for book cover song of the golden sparrow
This argument between a garage mechanic and a Santhal girl about the value of schooling occurs in a few pages of Nilanjan P. Chowdhary’s Song of the Golden Sparrow. According to the girl, ‘All this reading and writing is useless… My father says that the jungle is our teacher, the best teacher there.’ The boy replies, “Because your father doesn’t know anything outside the forest. But there’s a big world out there and I want to see it.”
After a while, Satyajit Ray appears. As he negotiates with a prince for money, the conversation intensifies with reference to the filmmaker’s work. In a casual remark to Rajkumar about his father’s music room, Ray writes “Jalsaghar, Banaras, Baiji, all gone” and then “yellow limestone, golden fort, sonar banana(?)”. I take a break to get out my copy of Feluda.
The song of the golden sparrow begins in Alkapuri, the abode of Kubera, the god of wealth. Prem Chandra Guha, a young demigod, is found asleep on the job of guarding the Chamber of Modern History. This, says Guha, happened because they were so boring that he—”a certified insomniac”—actually fell asleep. His sentence: A century of exile in India and to write a history that is not boring.
Thus begins the story of independent India, as seen through the lives of two children, Manhoos and Mary, who open the book, and the exiled Yaksha, now transformed into a golden bird. While the novel touches upon issues like corruption, greed, the political response to Naxalism in West Bengal and the eviction of tribals in the name of development, the writing is insensitive and hooks you.
As I close the book, I notice the tagline: ‘A Novel History of Independent India’. Today, when the word ‘history’ means different things to different people, perhaps it should be said that this book is not history or historical. It is a novel that looks at our past in a different way.
song of the golden sparrow
Nilanjan P. Chowdhary
tiger speaking
₹499
krithika.r@thehindu.co.in