Chapter II

ENGLISH, AUGUST: AN INDIAN STORY

English, August: An Indian Story was first published by Faber and

Faber Limited, London, in 1988 and later in India it was published by
the Penguin Books India in the year 2002. This is the maiden novel of
Upamanyu Chatterjee. Akash Kapoor in his article “Up in Smoke”
published in New York Review Books opines,
Upamanyu Chatterjee’s English August…, the story of a
young civil servant posted to a fictional rural town was
hailed as the country’s “Catcher in the Rye”—a novel that
captured the zeitgeist of the 1980s when India was
uncertainly emerging from decades of economic isolation
and ill conceived socialism…1

He further says, in a market dominated by cosmopolitan authors and

fusion prose, English, August is being presented, in the words of one
admirer as “the ‘Indianest’” novel in English that I know of.2 Anderson
Tepper in Time Out New York comments that English, August
Struck a chord with a generation of young writers wrestling
with the messy sprawl of modern south Asia. It’s also a
novel with resonating concern about the meaning of
maturity in the modern era… American readers should
identify with the brainy, sarcastic and slightly confused
protagonist of English, August as he struggles to find a
purpose in a rapidly changing world.3

English, August: An Indian Story came as a breath of fresh air among the
contemporary Indian English fiction writing, presenting the real picture
 20

of the youth of the present generation. The noted writer Amit

Chaudhary declares
English August is one of the most important novels in Indian
writing in English but not for the unusual reason. Indeed it’s
at war with ‘importance’ and is one of the few Indian
English novels in the last two decades genuinely and
wonderfully impelled by irreverence and aimlessness. It’s
this acutely intelligent conflation of self discovery with the
puncturing of solemnity that makes the book not only a
significant work, but a much loved one.4

The basic plot of the novel centres around a westernized youth,

Agastya Sen, also known variously as August, English, Ogu, and just
plain Sen, the twenty-four years old officer in training of the Indian
Administrative Service. Agastya lives the dissolute carefree life of the
privileged in Delhi, with his uncle Pultu Kaku. His father, a man of
ideology and principle, is the Governor of Bengal. Unfortunately, his
mother, a Catholic from Goa, dies from meningitis when Agastya is just
three years old. So he is raised largely by aunts in Kolkata. Life is easy
for him and he never feels the dearth of anything. He passes his college
exams effortlessly and acquires a hybrid western lifestyle that includes
ample quantities of alcohol and marijuana. He does not have any
definite goal in his life. He just wants to be happy, to live contentedly
and not be bothered and certainly not to fall into the rut of commuting
to office, working, commuting home and then rising the next day to do
it all again until he dies. Life is “to be enjoyed, not endured” is his
motto. In his school days, Agastya expressed his aim of life to become a
‘male stray dog’. Chatterjee writes,
In his essay, Agastya had said that his real ambition was to
be a domesticated male stray dog because they lived the best
life. They were assured of food and because they were stray
 21

they didn’t have to guard a home or beg or shake paws or

fetch trifles or be clean or anything similarly meaningless to
earn their food…. A stray dog was free, he slept a lot, barked
unexpectedly and only when he wanted to, and got a lot of
sex.5

Following his father’s path he also participates in the IAS

examination, deemed to be one of the most prestigious professions in
India. After his selection he is sent for one year training as an IAS officer
to a distant country town named, Madna not only the hottest place in
India but also as a place which does not have the characteristics to keep
up with the fast paced life in big cities, the alien town. He arrives at
Madna with “the essentials of his existence, his music tapes, his stash of
marijuana and his copy of Marcus Aurelius’s Meditation.
Katherine A. Powers in her article “Out of India, Tales that edify,
amuse”, published in The Boston Globe on April 09, 2006 says, “He
boards in a wretched government guest house where he is savaged by
mosquitoes and served food that tastes “like warm chilled shampoo”.
As he eats, the caretaker hovers at the door “never failing to show
something of himself…. A shoulder, a shoe, a leg and each portion of
his body saying there, I hope you continue to feel uneasy and strange”.
We would feel sorry for Agastya except that he has that covered.
Basking in self pity and aimlessness, he sets out to be contrary in
curious and laggardly. He takes a perverse aesthetic pleasure in
ugliness and disorder.6
It becomes quite clear from the very beginning that Agastya is not
meant to be in this service. A man, whose mind is most of the time
dominated by the thoughts of women and sex, who is addicted to
marijuana and would rather love “to be an actor in a porn film than a
 22

civil servant” clearly hints that he is not made for the position of an IAS.
In the training period he proves himself to be a heroic shirker of work,
an incorrigible pot smoker, a compulsive free loader and an almost
pathological liar. He arrives at work at 11.00 A.M. in the morning and
works until lunch then returns to his private room for the rest of the
afternoon, getting stoned, listening to music (Rabindra Sangeet),
reading some occasional Marcus Aurelius and sleeping. Moreover
Agastya is surrounded by wild characters; Srivastav, the pompous head
bureaucrat and his sexy wife Malti, the fashion and cultural leader of
the town; Sathe a local pothead and cartoonist also called ‘the joker of
Madna’, Kumar, the Police Superintendent and connoisseur of porn
films, Vasant, the world’s worst cook, Shankar, the engineer, Madan
Bhatia, the forest officer and his old acquainted. Agastya negotiates this
provincial creek with the only paddle he can find.
Despite his best efforts to do little or nothing Agastya ingratiates
himself into the local society and actually learns bits and pieces of his
future job. His posting at Madna, as a trainee is supposed to be a time
for him to learn about district administration but he conveniently
spends it associating with people like an iconoclastic editorial cartoonist
named Sathe, a good hearted alcoholic government engineer named
Shankar and Madna’s police chief Kumar who arranges porn movies for
him. He is working under the district Collector, Srivastav, but spends
most of his time understanding the life style of these bureaucrats, their
spouses and kids. He has keen eyes for details and tries to observe each
and everything about his superiors. After spending some months in
Madna, he starts getting some maturity and when, in the second step of
his training he is posted to a remote tribal block Jompanna, as a Block
Development Officer, he does a great job with the full responsibility of
 23

an IAS Officer. He actually surprises the readers by unexpectedly and

heroically solving the water shortage problems of the village Chipanti.
He finally decides to forget the idea of leaving the IAS service and tries
to adjust himself with his new job and the environment.
Kirkus Reviews in its edition of 1st March, 2006 comments,
A slacker seeks career success and sexual fulfillment in
Chatterjee’s 1988 first novel, since proclaimed a
contemporary Indian classics… This beautifully written
book strikes a nifty balance among satirical comedy, pointed
social commentary and penetrating characterization. Widely
considered India’s Catcher in the Rye, it also echoes both
R.K. Narayan’s Malgudi novels and J.P. Donleavy’s classical
portrayal of rampant unrepentant maleness.7

The novel English, August An Indian Story can be studied as a

manual for the administrative service in India. Prof. Radhika
Mohanram in her article in Amazon Book Review comments,
English August deals with August as a member of the
Indian Administrative Service, a reincarnation of the Indian
Civil Service, a behemoth left behind by the British to govern
the country. A job in the IAS is highly sought after in post-
Colonial India. August, while appearing lackadaisical and
self-centred and seeming to be its most inappropriate
member, draws attention to a system which has become
totally outmoded and out of touch with the needs of the
Indian masses.8

Upamanyu Chatterjee, himself an IAS has portrayed the Indian

bureaucratic system and its functioning in India in a very realistic way.
Meenakshi, in her article on “English August An Indian Story”
published on Wednesday, October 27, 2010 comments,
Every aspect of being an IAS trainee has been intelligently
probed by the author. He takes us inside the mind of a
bureaucrat, and tries to show that they are no extraordinary
 24

beings, but very much vulnerable to all kinds of human

follies…9

It shows the daily routine of the government officer, how they act
in different situations, the responsibilities of the post, the interference of
the political elements in the official works, the political pressure under
which they have to do their jobs and also the internal conflicts among
the various cadres of the government officers etc. The novel abounds in
the minute description of National Integration Meetings and the
Monthly Revenue Meetings, etc. Chatterjee has portrayed a real picture
of the government offices in India including its physical condition, the
various techniques of the employees to avoid doing works, their arrival
and departure time and their working style. The behaviour of the
Collector, his daily routine and style of functioning have been described
in quite details, how he works, when he comes to the office, what
happens when he enters the office, how he behaves with the various
types of people who come to meet him daily with petitions, and his
subordinates and his personal life etc. Chatterjee writes,
District administration in India is largely a British creation,
like the railways and the English language, another complex
and unwidely bequest of the Raj. But Indianisation (of a
method of administration or of language) is integral to the
Indian story. (EA,p. 10)

More than sixty years after Independence it remains largely so.

