Anonymous rambler

An ambler attains a poor man’s nirvana while readers lose their way in the novel journeyman.

Diddle-do-a-diddle, when’s a book a riddle? When it has no pretensions about being a book of riddle, or if, like The Anagarika’s Swansong, it’s a work of fiction designed to be an anti-novel.

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In Sanskrit, ‘Anagarika’ means a recluse in quest for truth. Arup Kumar Dutta’s Anagarika is a nameless protagonist who tries to do a Siddhartha. But unlike the prince, he doesn’t become an enlightened Buddha. And since he lives in the Kaliyuga — the Age of Untruth — he finds his way to a mental institution before gaining ‘a poor man’s enlightenment’.

The story of Dutta’s Anonymous Ambler, however, isn’t as simple as that. It’s a journey through a volley of alliterations and cryptic chapters that “need a cerebral response”. Too cerebral at times. The author, however, has a defence: the book is a satiric take on the novel form that shuns “all the conventional elements beloved of novelists, including linear narrative, structural integrity, natural characterisation, emotional or situational conflict”.

The satire, sadly, is seldom decipherable. Even the nameless protagonist realises that, signing off with “Yes, something of a yawn, my chronicle! Or travelogue. Or (hopefully) swansong.”

But the book has its moments. In his elements, Dutta describes the inherently humorous childhood of the nameless protagonist. This isn’t surprising, as he has written several award-winning books for young readers.