joins the IAS because 1) his dad was an IAS officer, 2) he's not sure what he wants to do and 3) has some vague notions about helping India. But he gets pretty disillusioned in Madna - about the bureaucracy, the sycophancy, the corruption, the feudal attitude of the IAS officers and life in general - and is amazed at how the big Indian machine continues to move forward despite all these spanners in its works. Some of the themes explored in the novel: boredom, existential crisis, scarcity of women, masturbation, bouts of intensive exercise alternating with extended dope sessions (I have no idea what he's talking about, honest).

This book makes me proud to be an Indian, this is the Great Indian Novel.

A brilliant, hilarious though dark book. Agastya's apathy is contagious, and so I'd suggest people prone to apathy and cynicism - stay away. Chatterjee manages to capture the red tape surrounding much of Indian governing to perfection, and does it with the perfect dose of humor and self-deprecation. Agasta's constant lying to the people around him really brings out his disdain for the world around him - however, what makes this book funny is his equal disdain for himself. Agastya is the antithesis of who I want to be, and yet, scarily, I see myself in him. And that is why I love this book.

An excellent atmosphere and a compelling story for anyone who has ever felt out of time or out of place.

English, August-An Indian Story is the representation of life of a typical civil servant posted in a small town in Orrisa. Coming from the pen of a civil servant himself, it lends itself the empathy so eminent in the flow of the book and adds an extraordinary charm to it. The fact that this is a bit overdone might be excused as a means of bringing it all the more closer to life. Agastya Sen is a young civil servant whose imagination is dominated by women, literature and soft drugs. As the story opens, he has been posted to Madna, a small provincial town in Orrisa. Here Agastya experiences the Indian kitsch in all its forms- relics of the British empire like the district bureaucracy and the language it speaks, the monsoon, Gandhi, savants, the enduring contours of underdevelopment and more. Through this confusion, he is led in lurches to the old Hindu belief in the virtues of renunciation and towards an uncertain knowledge of the self. For Agastya, this journey is a traumatic one. The book delves into the innate struggle between rationality and the principle of contradictions that always returns to prove a point,. Being brought up in a `big city' with its typical lifestyle and then moving to a `small' ( infact very small) town where life is so very different and in pursuit of what? This is the question that raises its head only after one is into the situation. Like a reactive complaint, it exists only after the event has happened and gives a person little chance to try to avoid it. This then leads to attitudes and responses that are the most extraordinary in the ordinary occurrence of things until it provokes the barren thoughts that are perhaps always very close to the surface in all of us. This whole flow has found basis in the book in its most natural form. The imagery and characters are all symbolic of the living entities who go through our lives in various unprecedented ways as we in oblivion jump from one incident to another. In oblivion , more because our actions are conscious but their basis seldom is. This struggle that we always run away from is what keeps returning to us. To face it or to make it an excuse for what we could have been but are not , is in our hands. This is perhaps what Upamanyu Chatterjee in a very subtle manner has tried to bring out for us to reflect upon. "Today I have got myself out of all my perplexities; or rather, I have got all my perplexities out of myself; for they were not without, but within; they lay in my outlook". This quote pithily capture s the soul of English, August.