Mapping the Local: Literary Micro-Geographies of Amit Chaudhuri

Abstract

The paper is a critical exploration of the concept and the application of the idea of local tints in the works of a modern Indian writer, Amit Chaudhuri. Leaving behind the postcolonial grand narrative that has dominated readings of Indian English fiction since the start of the twentieth century, the paper holds that the phenomenology of the local is central to Chaudhuri; the specific textures, sounds, atmospheres, and mundane details of place, with Calcutta (Kolkata), its native, giving the novelist primary focus, and Bombay (Mumbai) and provincial towns receiving secondary focus. Through a critical examination of his major novels, viz., the title chapters of his works, which are a strange and sublime address, afternoon raag, freedom song and the immortals, the analysis illustrates the ways in which an aesthetic by Chaudhuri makes the minor, the transient and the senses visible. It argues that his local tints are not, however, merely decorative, but represent a radical form of attention, which opposes monumental history, national allegory, and the typical elements of the Indian novel in English, to provide a different ontology of the everyday where the local is a place of silent but significant epistemological and aesthetic revelation.