Memories of Rain

Have you ever tried following the tiny wisps of perfumed smoke swirling from the amber crown of incense sticks melting into nothingness? Have you ever lost yourself trying to pursue with your eyes, the flock of birds archly flying across the dusky skies till your eyes watered and ached? Have you tried craning your neck trying to see a puffing train going around the bend from the window even if you perfectly know that you can’t see more than a few inches beyond? Have you ever continuously felt the rhythm of your hot breath vainly trying to fall asleep on a humid night? Or have you strained your ears to listen to that dying music from a deliciously unknown source you hear sometimes through the dense calm of monsoon?

If your answers are yes to any of these, then you will love the mini novel ‘Memories of Rain’ by Sunetra Gupta. It leaves you with a feeling of not having read something even if you had spent a couple of days reading this book. You feel empty yet strangely full of picturesque emotions. Her narration is extremely unique and to quote one of the reviews, ‘sinuous’ and very similar to Virginia Woolf’s style of story telling. She employs the trick of beautifully interweaving the past and present in the story initially set in the monsoon-ravaged Calcutta (or Kolkata) and later in the misty unpredictable London. There is something SO mesmerizing about the incorrigible Bengalis and their charming land that you fall under their spell as long as it lasts. This book was published way back in 1992 and was Gupta’s first novel.

The story line is starkly simple. It centers on a Bengali girl Monideepa falling in love with her brother’s ‘firangi’ friend Anthony with the romantic Kolkatan monsoon as the perfect backdrop. She is so smitten that she marries him without much ado and leaves for what she thinks is going to be a wonderland for her marital life. She is sadly mistaken.

After six years of marriage, she plans to move from London and away from her Anthony with her six year old daughter, after trying to live down his disloyalty to her. Moni’s emotions are exquisitely described by the author by creating such a vivid imagery consistently throughout the story. You can actually see what’s happening as you plough through the novel- the merciless rains, murky lanes, the burning passion Moni and Anthony have for each other, the simplicity of a college girl’s mind and the vulture-like sensuality of Anthony. Each and every line is threaded with foreboding and a melancholic ring, even if it is the description of Moni and Anthony’s simmering romance.
I’ve always been attracted to only a particular genre of books so far like classics and mystery. But this book is extremely unique and it is quite difficult to categorize its genre. It felt like watching a crossover movie all the while I read it. The most interesting aspect of this book is that there are very few full stops and a hell lot of commas throughout the narration. This tricks our mind into thinking that we are inside Moni’s head closely following her perpetual trails of thoughts. By the time you finish reading a sentence, you tend to forget how it began- just like the gyrations of our thoughts traveling in our mind any given plain day!