Amit Sengupta’s A Sudden Golden Smile, arriving with the season of spring, is a prudent collection of contemporary and old essays, a carefully curated selection drawn from his pen’s vast and prolific creativity over the years. One imagines the considerable sagaciousness required to choose from such a vast reservoir of his essays; and, yet, the result is a book of sterling merit and graceful charm.
These essays, ranging from the Genocide in Gaza and the political struggle for forest rights of Gond adivasis in the Central Provinces, or the Tharu adivasis in the dense forests of the Dudhwa National Park at the India-Nepal Border, to the luminaries of parallel cinema, and the defiance of dictatorship, form an eclectic gallimaufry of narratives, each written with a lyrical beauty signifying his literary and journalistic prowess.
His is a pen that possesses intellectual breadth, deep emotions, and rare courage, qualities sorely missed in contemporary Indian journalism. At the heart of these writings beats a steadfast protest against the manifold forms of tyranny, a clarion call against the encroaching tide of ultra-right-wing politics, in India and abroad.
The spirit of his youth, when, as an independent JNUSU president, he stood as a formidable student leader, remains undimmed, evident in his unwavering solidarity for the marginalised, the minorities, and the oppressed. One might, indeed, count on one’s fingers those journalists who so boldly confront the forces of Hindutva today, and Amit stands tall among that select few.
For instance, he deeply feels the pain arising from the persecution of the finest, thinking, and idealistic minds by the might of the State. He notes in his essay, ‘Daughters Against Dictators’:
‘‘That is how they have damned some of the finest young minds, with a history of brilliant scholarship, condemned with cooked up charges, while ritualistically patronising all kinds of sleaze-balls. Umar Khalid, Gulfisha, Sharjeel, Khalid Saifi, among others. Their crime: they were peacefully protesting against the communal and anti-constitutional CAA! And they all happen to be young, bright, inspiring Muslim intellectuals.
Surely, his essays are not mere reportage, rather, an engaging and continuous dialogue with a vast and progressive intellectual tradition. The nature of the references he employs bears ample testimony to his robust engagement with the works of radical thinkers, writers, and scholars, revealing a mind deeply committed to the pursuit of a just and equitable world.
Amit’s inclination towards writing is near compulsive, a daily endeavour of sorts, of which these 55 essays represent but a very tiny, yet exquisite, portion. In this context, one is reminded of George Orwell’s observations in ‘Why I Write’, wherein he elucidates the historical and political impulses that drive a writer’s pen. He embodies both: The desire to record truth for posterity, and the fervent wish to shape a better and more beautiful society. His dedication to these impulses shines through in almost every essay.
The author’s sentiments are sharply reflected while addressing questions like the resilience of the brave people of a ravaged Gaza, and war-torn Ukraine, the soldiers on both sides, inheritors of the same history, becoming cannon fodder in this bloody conflict, and likewise, in the lamentable civil strife which afflicts Manipur and Myanmar.
In an essay, entitled ‘A Death in the Time of Fascism’, he expresses his anguish at the apathy of the people, as the Nazi machine rolled on inside the gas chambers, and death and labour camps of Auschwitz, and elsewhere. Or, in the fact that innocents are being killed for no rhyme or reason all over the world. It is indeed a sentiment which does much to warm the heart. Also, tells a story of human apathy. He writes:
‘‘Death is an unceasing narrative. Death in our everyday life of rumbling ritualism arrives and disappears like uncanny crossroads in a journey where the end is inevitable. Distant deaths do not even touch us, they don’t trigger turbulence or abject absences or lament and loss, perhaps not even outrage; thousands dying and dead in Yugoslavia, Syria, Iraq, even in Pakistan.”
It can be argued that the author’s literary style is effervescent. With masterful perfection, he blends the briskness of journalistic reportage with a slick, crisp, dramatic lyricism. A reader can sense an aura of magic realism, a great literary genre that lends his prose a poetic and undeniable charm. Further, there is a distinct undercurrent of ‘stream of consciousness’, a fluidity of thought that allows his narrative to meander through the inner workings of the mind, and complex life and times.
A reader can quite perceive the abiding influence of wordsmiths like Gabriel Márquez, Franz Kafka, Albert Camus and Fyodor Dostoevsky across the pages of the book. It is as if he has picked up the inherent essence of their literary genius and distilled it into a captivating brew, a literary cocktail of sorts that is both stimulating and delightful.
A Sudden Golden Smile possesses the power to enlighten the literary connoisseur and the uninitiated, offering a progressive, open-ended, non-dogmatic worldview painted with delicate strokes of artistry, while remaining lucid without sacrificing literary depth. It is a labour of love that informs and delights, a testament to the enduring power of thoughtful prose.
‘A Sudden Golden Smile’
Amit Sengupta
Anamika
Pg 300
Price: Rs 595
(Available on Amazon)
Naren Singh Rao is a Delhi-based lawyer and academician specialising in sociology, law, media and cultural studies.