Chatterjee, in the novel describes the collectorate building and other
buildings in that premises like the office of SP, the police lines, the
District and Session Court and the District Council, the office of Sub-
Divisional officers, tehsildar, etc. in a very realistic way. Agastya, when
arrives in Madna, watches these offices with a child’s curiosity. The
 25

very first day of his training in the Collectorate office Agastya notices
the daily routine of the office. Chatterjee writes,
The visitors came all day. Agastya could eventually
categorize them. Indeed, that was all he could do, since the
conversation was beyond him. The petitioner always stood.
Srivastav asked to sit only if it seemed that they would take
long, if they sat it was on the edge of the chair. ( EA,p. 18)

Anjana Sharma comments:

Eighty years apart, cultures, civilizations, even craft and
temperament apart, Yeats and Chatterjee share an identical
vision of a de-centered, de-natured world.10

Dr. Mukul Dikshit opines that Chatterjee has, for the first time, focused
on a “new class” of Westernised Urban Indian that was hitherto ignored
in the Regional as well as the English Fiction of India. He declares that
Chatterjee’s imagination is a fertile as Kafka’s; his tragic sense is as keen
as Camus; his understanding of the absurd-comic (farce) in life is at par
with Milan Kundera and Saul Bellow.
Agastya is expected to learn the administrative techniques by
watching the DM doing his job. Srivastav reminds Agastya when he
says to him, “Hello, you’ve to get used to this. An Indian
administrator’s job is not easy.” (EA, p. 15) Chatterjee says,
And administration is an intricate business, and a young
officer who lacks initiative can not really be trusted in its
artifice. There is very little that he can learn from watching
some one else; Agastya learnt nothing.(EA, p. 10)

The Collector is the boss of a district. The importance of Collector

in the district administration and an aweful reverence to him can be
noticed from the behaviour of his subordinates and also the petitioners.
When Srivastav comes out from his room with Agastya to go to the
 26

integration meeting the whole scenario of the office outside changed.

Chatterjee writes,
Outside in the corridor the peons, the petitioners, the
politicians, groupies and their groupies all stiffened and shut
their babble when they saw Srivastav. They looked solemn
and guilty, as though they’d been planning to strip him. (EA,
p. 19)

Srivastav, the Collector is the mentor of Agastya and is supposed to

teach him the art of administration, which he actually tries to do
honestly. He tells him the importance of meeting with the people in
administration. He is of the opinion that a strict and good
administration can be seen if the officials will always remain in the
touch of common people. That is why the meetings like Communal
Harmony Meetings, National Integration Meetings, though sometimes
seem purposeless and unimportant, are actually very important and
essential for the smooth running of the administration because they
help them to read the pulse of the power. Srivastav tells Agastya, “It
helps in many ways. We find out from them what’s really happening in
the district-gossip, the things that our police and Revenue Officials
won’t tell us because they themselves must be involved.” In a
dictatorial tone he says,
Effective administration really means meeting the people,
and showing them that the Collector and the SP of a district
are not uppity and high-handed, but like meeting them. This
is India, bhai, an independent country, and not the Raj. We
are servants of the people. (EA, pp.22-23)

Today the country is being governed by a democratic set up

where the power lies in the citizen and the government officials are held
responsible for any type of untoward incident and in a district it is the
 27

Collector and the SP, the two top post, are responsible for anything. The
Collector enjoys the absolute power in his district but this power is
always associated with lots of “power and responsibilities of the job”
(EA, p. 107). He boasts about the contribution of the IAS in the
development of India. He thinks that whatever the progress the country
has made, it is because of them (IAS) and their ability of giving a good
and efficient administration. While talking about the importance of the
IAS in India, Srivastav tells Agastya, “If the country is moving it is
because of us only.” (EA, p. 58) This is the reason that they have to face
the criticism of many and are always held responsible. The government
as a whole has to be criticized. Kumar, the SP remarks very
sarcastically, “In India from washing your arse to dying an ordinary
citizen is up against the Government.” (EA, p. 38)
The life of an IAS is distinctively different from that of others
because he represents the administration and power all the time. There
is a select group of people he can mix with and a select place where he
can go. Otherwise it would mar the dignity and position of the
government. When Srivastav comes to know that Agastya is very often
found with the cartoonist Sathe, whom he hates, he warns him to be
careful and selective of the company that he keeps and also makes him
realize that he is not an ordinary man but an IAS. He tells Agastya, “As
an IAS officer you can’t mix with everybody. It’s not a job, bhai where
what you do after office is entirely your own private business, you are
also responsible to Government in the after hours.” (EA, p. 80)
But the same responsibility and power are not enjoyed by the
officers once they cross the limit of their concerned district. There are
two incidents in the novel which prove this fact. One when Srivastav
and Kumar get stuck in a traffic jam and go to a truck driver who
 28

parked his vehicle in the wrong way. He atonce runs to take his truck
away after realizing that they are Collector and SP. But when the same
SP goes to Delhi and argues with a taxi driver, he, in spite of being told
that he was talking to a SP, does not listen to him and instead talks and
behaves with him very rudely. Chatterjee describes this incident very
humorously: “very unexpectedly, the taxi driver, looking at Kumar
with his red hooded eyes, undid his pyjama and drawer strings fisted
his cock and said, “This is what I think of you Government types”.”
(EA, p. 146)
The burden of the world rests on them. So they always have to be
very practical and realistic. Like rest of the people they can’t enjoy the
beauty of nature, rain and the festivals. They are always conscious of
their effect on the administration. To maintain the communal harmony
is one of the biggest tasks of the administration. To keep the harmony
among the different religious groups specially between Hindus and
Muslims, they have to make several kinds of efforts and sacrifices also.
The festivals of both the communities are the most vulnerable times
when there is great chance of communal riots. Sometimes these riots are
preplanned and sponsored to gain the political edge. But whatsoever
the administration has to be really alert at these occasions. When after a
great heat, rain comes to Madna making the life a bit easier, Agastya
enjoys it. But Srivastav thinks differently. He thinks if it rains it is good,
there will be no shortage of water in Madna but if it rains heavily, there
will be the problem of flood which the administration will have to deal
with. So there is no time to take joy in any activity because they think
about the effect of that activity on the people and their reactions
accordingly. Srivastav says to Agastya,
 29

When you’re Assistant Collector some where, Sen, you will

realize how, in a position of responsibility, you have to view
things differently, in a practical way. Festivals, for instance,
are not a time for relaxation and enjoyment at all… What we
have to worry about then is the law and order and the
possibility of communal riot. The entire perspective changes.
And we don’t think of the rains as something romantic.(EA,
p. 108)

Kumar, the SP of Madna also teaches some qualities and

techniques of a good administration. When he goes to Mariagarh with
the SP as a part of his training. Kumar, an experienced police officer,
knows that the habit of travelling by road is very much essential for an
administrator because the districts are so big and he is required
anywhere at anytime. And to maintain the law and order the
administrator should tour all round his district. He tells Agastya, “I
frankly tell everyone that if you like a lot of travelling by road, you are a
good administrator. Three quarters of your work seems travelling,
bhai—these districts are so big, the divisions, the states the bloody
country is so big.” (EA, p. 133)
Many bureaucrats around the world are bloated, slow moving,
rigid and self-perpetuating and in this respect India is no exception.
Meenakshi comments, “Chatterjee, an IAS officer turned author, has
given us a very humorous yet dark description of the bureaucracy in
India.”11 Upamanyu Chatterjee manages to capture the red tape
surrounding much of Indian governing to perfection, and does it with
the perfect dose of humour and self deprecation. Radhika Mohanram
observes,
Overtly the novel attempts to do an expose of the IAS with
its corruption and tension which exists between the IAS
officers representing the federal government and the state
 30

government resulting in the victimization of the common

people in the administration nightmare in modern India.12

There is corruption among a section of officers. Some of them are

posted alternately between state and federal government, leading to
accusations of provincialism in the ranks. More worryingly some
officers are perceived as champions of their religion or caste-based
communities and act as “protectors” of their group’s interest.
Corruption is rife in the Indian civil services. There are three kinds of
officers—the corrupt who actually deals in bribe, the honest who are
clean and the idealists who never take bribe nor allow others to do so.
Kumar, the SP tells Agastya,
In government, you’ll realize this over the years, Sen, there
is nothing such as absolute honesty, there are only degrees
of dishonesty. All officers are more or less dishonest—some
are like our engineers they get away with lakhs, some are
like me, who won’t say no when some one gives them a
video for the weekend, others are subtler, they won’t pay for
the daily trunk call to Hyderabad to talk to their wives and
children. Only degree of dishonesty. (EA, p. 138)

