“Visions of
a Summer Past” is the debut novel of Avishek Gupta. I have read Avishek’s short
stories in the past and started reading his debut novel with certain
expectations. The good news is that, his writing exceeds all my expectations.
The story
chronicles the journey of a family across five generations, starting in the 40’s
with the Partition as backdrop and ending in this decade. Selecting this as the
premise of one’s debut novel, in itself, proves that Avishek is a gutsy author.
When your canvas is so wide and varied, you need to not only develop characters
that are true to the times and spaces they inhabit, but you also sign up for exploring
the changing social, political and cultural milieu of a nation or nations as
your story traverses through time. And this is where Avishek excels.
In his
novel, you see the gradual progression of means of livelihood – farmers and
landlords, independent practitioners of law, entrepreneurs, public servants,
and practitioners of cutting-edge technology in a multinational corporation. He
deftly portrays the challenging circumstances where his characters find themselves
in all these professions through the ages – a city burning in the wake of
partition forcing the landlord to abandon his property and heading to a land
unknown, labour unrest destroying a successful pharmaceutical business, and conspiracies
in the modern corporate.
You see the
nature of political protests changing as you move in time and space – from Swadesis
to Naxalites to Fidayeens.
Avishek’s
writing prowess also shines through the vivid visuals and imagery he creates
with an eye for details, taking the reader through Dhaka, Kolkata and Oxford of
yore to the modern-day Manhattan, Somersville and San Francisco. Avishek is a
highly imaginative and articulate writer – his writing gives the impression that
he knows the lanes and by-lanes of all these cities like the back of his hand,
which is a highly admirable quality for an author.
Avishek
builds memorable characters, seeped in Bangaliyana. You realize that
through changing circumstances across five generations in a family, what
remains constant is love, attachment to the family, and the strength of one’s
values. The love stories are beautifully handled. There are situations that tug
at your heartstrings, like the pet dogs chasing the family leaving the village
in Dhaka for an unknown land never to return, or, the police brutally killing a
Naxalite on the cricket pitch inside a university.
The best
part of the novel, which also forms the crux of the story, is an element of
mystery and magic realism that spans the five generations of the family, and I
will not give away spoilers, because the brilliant concept and the equally
brilliant writing should be best left for the reader to savor. It takes you by
surprise, and then draws you in, as the non-linear writing goes back and forth
in time.
Avishek has
set a bar very high for himself with his debut novel. I am now waiting eagerly to
find out what he has in store next. I expect nothing less than ‘magic’.
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