Tales of cricket, culture and the Caribbean
Henna Butt drops in for a chat with Rahul Bhattacharya, former cricket journalist and author of The Sly Company of People Who Care, a cricketing Caribbean opus
His tangerine coloured ethnic-printed bag—such as one might find in a street market in Bombay or Camden—crumpled on one of the moulded plastic chairs is the first thing that catches my eye as I am introduced to Rahul Bhattacharya. By contrast, he is immaculately attired in a tailored grey suit.
This disjunct does well to describe Bhattacharya and the themes which dominate his debut novel, The Sly Company of People Who Care.
The publisher’s London offices appear all too pristine a location for our meeting, me having imagined Bhattacharya in the sodden heat of Guyana. This is not the first time that I have unwittingly confused the author with his nameless narrator. Whilst Bhattacharya concedes that the protagonist does share much of his own background—age, ethnicity and profession as a cricket journalist—he explains that much of this was for technical reasons.
“Cricket is a plausible reason to send someone to Guyana,” he elucidates, “and there aren’t many others because not many people go to Guyana.” Whilst some details are borrowed from reality, the logic of the fictive world takes precedence over realism.
“I wanted it to feel real and I wanted to feel as if all of this actually happened,” he tells me. He certainly succeeds in this endeavour. Intricate and vivacious description twinned with a rapid and precarious unfolding of events lends the writing the feel of truths told.
Bhattacharya admits that the the idea of writing a novel came after he had chosen the material and perhaps it is this deft weaving of narrative around his detailed material that gives the writing its feel of happenstance.
The book is split into three quite distinct parts as the reader follows the protagonist on his journey, both emotional and topographical.The first part is frenetic and care-free as the narrator accompanies a diamond-hunter on a jaunt to the wilds of the country’s interior.
“It is a book of youth at one level,” Bhattacharya tells me. “All people, especially young people, feel the need to escape at some point in their lives.” This is evident to the reader who follows the narrator through various stages of youthful escape which are defined by the three parts of the book. The narrator, who seeks to escape the “deadness of life” does not only escape India but also his middle class upbringing – another trait he shares with the author.
The protagonist declares: “I had run from a serious education, then from cricket reporting. From the expectation to ‘settle down’ I had run.”
Bhattacharya describes the novel as “rooted in the experience of the Guyanese working class”, although he explains that this was coincidence rather than a predetermined project.
“Coming from a constricted middle class life you’re able to see”, he says, speaking to me directly, “life full of possibilities. At the same time you can see the struggle, you can see the odds against people in that situation. It was just a bit of natural interest in that.”
This explanation gives me a real sense of the narrator in the first part of the novel, a young adventurer, lettered and monied coming to a foreign land seeking excitement in the lives of those from a different socio-economic stratum.
In the second part of the novel, when initial crackles of adventure somewhat fade, the narrator seeks to explore the history of Guyana.“The truth of the Caribbean is displacement and migration”, Bhattacharya is convinced.
I ask where Bhattacharya’s interest in the themes of migration and displacement stem from This question brings about a heavy pause in an otherwise free-flowing conversation. The response describes a Bengali and Gujarati mixed background and a childhood spent in different cities.
“I’ve always had this sense of vague foreign-ness to most things in my life, to the Bengali part of my family, to the Gujarati part of my family, to Bombay when I moved there as a youngster, to these things which are coming to me from the West, to the art etcetera which have really informed me, to the English language to an extent, even though it’s my first language because it was the language of my education.”
Even as a child the author was intrigued by the journeys of the individuals he saw in an India characterised by widespread rural to urban migration. The Caribbean is a place where he saw these journeys on an epic scale and the young Bhattacharya who initially visited the West Indies to report on cricket was drawn to the place to such an extent that he returned there to live for an entire year, the only time he has ever lived abroad.
“It’s a very moving thing, to feel and to watch,” Bhattacharya says of the tangible sense of displacement that he felt in Guyana. This feeling is conveyed in the book with particular intimacy through the narrator’s interaction with the Indian-origin Guyanese.
An element of bewilderment is portrayed in the way in which Indian traditions have persisted in Guyana. The narrator states that he and his love interest, Jankey, were “surprised by one another’s Indianness.”
Another character sings an old Hindi language song and the narrator is touched by the melancholy he feels. “To sing in a language one didn’t know, it seemed to me an act of devotion. The half-baked, heartfelt, creolised delivery, I felt it in my bones.”
There is this great sense of loss that you feel always, with the Africans because so much of their culture and their history was completely obliterated by slavery and that is an absence that they really miss.”
“The Indians”, as he calls them (whether this is the term that the Indian-origin Guyanese use for themselves or whether this is Bhattacharya’s own reference for them is unclear), “were allowed to preserve their culture to a greater degree, but their longing for a homeland is tangible and their Indianness and how they relate to what they call the motherland which is India. You feel that, you definitely feel that.”
Bhattacharya makes it clear that, for him, history has a very real place in telling any contemporary story – “You cannot ignore it.” He is emphatic in the face of my cynicism. He describes that newspapers in Guyana feature debates on whether slavery or indenture was worse, whether Indians who were the last entrants into this society were more at a disadvantage than the Africans.
“It’s a living, alive issue. It’s very important – you can’t help but feel that and see that.”
The final part of the tale centres on Jankey, as reality begins to seep in at the edges of the narrator’s escape. The fluid movement through locations and relationships is slowed as the protagonist embarks on a journey to Venezuela with only Jan for company. All of the characters in this book are explored in a fairly shallow sense until this point. As the pace slows the reader gets to know Jan, her habits and nature.
The final part sees a more raw engagement between the narrator and his surroundings. His alienness and privilege relative to those around him is brought into sharp relief when he grows weary of footing the bills for his “prize bird”. Jan transforms from frivolous holiday frill as she reveals that she has a son.
Bhattacharya evokes the feel of a place masterfully using imagery both beautiful and repugnant. His use of the Guyanese dialect is almost loyal to a fault. As a reader it is initially jarring and stalling but provides an attraction that comes from tasting foreign phrases crafted from the familiar. When I ask him why he chose this style of storytelling he responds in a self-evident tone: “It just felt organic to the landscape”.
The author’s affinity for the language is clear: “It’s a very, very vibrant, living language, very addictive, it was bouncing around my head when I came back and I just felt that to write it all in standard English would be false.”
The story is brought to a ragged and abrupt end when the mundanity of border bureaucracy forces the narrator to leave, shattering the last illusions of escape. He exits having enjoyed the people, the culture, the music of the place. Although he may feel regret for any negative consequences that have resulted from his visit he will nonetheless be returning to his comparatively privileged lifestyle having only taken from Guyana, without having given anything back – not unlike the colonisers who came before him.
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