Agastya notices the power of an SP when he visits him. He is

surprised to see the way they get the VIP treatment in the Mariagarh
Rest House. There was arrangement of excellent dinner, wine and also a
video with porn movies. When Agastya expresses his surprise to get all
in such a remote area Kumar says, “You are the guest of police bhai.
The police can do anything.” (EA, p. 138)
The Collector is also not behind to take the disadvantage of his
position. Srivastav’s name was linked to a female BDO whom he denied
to marry after a long affair and in frustration and depression she
committed suicide. The Dainik propagates this news hence Srivastav
 31

remains displeased with the newspaper and also the reporters. How a
Collector takes the advantage of his post to fulfill his various needs is
clear in the following sentence,
Mrs. Srivastav was one kind of wife to a Collector; their
‘further studies’ depended entirely on where their husbands
were posted. While the husband worked, the wife gathered
degrees from the sad colleges of the small towns. It was not
easy to refuse admission or a degree to the wife of a
Collector, or a District Development Officer or a
Superintendent of Police, even if their previous degrees were
from places that the principal of the college was not sure
existed… Thus when Srivastav had been Assistant Collector
at Lalchuck, Mrs. Srivastav had become a Master of Arts at
the Lalchuck National College. And when the husband had
been District Development Officer of Haveliganj, the wife
had become Bachelor of Education at the Haveliganj Gandhi
Graduate College and now a Master of Education at the
Janata College, Madna. (EA, pp. 60-61)

Bureaucrats are also hobbed by interference as politician

promote, demote or transfer them at will. Political interference in the
administors’ job always jeopardize the progress of a district because the
officers are bound to please the political godfathers and their major
activities are directed by them or their interest. If they do otherwise
they have to face the punishment of being suspended or transferred to
some remote areas where nobody wants to go. The communal harmony
and peace is the most desired thing in a district and the administration
always pay full attention to maintain this harmony but sometimes the
riots are planned by the politicians to increase their vote bank or such
other things and later the government officers specially the Collector
and SP are made the scapegoats. Kumar, the SP tells Agastya about the
previous riot and its consequence over the administration. He says,
 32

The last Collector, Antony was transferred I think, because

of the riots… the politicians who were actually behind these
riots just wanted a scapegoat. These politician bastards,
you’ll really know they are like when you’re Block
Development Officer…(EA, p. 20)

Shankar tells Agastya that he has approached the minister of his

department and bribed him to get him transferred to his home town,
Koltanga. He gets his transfer done but only after repaying the minister.
Upamanyu Chatterjee has very minutely described the class
consciousness and the feeling of discrimination among the IAS itself.
There are two categories of the IAS officers—one the directly recruited
to the IAS through the National Civil Service Examination like
Srivastav, Menon and Agastya and the second, the promotee who have
been promoted to the cadre from something lower, the regional civil
service or the engineers. In Srivastav’s words: A ‘promotee’ was a vile
curse, ranking somewhere between bastard and mouthfucker.” (EA, p.
58) Srivastav hates the promotee officers because they have no ethics.
The District Development Officer Bajaj is a promotee IAS about whom
Srivastav comments, “Bajaj behaves like a promotee, you will see. The
Indian Administrative Service has a work ethic, these other fellows
have none.” (EA, p. 58) Not only the IAS but the common people also
know this difference and behave with both types of officers accordingly.
When Agastya visits Bajaj the District Development Officer, he observes
this difference of attitude and behaviour when an advocate comes to
plead for the admission of his daughter and his reaction was surprising
and even insulting when he was denied. Agastya notices the way he
goes and slams the door open. He thinks that no one would ever dare to
behave like this before the D.M. Srivastav. Srivastav has the same
 33

opinion about his predecessor,Antony, who though a direct recruitee,

acted like promotees because he took the curtains of the house away
when he left. But for the sake of the solidarity of the cadre he did not
make any complain against him but he still opines that “…at least an
IAS officer shouldn’t behave like this, otherwise where is the difference
with others?” (EA, p. 58)
Again there is a rift between the IAS and the IPS officer i.e.
between the Collector and the SP. Srivastav tells Agastya how Kumar is
envious of the IAS officers and craves for the bungalow of the DM
though he never expressed that openly. He tells Agastya proudly how
he amended the habit of Kumar’s sleeping at noon time. He says to
Agastya, “Kumar’s an Indian Police Service specimen, they are all
jealous of the IAS.” (EA, p. 58) Kumar also has the bitter opinion about
the revenue officers when he says to Agastya, “…your senior IAS
bastards swell up because of the power they fool around with,
especially in a district.” (EA, p. 39)
This discrimination goes on further among other departments of
the government organization. The IAS and IPS are better officers with
important and greater power and responsibilities and the IFS officers
stand nowhere with the IAS and IPS in terms of power and
responsibilities which they are capable of in a district. The Revenuemen
call the forest officers contemptuously as “the foresters”. When the
officers of the forest department plan for a picnic to Goparak they invite
the DM and SP also to join them. Srivastav does not like this idea
because he is prejudiced to think himself greater than them and feels
humiliated to mix with them. He says,
But these foresters …seem to suffer from some inferiority
complex. Why can’t they gracefully accept the fact that their
 34

job and position is far less important than that of a Collector

or … SP?… You see in the picnic, how they behave. They
will try and behave like equals, especially the wives. (EA, p.
107)

In spite of all the discriminations among the various branches of

the government one thing is common to all. The government job is very
secured. Once one gets a government job whatever the rank may be,
one’s life is fully secured because in normal circumstances one can’t be
terminated. A government job is the guarantee of a life-time. This is
why, when Pultu Kaku comes to know that Agastya is planning to leave
his IAS service and join Tonic in his publishing business in which he is
least interested, he becomes furious and chides Agastya for thinking so.
Red with anger he shouts, “a government job is so secure, you needn’t
work at all, and you can never be thrown out. And you want to leave
the IAS, no less, after having been just a few months in the job.
Disgusting. It would’ve been like your father wanting to leave the
Indian Civil Service. For what? Not for a cause—Subhash Chandra Bose
or somebody like that—but to be happy, you said this morning, all I want
is to be happy. What you need is whipping.” (EA, p. 161) Radhika
Mohanram comments,
The IAS itself becomes a metaphor for India under the guise
of decolonization. Post-independence IAS once more re-
inscribe the colonial government as well as the profound
sense of dislocation that a lot of Indian feel. Nationalism
represented by the IAS can only be purchased by the
homogenization of India and its people. The IAS and its
policy of placing elite officers in locales and terrains they are
unfamiliar with only goes further towards making it an
inept administrative body unable to cope with the intricacies
of administering in a place and language alien to it.13
 35

Steve Koss in his article “A Brilliantly Funny and Irreverant

Coming of Age Story in India” says,
English, August is subtitled An Indian Story about growing
up and finding one’s place in the world, about giving one’s
ideals and acceding to the tedious realities and
responsibilities of adult life. Chatterjee’s is a tale of India’s
multiple worlds, from the west itself (represented by
England and America) the Cosmopolitan strivers of the big
cities, the ineffectual but life time employed government
workers, and the countless millions of Indian living in the
rural countryside. Chatterjee reminds us constantly of
India’s many languages, of the difficulties that the people of
one nation can have understanding one another’s lives as
well as their speech.14

