Tin Fish

Author- Sudeep Chakravarti

Publ. Penguin India, 2005

Price Rs. 250

The first line of this at-once funny, touching, thought-provoking, and gripping story is, “So, there we were, Fish, Porridge, PT Shoe, and I, Brandy. We were brothers without barriers, friends until death.” Tin Fish follows the lives of four buggers in a boarding school, The Ajmer College. (A disclaimer: this is not a boarding school story on the lines of Enid Blyton, and is not to be confused with her books…old Enid never wrote about confused adolescents, gora chicks (to say nothing of their boobs), and the political situation in her times…) Sudeep Chakravarti is a good sculptor of characters (note: there is no heaps of praise for his character sculpting, just a passing mention), cloaking each one of them with enough idiosyncrasies to write a film with Paresh Rawal playing ten roles. His style appeals to me a lot, ‘coz he continuously digresses from one incident to another. To quote Holden Caulfield, (‘Catcher in the Rye’, by J.D.Salinger…pretty much my all-time favourite book), “Oh sure! I like somebody to stick to the point and all. But I don’t like them to stick too much to the point. I don’t know…” One moment, Barun, a.k.a. Brandy, is telling you of the journey from Calcutta railway station to home, and suddenly takes a disorienting jump to a narration of the trek to Kashi he went with, with his friends. Another disorienting jump later, Brandy’s telling you about the Prime Minister of India, who believed that drinking his own “purified liquid” (read piss) was the way to a healthy life.

In the beginning, debutante Sudeep Chakravarti seems to be trying hard to find his groove, which continuously avoids him, atleast through the first hundred-odd pages. This leaves the reader with the feeling of I-think-this-is-going-somewhere-but-right-now-I-am-as-clueless-as-the-author-himself. Luckily for both author and reader, the missing groove is found sufficiently early on in the book, and then its all cool-breeze, ya?

Chakravarti takes you through all the characters’ feelings through the eyes of Brandy…be it Tin Fish’s relationship with his father, a gay chap smooching Porridge, their hopes and aspirations for the future, or Brandy’s love…Chakravarti creates a lovely space, albeit with its faults…but then, what is perfect? Inspite of is faults, Tin Fish definitely deserves a read…maybe two?