Memories and beyond

'The labyrinth' begins, in three dimensions of Euclid, deep inside a forest in West Bengal. On the dimensions of time, it goes back about two decades and a half from now, as the protagonist Sudipto first meets the elderly gentleman, Sri Dwarkanath Chatterjee amidst the verdant bloom of his ancient estate.

It is from here in space and time that the winding desire path meanders out of the realm of sal, mahogany, neem and mehul trees into varied panoramas. It is tale of a young Sudipto and her batchmate Mrinalini’s companionship and the dream-world of eternal togetherness. The chain of events are set in such a motion that inexorably lead him to a point from where no return is possible — this is how debut author Udayan Majumdar likes to describe his “first baby”, the Labyrinth.

When quizzed about his romance with writing taking a serious turn, the author reveals, “I had been writing and rewriting short stories for quite a while when it occurred to me that I might attempt publishing a collection. However, I was aware of the difficulty that would be involved in doing so — for an unknown author to find a publisher for shorter fiction was not going to be an easy task. So I decided to pick up characters from my short stories and weave a novel around them. As the story progressed, it came to acquire a life of its own —  the characters I had begun with had to change, new ones had to come in, and so with the events.”

All along, the author feels that the basic ideas were already there and he did not had to struggle with what to write on. “I knew the story would have to do with what a psychoanalyst perhaps calls ‘fixation’. It would have to do with memory — memory that can both be benign, soothing, and at the same time destructive and cruel. It would have to do with how the past can subsume the present. Also, with how weakness can coexist with resilience and how the lyrical can run alongside the sinister,” adds Majumdar.

Talking about Sudipto, the protagonist, Majumdar insists that he doesn’t draw parallel with him. “I am not Sudipto and infact, would not want to be in his shoes. But there are quite a few things common between us. Like him, I grew up in Ranchi, shifted to Calcutta to study at Presidency College, lived at Hindu Hostel for about five years, went holidaying often to a forest estate at Jhargram, loved badminton and so on. I knew I could’nt go wrong in using these details to draw the outline. It was a question of picking up the right traits and idiosyncrasies from my store of observations.. I have seen people suffer the psychological turbulence that Sudipto goes through. So, to create Sudipto, I had to look both within and without.”

As for fleshing out the characters, the author says, “If you can live your characters, you’d know how they would behave in a given situation. I had to make allowance for a character doing something extraordinary that readers wouldn’t think he was capable of! Like a timid person pulling off an act of extraordinary courage, or vice versa.”

About his future plans, Majumdar, who is also the editor of a credit-rating company smiles, “My short stories have been plundered already. I’ve not thought of the next novel. Now I’m on a holiday, so to speak. Let me enjoy it as long as it lasts.”

When not writing, he likes to engage in a host of interesting activities like playing bridge with friends. “Mostly, on a calm evening, you’d find me in the balcony with lights switched off, staring into the darkness and ‘awaiting enlightenment’, to quote my bemused wife and daughter,” concludes the author.