The novel depicts the identity crisis of the protagonist and a quest
of journey to discover himself. Michael Dirda in an article in The
Washington Post on 23 April, 2006, comments, “Most novels progress,
but this one simply chronicles an ongoing journey and spiritual
restlessness.”15 Agastya’s soul searching insightful- journey starts in
quest of his real self. He comes across a variety of people who are so
unlike him and in a way quite unproductive and wasted as IAS cadets
and officers. But he just finds it all so funny, silly and stupid that he
can’t help laughing on most occasions. He is cocky and witty and the
book is full of his weired imagination about the different people and
situations he comes across, not sparing the frog staring at him from the
corner of the room. Shaun Randol in his article published in Quick
Review on Tuesday, December 1, 2009, comments, “Agastya’s story is of
self discovery, though much like in life, a real answer is never
achieved….”16 Though it is thought that the critical moments of
Agastya’s self discovery occur in the rural city of Madna but according
to Randal, “the story’s most telling experiences actually come almost
 36

exactly half way through the novel. It comes when Agastya takes a
holiday from his workday routine to visit the more cultured, bustling
metropolis where he believes he belongs. “Then at last the passage to
Delhi. But it would be no fugitive, thought Agastya, it would provide
no repose, would instead only meet his restlessness.” How right he was!
This visit is his Holden Caulfield moment.”17
His posting to a small town called Madna most unlike the places
he is accustomed to live in starts off as a cultural shock for Agastya.
Upamanyu Chatterjee, himself a civil servant has described through the
protagonist a long philosophical journey and a process of self discovery.
The novel manages to capture the essence of an entire generation of
Indians. The writer calls it the “Cola generation”, utterly influenced by
the western ideals and culture, whose urban realities jar in sharp
contrast to that of the slow and placid life of Madna, representing the
rural India. Agastya’s sense of dislocation is only compounded by his
extreme lack of interest in the bizarre way of government and
administration. Agastya tells Shankar, another lonely and nostalgic
person living in the same Rest House, “At the moment I want to know
what my future will be… not in any vague sense… but what am I doing
in Madna, will I get to like this sort of life… I miss my old life… I just
feel strange…” (EA, p. 33). Niranjana Iyer writes,
Madna is thus gradually revealed to be the catalyst, rather
than the cause of Agastya’s alienation. Agastya personifies a
generation of rootless Indians who feel no connection with
their rural past and find little in their Westernized realities.
Unable to find a satisfying career alternative and at a loss to
understand his unhappiness, Agastya is seemingly at an
impasse. Chatterjee wisely offers no shiny, neat solution.
Agastya sojourn in Madna is, after all, a journey of self
discovery—with no final destination.18
 37

Agastya joined the IAS not because he had any such aim but
because he did not have any goal of his future life. Something had to be
done so he selected this field of government service. Meenakshi
comments: “The story leaves us with many questions about the concern
of youth of … 1980s where there weren’t many job opportunities for
them and they usually tried their luck at everything hoping that
something will surely click.”19 Though Agastya’s real aim was very
clear, it was to live a life of luxury and pleasure without doing any
work and he thought that the life of a male dog is his ideal in this
respect. He expressed this desire in one of his essays in his school days.
In Madna, he has his first experience of dislocation and such
condition of mind so lonely, so alienated and so dejected. He ponders
over his miserable condition. Chatterjee writes, “He asked himself
again. Is it because it is a new place? Yes. So do I miss the urban life?
Yes. Is it because it is a new job? Yes. The job is both bewildering and
boring.” (EA, p. 27) He always wants to run away from his job and
enjoy his secret life in the hot dark room in the Rest House: “There
would be marijuana and nakedness, and soft, hopelessly incongruous
music (Tagore or Chopin), and the thoughts that ferment in isolation.”
(EA, p. 26) In his article “Up in Smoke” Akash Kapoor writes,
Like so much modern Indian writing, then, English, August is
concerned with cultural alienation and dislocation.
Chatterjee writes beautifully about this condition… but he
can also write hilariously about it, avoiding the
sentimentality and mundlin nostalgia that cloud so much in
expatriate writing. Indeed… it brilliantly captures a
generation and a nation struggling to re-orient themselves in
the early days of what we now call globalization…
Agastya’s story is convincing, entertaining, moving and
timeless. It merits an accolade that’s far harder to earn than
“authentic”. It’s a classic.20
 38

Agastya tries to find out the cause of his problems but he finds
none. Though he tries to conceal the sense of dislocation, resulting in
complete loneliness and non-adjustment in his letter to his father but he
continues to suffer in the Collectorate. He does not like his work at all.
His mind is always dominated by marijuana, masturbation and
meditation of Marcus Aurelius, images from his previous profoundly
urban life, though his work in Madna ideally requires him to be a
devoted servant of the people. Sometimes he does not blame ‘Madna’ to
be the cause of his restlessness and unhappiness. He turns to be a
philosopher and tells Bhatia, “But, Mandy, all jobs are boring, and life
for everyone is generally unhappy. You can’t blame Madna.” (EA, p.77)
Agastya seems to enjoy his loneliness too and does not want to
share its joy with anyone else. Chatterjee writes,
He realized obscurely that the sense of loneliness was too
precious to be shared, and finally incommunicable, that men
were ultimately, island; each had his own universe, immense
only to himself, far beyond the grasp or the interest of
others. (EA, p. 77)

Be it dissociation of a person from his culture or feeling of

alienation in his own country, the novel is a wonderful and amazingly
funny critique on the daily musings and thoughts of a very confused
man. In fact the confusion of Agastya is exposed beautifully in one of
the sentences where Chatterjee says, ‘There was not a single thought in
his head about which he did not feel confused.”21
The confusion is enhanced by a great quantity of liquor which he
is habituated to drink and the marijuana which he smokes very often
 39

and also partly due to lack of self confidence and self importance.
Akash Kapoor comments,
Agastya’s confusion is superficially about his career: having
followed his father into government service, he toys
repeatedly with the idea of seeking other work. But his real
problem stems from uncertainty about his identity in a
rapidly changing nation. Chatterjee’s central character has a
satisfyingly complicated—even irreverent—take on the
concept of Indianness.22

Agastya as a person is a perfect image of several Indians who are

in the same dilemma. The feelings of loneliness and dislocation compel
him to be in friendship with people like Govind Sathe, Multani, Bhatia
and others. While he is with Sathe or Bhatia (he usually drinks in their
company) he forgets his tension and enjoys the life but it is the demand
of his IAS post that he can’t mix up with everyone and Srivastav
reminds him this fact again and again. When his position as an IAS
requires him to be in the club ceremony along with other top officers of
the district, his heart craves for party with Sathe and Company.
Chatterjee says,
Agastya was enraged at himself, for agreeing to the
afternoon, for being in Madna, for a job that compelled him
to be polite to Srivastav and his wife, for being in the job he
was, for not having planned his life with intelligence, for
having dared to believe that he was adoptable enough to
any job and circumstance, for not knowing how to change
either, for wasting a life. (EA, p. 112)

The human nature is strange as Chatterjee writes, “Most men, like him,
chose in ignorance, and fretted in an uncongenial world, and learnt to
accept and compromise, with or without grace, or slipped into despair.”
(EA, pp. 113-114)
 40

Agastya wants to know the reason not the institution. He

encourages himself to act accordingly because he is the master of his
time. He wants to be rational and reasonable to the problems of his life.
Even rationalism does not seem to help him to provide the answer of
the various questions related to his life. He does not find a way to go
because everywhere darkness of ignorance prevails. Chatterjee
comments on the mental condition of Agastya’s mind,
Once he had believed that it was good to be rational, but not
it seemed that his reason could never answer the
overwhelming questions, or grasp the special providence in
the fall of a sparrow. One way out was to turn like Shankar
to the extra-terrestrial, to Jagdamba, and like Vasant to
believe in that special providence, even in the arrival of a
frog; another was to slink away from having to think, to
wish to be that pair of ragged claws that had so tantalized
him in his college years, scuttling over the floors of silent
seas. (EA, p. 114)

