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A Strange and Sublime Address

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If old age is a second childhood, then surely, like childhood, it is a myth of youth's creation. Childhood, as recounted in Amit Chaudhuri's A Strange and Sublime Address, opens out in a concertina of sunlit and shadowy rooms, that expands and telescopes soundlessly, like ribs in the act of healthy breathing , without effort, without pleasure, without pain. Chaudhuri's childhood is coloured carefully within the line, defining recognizable shapes, where ` a ' is always an apple, but an apple in infinite regression, reflected endlessly in diminishing memories of grownups who mirror the world outside. It is always the most distant apple, the faintest and most dimunitive one which is the most desirable. But even desire is too strong a word for A Strange and Sublime Address, its hues are palest aquarelle and will not permit the brute flush of human want. Tender is a favorite adjective of the author's. It just about describes his prose. This incredibly beautiful book is not about childhood at all. It is about limbo, the unknown intermediate plane, whose very placidity suggests turbulence before and after. The idyll of childhood is an adult creation. Children themselves know their lives are urgent with fears, compelled by passions, and seismic with grief or love. Looking back is full of erasures.