“I had to construct lineages for myself”: An interview with Amit Chaudhuri

Abstract

In this interview, which took place on July 6, 2016, the distinguished novelist, poet and critic Amit Chaudhuri traces his early years in both Calcutta and Bombay/Mumbai and the influence upon his development of the two cities. He also traces his literary forebears, who include several “Bombay poets”, such as Nissim Ezekiel, Adil Jussawalla, Arvind Krishna Mehrotra and Arun Kolatkar. He discusses the creative interconnections between east and west – in particular the presence of American popular culture that was very much part of Bombay/Mumbai in the 1960s and 1970s. Amit Chaudhuri also reflects on the nature of the modern and on the respective achievements of Indian English-language poetry and fiction, although he also expresses his misgivings about commonly accepted “boundaries” between the two forms, and suggests how they, together with the visual arts, might be more closely intertwined than many critics imagine. The interview closes with reflections on the past and present of Bombay/Mumbai, which he sees as “now the most interesting Indian city”.

Keywords:

• Bombay/Mumbai
• Indian literature in English
• Calcutta
• Bengal
• modernity
• cosmopolitanism

Acknowledgement

The photograph of Amit Chaudhuri is reproduced with permission from Geoff Pugh.

Notes

1. Arjun Appadurai remembers that in his early life in Bombay, the experience of modernity was notably synaesthetic and bound up with the aura of the USA. See also Arvind Krishna Mehrotra’s interview in this special issue of the Journal of Postcolonial Writing on “The Worlds of Bombay Poetry”.

2. ‘The Boatride’, a long poem by Arun Kolatkar, was first published in Arvind Krishna Mehrotra’s little magazine damn you: a magazine of the arts 6 (1968) and republished in The Boatride and Other Poems (Kolatkar 2009), also edited by Arvind Krishna Mehrotra. See Arvind Krishna Mehrotra’s interview in this special issue on The Worlds of Bombay Poetry of the Journal of Postcolonial Writing, for details and images of the 1968 publication.

3. Krittibas was an influential poetry magazine, started in Calcutta in the 1950s, that published the most important modern Bengali poets such as Sunil Gangopadhyay (1934–2012) and Shakti Chattopadhay (1933–95).

4. The Tate Modern in London held an exhibition of Bhupen Khakhar’s paintings, called You Can’t Please All, from June 1, 2016 to November 6, 2016.