In his letter to his governor father he clearly accepts, “I just can’t

get used to the job and the place. I’m wasting my time here and not
enjoying the wasting.” He plans to go to Delhi during the Durga Puja
and expresses his desire to meet Tonic and requests his father to phone
him or write to him a letter that he is interested to join him leaving the
IAS job. A job in the civil service is everyone’s dream. But Agastya on
the other hand is debating whether he should stay in the job or not.
Chatterjee describes the life of trainee from a completely new
perspective, giving it an unusual punch and making this story worth
reading and remembering.
After a long speculation, Agastya comes to the profound
conclusion that loneliness was a petty and private thing, that the human
reason was inadequate—now all that seemed puerile and dull, the
 41

desultory cogitations of a healthy mind. Now he no more gets pleasure

even in masturbation. He meets the same people and continues the
rounds but without his mind. He bothers no more to analyze himself.
He would gaze for minutes at the nick of his finger that he gave himself
at the picnic without seeing it. Sometimes he would press the scar with
his thumb nail to relieve the pain.
The meditation of the authors of the Gita and Marcus Aurelius
don’t seem to help him in any way in his struggle with his loneliness
and he comes to believe that whoever could have made the effort to
write down all these things could not have felt them with any intensity.
There is nothing, no word or phrase which could express any genuine
longing for emptiness. He exclaims, “In the dark night of my soul I feel
desolation. In my self-pity, I see not the way of righteousness. “But
many-branched and endless are the thoughts of the man who lacks
determination. And that was really all, he felt. The mind is restless,
Krishna.” (EA, p. 135)
Agastya was born with a silver spoon in his mouth. He never
knew the want of anything in his life. He almost got all what he longed
for right from his childhood days. Hence, he was never unhappy in his
life. But now the circumstances have changed completely which has
been increasing his restlessness and deprivation each day. Chatterjee
says,
For life had suddenly become a black and serious business,
with a tantalizing, painfully elusive, definite but cliched goal
how to crush the restlessness in his mind. That is why he
began to feel that his experience of Madna was wasted time.
(EA, p. 135)
 42

There is no one in Madna or perhaps anywhere with whom he

can share the conflict which always continues in his mind. He was not
able to take a decision whether he should resign himself to this world,
and to the rhythm that living as we do is imposed upon us or whether
he should believe in the doctrine which says action is better than
inaction.
In Madna Agastya is lonely not alone. He does not feel rewarded,
only deprived and time is running out very fast. He becomes apathetic
to the world outside him. Earlier he felt lonely and he was used to but
later on things changed. Now the things, which he enjoyed earlier, seem
to be meaningless and devoid of enjoyment. Though he has written to
his father to ask Tonic to take him in his publishing business, the fact is
that he really does not want to do so. He is in a state of complete
bewilderment and agony. Chatterjee says, “Now he didn’t even long for
his earlier megapolitan life, paradoxically he missed nothing… He
wanted nothing, but it seemed-only a peace, but that was too pompous
a word.” (EA, p. 136)
Sandhya Iyer, in her article “To be or not to be” writes,
…the author brings a rare emotional nakedness and searing
honesty to his protagonist’s internal monologues and
observations, not felt by me since James Joyce’s A Portrait of
An Artist As a Young Man. There are several brilliant
passages that bare the protagonist’s innermost feelings but I
continued to be amazed by Upamanyu Chatterjee’s power of
perception and his ability to wrench out those thoughts so
well.

The noise of the jeep made sustained conversation impossible for

which Agastya was happy. He could slide down in his seat his neck
rested against its back and, without chafing, allow his mind its
restlessness. In a jeep, he would smile and argue with himself, you
can do nothing about your mind or your future, not until the
 43

journey is over. In a moving jeep he was not vexed by the onus of

thought…23

Then at last the time comes when he gets an opportunity to go

back to his old life in Delhi for a ten days vacation during the Durga
Puja festival. He actually escapes from the life of boredom to the life of
pleasure and enjoyment as he thinks so. But he is not very excited about
his tour to Delhi because he knows that the image of Madna would not
leave him there also and he would be haunted by the same restlessness
here. Chatterjee comments beautifully,
Then at last the passage to Delhi. But it would be so fugitive,
thought Agastya, it would provide no repose, would instead
salt his restlessness… he would be haunted by the image of
Madna… he would be thinking that next week this time I
shall be exercising in the Rest House room while Digambar
waits outside. (EA, p. 142)

He tells his uncle, “I’m in a sort of state of flux, restless... I don’t

want challenges or responsibility or anything, all I want is to be
happy.”(EA, p. 148) But where this happiness comes from is not known
to anyone at least not to Agastya. He thinks that he would be happy if
he settles down in Delhi but he himself is not sure about it. When he
visits Tonic he was in a state of indecision. Tonic’s office was fifteen
kilometers away from his residence and in the journey itself he decides
that he would not do this journey everyday. He does not like Tonic and
neither does he want to work with him. Chatterjee writes, “He
wondered why he was going to meet Tonic, he didn’t particularly want
to work with him.” (EA, p. 168)
Katherine A. Powers, in her article, “Out of India, Tales that
edify, amuse” published on April 9, 2006, in The Boston Globe,
comments,
 44

Agastya has more than a little common with the hero of John
Kennedy Toole’s, “A Confederacy of Dunces”, in his
egotistical alienation, his ancient self help tome, his solitary
sex and most amusingly in his iconoclastic approach to
administrative files.24

Shaun Randol, the founder and Editor in chief of The Mantle, a

forum for progressive critique, is of the opinion that homesickness or
nostalgia is common to all. He comments,
Many have experienced the trial of leaving home for a
strange land, only to feel the pull of home calling you back.
Old stories, old places, and faces. They all beckon. And so
when we make the journey back for a holiday visit or
celebratory reunion, we discover that, unknowingly, in our
strange land, we actually had grown and matured and
moved on from our old lives. That in fact, the place we
thought we always belonged to, becomes foreign precisely
because the familiar sights, sounds and smells remain stuck
in the past. It is at that moment we realize, away from home,
we had begun a new chapter. That a second life, or at least a
second wind, could only have happened outside our
comfort zones. To me, this is the essence of English, August.
The self discovery happens only when August can gain
perspective on his life and situation by literally putting
distance between himself and all that he once held near and
dear. Not that Agastya finds an answer as to who or what he
should be in life. But just as importantly, he discovers who
and what he no longer is—and this is the universal lesson
we too often take for granted.25

After his meeting with Tonic, a realization comes to him and he

decides at least not to join him and “go back to Madna and get used to
things.” (EA, p. 171) Agastya gains maturity day by day during his stay
in Delhi. When talking to his old chums, he realizes that those who are
in Delhi are equally dissatisfied with their jobs and are planning to
change. Dhrubo, who works in City Bank is also planning for the IAS.
 45

Though Agastya still has confusion in his soul but he doesn’t want to
expose it before anyone because it is something related to him
personally and nobody has any concern with that. Chatterjee
comments,
Already he realized that most of what he thought and felt
was rather trite and not remotely unique— Bhatia, for
instance, was out of place in Madna too, and Madan didn’t
like his job either, felt he was wasting time in it, and knew of
no alternatives. No emotion was sacredly his own, and he
half-hoped that his restlessness would thus succumb to
attrition. Perhaps his mind would finally realize that its
disquietude was merely an index of its immaturity, as
inevitable a sign of growing up as the first emission of
semen, as universal as excrement, and about as noteworthy.
(EA, pp. 173-174)

This maturity is reflected in his behaviour when he returns to

Madna and is posted as Block Development Officer to Jompanna, where
he does the best of his duty keeping his loneliness, alienation and
dislocation aside. Sandhya Iyer comments:
It’s really one person’s account as he goes by his life
aimlessly, but Upamanyu Chatterjee infuses his story with
such varied and colourful episodes, does it with so many
nuanced characters, creates such a perfect sense of the place,
that you are effortlessly drawn into a narrative that stays
vibrant in spite of the essential static life of Agastya. And all
this is recounted with a brazen sense of abandon and wry
humour that it makes you chuckle and smile.26

