Book Review | A Bengali professor unscrambles the riddle of Berlin
Sojourn is a sketchy sort of travelogue — not just of a place but the mind. The narrator, a visiting professor at a university in Berlin, contemplates Berlin’s divided past as he traverses the unified present in his free time. It’s about the people he meets, the places he visits, the food he eats, glimpses of history, and even deep reflections on the strange shape of his toilet base — as banal as that.
The first acquaintance he makes is a Bangladeshi poet on exile for insulting the prophet. Faqrul takes the narrator under his wing, invites him to Bangladeshi restaurants, accompanies him to malls, etc. — he pops in and out of his life, and is his unofficial guide. There’s a chilling passage where Faqrul takes him to a place that is full of flat stones: “Everywhere were flat stones, like rockery on an abandoned shore. ‘These,’ said Faqrul, ‘are to remember the Jews.’ He spoke in an offhand way... In and out we went through the shadows of what was part graveyard, part playground. ‘I was beaten up here,’ he said — again exuding satisfaction. ‘What? When?’ We paused at a stone. ‘1992. I was wandering around when a bunch of thugs came by. Oi — neo-Nazi…’” And then Faqrul reveals that East Berlin was full of neo-Nazis, and thanks to them his natural teeth were replaced by dentures.
A Bengali-German fellow professor becomes another acquaintance the narrator spends time with occasionally. He is secretly delighted when she praises his new book: “My heart beat faster, as it does when I hear such words. It’s like being caught out. You write for others in theory; confirmation of the fact is disconcerting.”
One of his most significant acquaintances is Birgit, a researcher on labour movements in South India. She gets in touch with him and tells him she loves India. This puts him off a bit (“I’m wary of Europeans who ‘love’ India — an old neurosis”) yet he meets her and the relationship they form is a bit, well, pretentious.
There’s no plot as such — it’s just a fairly straightforward and mundane journal of the few months he spent in in Berlin. Nor is it a useful travelogue, because you can’t dip into it for tips on where to eat, what to visit, etc. Minute scraps of meat are thrown your way every now and then, not enough to satisfy.
The enjoyable bits are little nuggets of information or observations on subjects like the Jewish Museum, the popularity of Bollywood actor Shahrukh Khan, the mindset of German students (“German students liked to defer to authority”), etc.
There’s no storyline to grab you, so the pages don’t fly. Consider it more like a conversation with a friend who has returned from abroad and recounts his experiences (rather than holiday pictures) over drinks. It’s no more, no less than that.
Sojourn
By Amit Chaudhuri
Penguin Hamish Hamilton
pp. 136, Rs 499
