A famous novel always swamps its sequel. Yet, Bibhutibhushan Bandopadhyay’s Aparajito (English translation from Bangla by Gopa Majumdar) is by no means lesser than the prequel Pather Panchali
This 472 page pleasure traces the growth of the ever imaginative, Apu, from the age 10 to adulthood, encompassing his life events, his relationships and his restless travels.
Aparajito captures the whimsical randomness of Apu’s poverty stricken life. The dominating theme is not deprivation, but Apu’s sense of wonder that makes even the ordinary luminous, and the lure of the unknown that propel his life.
Aparajito is about how things are rather than how we want them to be. In life, one tragedy after the other strikes its deadly blows, leaving nothing static. Life refuses to move along the predicted lines, is about change and moving on. At peace is the person who lives in the now without glorifying the past or being too concerned about the future.
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Synopsis
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Transported from his native village Nischindipur, where he spent his early life scampering around barefoot collecting berries and flowers with his sister Durga, Apu finds his urban existence confining and depressing.
His world opens out to knowledge in a boarding school. Apu reads voraciously about the world, yearns to go places.The expansion of Apu’s horizon continues through a couple of years of college in Calcutta after which poverty forces him to abandon studies. He takes up one unsatisfying job after another in order to stay in the city and continue to read in the Imperial Library. In his heart he remains a traveler, reaching at times the dense jungles of Madhya Pradesh and towards the end going off to Fiji.
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Mother-Son ties
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A complex web ties children and parents. Children grow up and turn their back to their homes, leaving old parents behind, with a sense of guilt. The dilemma between living with his lonely now widowed mother in a village performing Brahmin rituals for a living, and pursuing college education in Calcutta tears Apu.
A young Apu represents the youth of the immediate years post independence-progressive, subjected to an academic awakening and questioning the basic framework of Indian culture. He wants to enter a new world, pushing his old world behind him. He opts for Calcutta.
Mother and son go through contrasting emotions during the same period, Apu’s exhilaration on discovering a new world in Calcutta, and Sarvajaya’s increasing loneliness and despondence.
Modernisation alienates mother and son, as he cannot relate to his mother and her rural surroundings anymore. Saravjaya’s world crumbles as Apu’s visits to her become shorter and rarer.
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Apu’s other relations
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Aparajito is also an account of Apu’s other relations, friendships and romantic attachments.
The most intense among these is the bond he shares with his wife Aparna (a remarkably simplistic, real and endearing part of the novel) who departs from his life as suddenly as she entered it, leaving a son behind.
The last section depicts Apu’s attempt to reclaim his son Kajal, a lively, likeminded five year old carbon copy of his childhood. When the novel ends, Apu embarks on a voyage to Fiji, leaving his 8-year-old son, Kajal, with a friend in Nischindipur. The cycle of life continues, because another wide-eyed child now roams the fields of Nischindipur, even though much has changed in the intervening quarter century.
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An Undefeated Life
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A twin theme of loss and progress runs through Aparajito. This story is immensely humanist, with values of respect and unsentimental compassion for every person in your life.
Apu aspirations to educate himself may seem unremarkable from an urban and present perspective. Things are very different given his background and time, where even the most meager aspirations (earning enough to feed one’s family, living long enough to see one’s children grow up) tend not to be realised.
Satyajit Ray based two movies Aparajito and Apur Sansar on separate sections of this book. Salman Rushdie has acknowledged Bibhutibhushan Bandopadhyay as his favorite vernacular author. Its a treat to read his books translated in English
Readers may get impatient with the imaginative and irresponsible dreamer that Apu is, skeptical of organised social action or worldly success, lacking materialistic ambitions. In today’s world, a man like Apu would be seen as misfit, aimlessly adrift, and irresponsible, professionally and personally. Yet he has an unending passion to explore life in its full splendour.
On its own or as a sequel, Aparajito is not to be missed. It is not really necessary to read Pather Panchali before you begin Aparajito. (Opinions on Pather Panchali are also available on MS).
Aparajito might have been just yet another tale of woes. But that’s exactly what it isn’t. It is a story of an unvanquished spirit that rises through all sorrows and grief triumphantly retaining hope at all times. Truly Unvanquished!