The novel is titled English, August: An Indian Story. It is really an

Indian story, the story of true India i.e. the rural India. When Agastya
expresses his reluctance to continue his job at Madna and desires to
leave the IAS, his father understands his state of mind. He writes to him
 46

in his letter, “This is what comes of living in a city and not knowing
what the rest of India is like.” (EA, p. 149)
The novel is about rural life; life as seen through the eyes of a city
boy. Akash Kapoor in his article further comments:
His book displays a world rarely seen in modern Indian—
writing revealing a detailed knowledge of the heartland that
can result only from personal experience. As a member of
the Indian Administrative Service, Chatterjee has travelled
and worked throughout India and his novel is crowded—at
times over crowded—with the sorts of characters and scenes
from rural life that couldn’t have been written by an author
living in New York or London. Some of his descriptions are
reminiscent of the late R.K. Narayan, whose fiction took
place in the invented rural town of Malgudi.27

In the hands of Upamanyu Chatterjee the cliché theme of the urban

encounters with the rural resulting in a cultural shock, becomes
something more. Drawing from his own experiences as a civil servant,
Chatterjee realistically depicts the paradoxes and problems involved in
the grass root administration. Michael Dirda comments, “In Madna
everything is broken or stolen, mosquitoes swarm over one’s body,
people defecate in the streets.”28 When Agastya goes for the first time to
participate in the meeting for National Integration and harmony held in
the Gandhi Hall, he is wonderstruck to see the physical condition of the
meeting hall and also the statue which resembles the statue of Gandhi,
the father of the nation. Chatterjee describes this scene very
humorously:
Gandhi Hall stood beside the city police station, a three
storeyed building. For a moment he thought that it had been
bombed, something out of a T.V. news clip on Beirut, broken
window panes, old walls, an uncertain air, a kind of wonder
at not having collapsed yet. A red banner over the door, and
 47

outside, a statue of a short fat bespectacled man with a rod

coming out of his arse. (EA, p. 21)

Srivastav tells him that the statue was of Gandhiji which fell off a few
weeks after it was installed and the rod was used to prop up the statue.
The rest of the book is a view of a typical Indian village-town
through the eyes of a city boy, Agastya, who is perpetually confused
about his identity, his Indianness and a lot of the bureaucratic
methodology of the civil services. Agastya realizes that the Indian
heartland consisting of its myriad villages and people is a stranger to
him. Akash Kapoor writes,
Ending up in the remote town of Madna Agastya (who has
spent most of his life in New Delhi and Calcutta) quickly
learns how foreign he is to the Indian heartland. Like a
tourist, he boils his water; is terrified of the frogs and
mosquitoes; he struggles with the local language. Modern
and secular, he hasn’t much respect for tradition or
religion.29

Michael Dirda praises the ability of the novelist for portraying the
Indian village realistically. He writes, “Chatterjee…excels in his
descriptions of Indian life… Agastya may feel out of place in Madna,
the American reader soon feels grateful for the chance to visit a world
by turns so familiar and exotic.”30 Chatterjee describes the rural scene in
a realistic way. He writes,
On their left was some kind of pond, with thick green water
and the heads of contented buffalo. Scores of people, sitting
on their haunches, smoking, wandering, gazing at anything
moving or at other people. Most were in white dhoti, kurta
and Gandhi cap… Some had towels over their heads… The
people sitting on the road stood up and moved away at the
last moment, reluctantly, some scowled. (EA, p. 11)
 48

Upamanyu Chatterjee has captured the realistic picture of a village life

when Agastya visits Mariagarh with John and Sita. He writes,
The town looked so ugly that he wanted to laugh… The
adults defecating modestly behind bushes, the children,
lords of innocence, waving to the jeep while sitting beside
the road, cows and stray dogs, even inexplicably, a camel,
and people, people, burgeoning like a joyous cancer. (EA, p.
197)

Chatterjee has captured the widening chasm between urban and

rural India brilliantly. An average Indian grown up in Indian megapolis
like Delhi or Calcutta feels more at home in New York or London than
in a place like Madna. The novel is written for the Indian readers in a
satirical style against the moving, spiritual and philosophical style of
the current trend of Indian author. The novel has achieved a cult
following among much of India’s urban youth because it succeeds in
exploring the absolute dichotomy of the two worlds they inhabit—the
Western city and the Indian village. The English they speak, “hazaar
fucked” as it may be, and distinctly Indian mindset they have.
Upamanyu Chatterjee has made certain literary excesses in the book
which is quite frankly a primer on Modern India; an India that is real
and immediate in distinction to Rushdie’s exotic caricatures. The book
introduces us to the real India.
The Western influence on young generation and vast difference
between urban and rural life form a part of the theme as well. Akash
Kapoor comments:
Indeed Chatterjee’s prose is cynical, witty and frequently
bowdy. It brilliantly captures a generation and a nation
struggling to reorient themselves in the early days of what
we call globalization.31

Radhika Mohanram comments,

 49

…there is a subtext of anger which is aimed not just at the

IAS, but one which questions reality in India which is
mediated by the English text or more particularly through
Western eyes. For instance, watching Indian television,
August makes reference to Peyton Place and waiting for
Godot, which prompts his uncle to respond with, “the first
thing you are reminded of by something that happens
around you is something obscure and foreign, totally
unrelated to the life and language around you.” This
particular theme pervades the novel and all the characters
agree that post-colonial India is unreal, “a place of fantasy”
and confused metaphysics.32

There are many instances where one can find the picture of this
scene easily. The author has tried to show a generation of Indians
already influenced by the Western culture. It is a generation that is not
entirely disaffected or alienated, but that is unsure of its future, its goal,
and its ambition—Agastya, often affable but generally choosing to
remain an outsider too. Agastya becomes both a spokesman and a
metaphor for the young urbans and middle class intellectuals that
sincerely attempt to tackle the guilt and accompanying pride of the
Indian brain drain in the nineties. Chatterjee does not shy away from
the fact that the younger generation of the middle class inhabit a
position trapped between the world of modernity and tradition, of East
and West, with both extremes familiar yet distant at the same time. The
best of Chatterjee’s observation concern India itself. He describes his
father’s approach to life as a blend of Marcus Aurelius and Readers’
Digest. The western influence of the West on Indian youth has much
been reflected in Agastya’s classmate and now his companion in
Madna, Bhatia, who strolls with a walkman, likes to call rupees “buck”
and himself Mandy. Chatterjee says that he is a kind of person who
 50

would love to get AIDS because “it is raging in America” and notes that
“Most of us seem to be so grateful that he (E.M. Forster) wrote that
novel about India.” Agastya’s slacker friend Dhrubo referring to an
Indian movie comments that he (the director, Ritwik Ghatak) was
aweful until the French said he was good and now he is a master.
In the article “The Land of the Confused” published in The
Metropolis on Saturday, a critic harshly describes the present generation
youth’s temperament and attitude represented by Agastya and his
westernized friends,
It’s precisely the intellectual, moral, cultural and spiritual
bankruptcy that renders them incapable of discernment and
sound judgement in the first place. Upamanyu Chatterjee
has very effectively brought to light in his work… He
exposes the majority of metropolitan Indian (male)
youngsters for what they are—stags in a rut, truant, feckless,
anarchic, unsaddled, piebald creatures all mane and toil….
Agastya epitomizes the modern day urban Indian
youngster. Agastya is all at sea when he finds himself placed
willy-nilly in the midst of reality and away from the
superficial levels of existence. And last but not the least, as a
logical corollary as it were, Agastya has zero-historical
perspective. Could there be a better example of modern day
urban Indian youth than ‘Ogu’ Sen? Morally crippled,
culturally uninformed, civilisationally wretched. That’s a
whole generation of Indians for you. Blindfolds on eyes,
plugs in the ears. Truly a generation unique in its self
imposed darkness.33

The novel throws light on the fact that the urban Indians like
Agastya are the victims of an alien cultural discourse which has been
internalized by them in the course of their educational cultural
nurturing. The careerist English educated Indian urban youth suffers
alienation at his deeper psyche level from his root and become doomed
to life of unhappiness and boredom. The rest of the book is the amazing
 51

unexpected, incredible India. He discovers infinite surprise for Cola

generation.
While portraying the rural life of India, Chatterjee has touched
the pathetic condition of the tribals living in remote forest areas in the
most unliving conditions. The novel in hindsight also comments on the
Naxalism in India, which seems a little out of context. Chatterjee also
presents the government’s perspective of the naxal movement and
Agastya seems to be mocking at the movement.
When Agastya is posted as a Block Development Officer to
Jompanna where the majority of the population is tribals, he makes a
tour to a remote village named Chipanti and comes across with their
pathetic and pitiable condition and living standard. Bajaj, the District
Development Officer, has already told him the wretched plight of the
Tribals: “The tribals have been ignored for decades, primarily because
most of them stayed in those inaccessible hill forest.” It is not easy for
the government officials to communicate with them easily and hence
the politicians take the benefit of such situation. It is the politics which
is mainly responsible for their not availing the benefits of the various
schemes and programmes started by the government for their uplift.
The money issued for the tribals’ cause is mostly spent on non-tribals to
strengthen their vote bank, etc. Bajaj shows full sympathy with the
tribals and tells Agastya:
The money that was pushed into Jompanna was directed by
the politicians, to benefit the non-tribal population of the
plains, you know, primary school, dispensaries, roads, wells,
bank loans—in return the same politicians were voted back
to power in the local political body. (EA, p. 240-241)

Chatterjee has drawn a realistic portrayal of the acute water

scarcity which the inhabitant of the area has been facing. The picture is
 52

quite pathetic and moving. When Agastya makes his visit as BDO to
the village Chipanti, he is surprised to see the way the people were
collecting drinking water from a dried well. Chatterjee writes,
…there seemed to be no laughter and no conversation. The
village did have children but they were all busy. Women
were tying them to ropes and letting them into the well.
After a while the ropes were bringing up buckets. He went
closer. The buckets were half-full of some thin mud. (EA, pp.
255- 256)

The tribals are forced to drink the muddy water. Agastya is

moved to see the situation and makes arrangement of drinking water
for them immediately. He sends the junior engineer, Chaudhary back to
Jompanna to bring water tank for them. Chatterjee is quite critical about
the contribution of the government in the development of the tribal
people. He comments,
…who say that what the government has really done with
its policies since 1947 is to ruin distinctive tribal cultures
without providing any real compensations. And that is, as
usual, because the critics have no idea of what they are
talking about. (EA, p. 241)

The injustices done to the tribals turn them towards Naxalism,

the self proclaimed social workers of the tribes. Sathe, when comes to
know that Agastya is being posted to Jompanna, informs him,
The Naxalites are there, too, trying to get the tribals to think,
instead of wasting their lives drinking, and killing one
another for their wives and watching their children die, and
waiting to be overworked and exploited by forest
contractors… (EA, p. 192)

The story of exploitation and injustice to the tribals does not stop
here. Chatterjee says, “…sex was part of the larger exploitation…” (EA,
p. 262). The innocent tribal women are the easy victims of sexual
 53

exploitation. Rao, who lives in the tribal area, though not a tribal
himself, tells Agastya that in a village called Pirtana, it was their custom
that their women did not cover the upper half of their body and various
minor and major district officials, Range Forest Officer and Revenue
Circle Inspectors, Head Constables, have taken the advantage of their
innocence. Rao informs him that at Pirtana the new Assistant
Conservator of Forest, Gandhi abused the innocence of the tribal
women who cooked for him. The men of her village were angry. They
visited Gandhi and as revenge and punishment they cut off his both
arms. The tribals justify this accident because they believe in wild
justice and think that this kind of act should never go unpunished. This
was a shocking news for Agastya as he knows him very well, but he
does not tell anyone about his relation with Gandhi. Rao further tells
Agastya the other types of exploitations which are imposed on the
tribals. The Forest Contractors never pay the tribals enough for the
oilseed and tobacco leaves that they collect for them. The timber
smugglers, who have actually ruined the forest much more than the
tribals did, foist the blame on them by bribing the Range Forest Officers.
Rao, the mouthpiece of the tribals, blames the government for not doing
anything for their development. He states, “The tribals are trapped, and
your government development can’t save them because sitting in those
big cities, you have no idea of how they live.” (EA, p. 262)
Chatterjee has shown a great concern with the plight of the
tribals. He thinks that there is the need of some strong measures to be
taken by the government to improve their condition. But this can’t be
done by sitting in the air condition rooms of the government offices.
Some more practical steps should be taken to bring the tribals into the
main stream of life. Only then the development and uplift of the tribal
 54

races will be possible and this is the only way to combat the naxal
problems also.
Through the character of Baba Ramanna, Chatterjee has
presented the theme of social service. He was a doctor with a lucrative
practice in Bangalore but having been influenced by Mahatma Gandhi
he left his profession and started a rehabilitation centre for the leprosy
patients, without taking any kind of assistance from the government.
He has included his whole family in his mission of curing leprosy from
not only the physique but also from the mind of the people. He leads a
simple life, following the Gandhian doctrine of simple living and high
thinking. His centre is a psychological rehabilitation centre for the
socially discarded to lead a meaningful life. Shankaran Karanth, the son
of Baba Ramanna, describes Agastya the whole story of struggle, which
his father faced when he started this. He started it all alone. No one
came forward to support him, not even the government officials though
now they are requesting the centre to accept their assistance because a
German Organization has started funding him. Karanth complains,
…most district officials are deaf. Before some German
organizations started funding us, none of them ever came
here. Now it seems they can’t leave us alone. They want to
force a loan down our throats. Forty years later, they want to
officially recognize the Home, which means interfere in it.
(EA, p. 236)

It was never an easy task, Shankaran Karanth tells Agastya, “The

really important and difficult thing was their psychological
rehabilitation, to convince them, after their flesh had stopped rotting,
that they were not freaks or monsters” (EA, p. 236). It is not only the
leprosy patients but the society, which always hates such people, also
needs to be taught that leprosy is not contagious and they are also
 55

human beings like rest of the humanity. Baba Ramanna, whom

Chatterjee calls ‘a male Mother Teresa’ (EA, p. 235) has made them able
to stand on their own feet leaving the beggary and they are living
normal life with their families like other normal human beings.
Upamanyu Chatterjee has slightly mentioned the activities of the
Christian missionaries in India and their meaningless attempts to
convert the innocent tribals to Christianity. They help these poor
economically, get hospitals built in the most remote corners of India.
They often misguide them about their own existing religion. They use
all means—money, power and pressure to convert the sick and illiterate
people, to Christianity. The novelist mocks at their futile attempt. When
Agastya is posted to Jompanna he sees a hospital which was built by
the Dutch missionaries. He is greatly amused when he comes to know
that “the Dutch missionaries at the hospital were converting tribals to
Christianity, Agastya thinks this absurd and rubbish.” Chatterjee
comments,
He wondered at motivation: what had induced the Dutch to
build a hospital of charity in an obscure corner of India, or
the Germans to fund an Indian curer of lepers? But he was
greatly amused, a few weeks later, to learn that the Dutch
missionaries at the hospital were converting tribals to
Christianity… God, he laughed, when will these Christians
ever grow up? (EA, p. 245)

In this high tech age when the importance of religion is decreasing and
materialism prevails everywhere the behaviour of the Christian
missionaries is really ridiculous and meaningless. They seduce the
needy people and spend lakhs of rupees only to make a sign of Cross
and add a David or John before or after his name.
 56

Upamanyu Chatterjee has discussed the plight of the older

generation in our urban society very briefly. The old people are thought
useless and hence neglected by their own sons and daughters whom
they gave everything of their lives. But once the new generation become
independent and feel no need of support from them, they become self-
centred and make a new world of their own where there is no room for
the father or mother. In this situation of complete helplessness the
parents take shelter in Asylum, in spite of being perfectly sane and
healthy, because they just want a house to live in. Similar is the case
with the widows of Varanasi. While talking to Shankar, Agastya says,
‘But I read in an article somewhere that some of the inmates
of the Ranchi Asylum are perfectly sane, they’re just
unwanted at home, and it’s just cheaper to keep them in the
asylum. Then the widows at Varanasi…’(EA, p. 31)

In India, it has been the tradition to regard the older generation as

God and serve them but now perhaps it is the influence of the Western
culture that people are behaving like this.
Chatterjee mocks at the reservation policy in India because it very
often forces the authority to choose the most inefficient candidates. It is
the compulsion that the posts are to be filled according to the various
categories of the candidates. And if a suitable candidate is not found in
any category, the post is to be filled by the inefficient and unable ones
because the quota system has to be followed strictly in the recruitment
of government services. When Agastya visits Bajaj, the DDO, he invites
him to “watch fun” of the interview for the selection on the post of
primary teachers. The posts are reserved for the tribal candidates. In
spite of agreeing to the fact that no single candidate present in the
interview was able for selection, he is compelled to choose the less
 57

inefficient ones. But its consequence will be greater and larger. The
students will have to suffer the result of their teachers’ inability.
Upamanyu Chatterjee’s English, August: An Indian Story can be
described as the first serious attempt of an Indian author which dares to
match the sensibility that is found in the modern European novels. His
portrayal of the plight of the urban educated youth, the predicaments of
the Western types in India is a very relevant topic even today. It is
really one person’s account as he goes by his life aimlessly. Chatterjee
infuses his story with such varied and colourful episodes, dots it with
so many nuanced characters, creates such a perfect sense of the place,
that one is effortlessly drawn into a narrative that stays vibrant in spite
of the essential static life of Agastya. Chatterjee portrays a new class of
westernized people who are on the verge of becoming a class, which
was hitherto ignored in the regional and the English fiction of India.
Chatterjee’s “Urban Elite” are much different from the American
materialist class. It is a class of people who have classical western
sensibilities and the novelist is a torch-bearer of this very class.
Although there are many themes in the novel like Indian
bureaucracy, corruption, tribal development, moral turpitude among
the ruling, etc., but nowhere in novel the novelist assumes the role of a
preacher which is quite appreciable, and this quality of Chatterjee
differs him from the other writers. Chatterjee presents the protagonist’s
inner world beautifully. To quote C. Sengupta,
Upamanyu Chatterjee’s maiden novel, English, August: An
Indian Story is a subtle metaphor of contemporary youth’s
quest for self realization… The novel describes a journey—
sometimes pathetic, sometimes humorous, even ridiculous—
a journey from rootlessness to maturity, a struggle to come
to terms with oneself.34
 58

Different critics and readers have expressed their views on

English, August: An Indian Story in different manners. Judging any
literary work is not a very easy thing. The depth of every expression
depends of course on three points—(1) the person’s mental level, (2)
nature or mode of looking at the things because whether he or she has
traditional standard of thoughts or is modern and practical in mind
having open eyes that can see and understand the huge changes of
values occurring in the society, and are ready to accept the needful and
(3) the country and society to which he or she belongs. In other words
it is all about consciousness, time and space. One more thing is always
useful—i.e. how much we know the writer whose writings we are
judging. Hemingway had said, a writer can never escape from his own
self. Naturally, knowing the writer personally makes the work easier
and more realistic. We have already gone through so many criticisms
on English, August, very rightly written, very intelligently analysed but
it will be sheer injustice if we do not pay attention to the critical
opinions of that person who wrote the introductory pages and who
knows the writer, i.e. Akhil Sharma, another Indian writer. He wrote
the introduction when the novel was published in America in 2006.
Here we find great benefits—(1) being Indian by birth Akhil would be
able to appreciate the novel from the Indian point of view, (2) being
another writer, he would be able to judge the novel from literary
standard point, (3) being a post-modern writer, he would definitely
judge the novel by the fourth dimension standard—i.e. from post-
modern point of view, (4) living in America, he would be able to
compare the novel from global standards too. The last critical quotation
therefore is being presented from the Introductory chapter of English,
August published in America in 2006. Here it is,
 59

Salman Rushdie’s Midnight’s Children was the first Indian

novel to be widely perceived as a vital contribution to
literature in English. Since that happened, many Indian
writers have gone on to become household names not only
in England and America but all around the world:
Arundhati Roy, Amitabh Ghosh with his historical novels,
Vikram Seth, whose A Suitable Boy is a marvelous thousand-
page-plus social comedy about arranged marriage. These
famous authors, though, only begin to suggest the range of
excellent English language literature being produced in
India.
To me as an American writer of Indian ancestry and
an avid reader of Indian fiction, one of the most striking
things about so much contemporary Indian fiction is the
way it presents itself as being representative of the historical
moment, of the social situations, of the cultural climate, of,
above all, India. And perhaps it is this strange, but not
unusual, idea that every Indian novel is or should be. The
Indian novel, that Upamanyu Chatterjee had in mind when
he gave the subtitle of “An Indian Story” to English, August,
his extraordinary first book. A story and not the story, even
if English, August tells a story that could only be Indian.
Whether or not that was Chatterjee’s intention there’s no
doubt that his book stands apart from other Indian fiction by
virtue of being so attentive to the particular.35
 60

References

1. Akash Kapoor, “Up in Smoke,” Sunday Book Review The New York
Times (July 2, 2006), p. 326.
2. Ibid., p. 326.
3. Anderson Tepper, “A Passage from India, An influential Indian
novelist gets his day in the U.S.,” Time Out New York (April 27,
2006) www.timeout.com/newyork/books/a-passage-from-India
4. Amit Chadhary, “Review of English ,August,”
www.amazon.in/English-August-Indian-Review-
Classics/dp/product-description/1590171799
5. Upamanyu Chatterjee, English August: An Indian Story (Noida:
Penguin Books in association with Faber and Faber, 2002), p. 35.
(Hereafter abbreviated as EA followed by page number).
6. Katherine A. Powers, “Out of India, Tales that edify, amuse,” The
Boston Globe (April 09, 2006).
7. Anonymous, “Review of English,August” (March 1, 2006)
www.kirkusreviews.com/book-reviews
8. Radhika Mohanram, “Contemporary Novelists 2001”
www.cf.uk/,,/mohanram-radhika.html
9. Meenakshi, “English, August – An Indian Story by Upamanyu
Chatterjee,” HUL 238 Class Blog. (October 27, 2010), hul
238.blogspot.com/2010/10/English-august-story.html
10. Anjana Sharma, The Hindu, January 21, 2001.
11. Meenakshi, op.cit.
12. Radhika Mohanram, op.cit.
13. Ibid.
14. Steve Koss, “A Brilliantly Funny and Irreverant Coming of Age
Story in India,” www.amazon.com/English-August-India-
Review (July 31, 2006)
15. Michael Dirda, “A Comic novel follows a disaffected young
Indian bureaucrat to a back water posting,” New York Review (The
Washington Post, April 23, 2006), p. 326.
16. Shaun Randol, “Quick Review-English August by Upamanyu
Chatterjee,” THE MANTLE (December 1, 2009),
mantlethought.org/content/quick-review-english-august-
upamanyu-chatterjee
17. Ibid..
18. Niranjana Iyer, The Missouri Review, Vol. 29, Nov. 3, Fall 2006, pp.
272-273/20, 355.
 61

19. Meenakshi, op.cit.

20. Akash Kapoor, op.cit.
21. Sheermelody, Satire and Humour at its Rawest (December 20, 2006)
http://www.mouthshut.com/sheermelody/time line.
22. Akash Kapoor, op.cit.
23. Sandhya Iyer, “To be or not to be,”
Sandyi.blogspot.com/2009/08/book review (August 4, 2009).
24. Katherine A. Powers, “Out of India, Tales that edify, amuse,”
op.cit.
25. Shaun Randol, op.cit.
26. Sandhya Iyer, op.cit.
27. Akash Kapoor, op.cit.
28. Michael Dirda, op.cit., p. 326.
29. Akash Kapoor, op.cit.
30. Michael Dirda, op.cit., p. 326.
31. Akash Kapoor, op.cit.
32. Radhika Mohanram, op.cit.
33. Anonymous, “The Land of the Confused,” The Metropolis on
Saturday, www.metropolismag.com.
34. C. Sengupta, “Upamanyu Chatterjee’s English, August: An Indian
Story: Metaphor of Contemporary Youth’s Quest for Self-
realization,” Commonwealth Review, 51 (1993-95).
35. Akhil Sharma, “English, August: An Indian Story,” New York
Review Book Classics, 2006.
36. Radhika Mohanram, op.cit.