Review: The Continents Between by Bani Basu
First published nearly four decades ago in the original Bangla, this complex novel that traverses an expansive canvas of time and place, is striking for how urgently relevant it still feels
What is a homeland? What is freedom? What is the meaning of a life lived in between belonging and longing?
Acclaimed Bangla author Bani Basu’s debut novel, Janmabhoomi, Matribhoomi, translated for the first time into English by Debali Mookerjea-Leonard, grapples with these questions, among others, through the lives of the Mukherjee family: father Sudeep (a professor of biochemistry), mother Kamalika (a singer), and their children, the Indian-born Swadesh/Babu and the American-born Aratrika/Moni.
Widely regarded as one of Bangla literature’s most talented contemporary writers, Basu (85) began contributing to periodicals like Anandamala and Desh in 1980. Janmabhoomi, Matribhoomi was originally published in 1987, in the periodical Anandalok’s Puja issue and in book form a year later.
The English translation entitled The Continents Between is a deceptively slight volume of 240 pages (including a glossary, family tree, acknowledgements, and translator’s note). In it, Basu, with a poise remarkable for a debut author, deftly juggles fully realised characters, nuanced social commentary and sensitive reflection that stays with the reader. An ambitious story, this contribution to Indian immigrant and diaspora literature is narratively and emotionally complex. Mookerjea-Leonard’s thoughtful translation does a wonderful job with the rhythms of the dialogue and language. In some ways, it is a narrative of its time, and yet, it is striking how urgently relevant it still feels, with the questions it asks of itself and its readers and the intricacies it interrogates through its characters.
Take, for example, Babu wondering about the false promises of fitting in: “It isn’t as if once we blend in, we’ll enter into some paradisiacal gym of universal civilisation.” At the other end of this is Kamalika, who had chafed at being required to observe all the Shashthi rituals when living with Sudeep’s joint family in Calcutta, but diligently maintains them in the USA, even acquiring a Bangla calendar for correct reference. “I can’t stop following the customs. Without them, I’d panic.”
The novel begins on a snowy March day, in 1981, on Aratrika’s thirteenth birthday. Sudeep, Kamalika, and Moni are living in Brooklyn; Babu is at college in California. They have a tight circle of fellow immigrant friends who double as each other’s local families. But Sudeep has never been able to shake off the guilt of leaving his parents and extended family in India to move across the world and make a new life for his young family. He is aware that “memory returns the past wrapped in romanticism” but cannot deny the increasing pull of his motherland, of his blood. This time, though, they’re going to do it right. Through careful planning, he’s going to ensure that they avoid the problems that had caused them to move abroad to begin with.
And so, in March 1982, Sudeep and Kamalika, with a teenaged Moni, return to Calcutta. Sudeep accepts a job as the principal of the college where he had been an undergraduate student while Kamalika becomes an associate professor and, much to Sudeep’s delight, “progresses towards self-actualisation”. Moni, with admirable optimism and enthusiasm, throws herself headlong into school, new friends, cousins, and the city, which baffles and thrills her in equal measure.
But the thing about nostalgia is that no amount of organisation, foresight, and awareness can prepare the returnee for the change in what was once home, and the change within themselves too. This is especially true for Sudeep, who begins to worry that the decision to return was the wrong one — burdened by the pressures and duties of a joint family; the pressures of his role in the college as he struggles against bureaucratic red-tape, corruption, and an increasingly volatile student representative body that doesn’t trust this ‘foreign returned’ man or his ideas about discipline, punctuality, or ethics; and the pressure of his mounting inner confusion and turmoil.
Through titled sections narrated in rotation by one of the four Mukherjees, with interventions by a third-person omniscient narrator, who sometimes takes over entire sections, the reader traverses an expansive canvas of time, place, and a host of characters in America and in India. Each voice is distinct, with an intimacy that borders on the confessional when in first person; not unlike on a stage when actors break the fourth wall. In fact, at times, in its fragmentation, the book almost reads like a play, with characters entering and exiting the stage.
The Continents Between makes for as evocative a title as the original Bangla does — “neither home nor away but somewhere in the in-between, fated to live an obscure life clipped of identity” — even as the tug-of-war between birthplace and motherland from the original title is referenced by Moni in the final chapter. There is no neat tying up of threads, no tidy resolutions. But there’s a fragile hope, and it’s rather fitting that the girl on the cusp of adulthood, whose thirteenth birthday inaugurated the story, is the one who, at the end, not only echoes the questions it has tried to answer, but concludes the narrative with her quiet, burgeoning understanding of some of its answers; answers she has gleaned through crushing disappointments during her years in Calcutta.
“It isn’t possible for humans to be free of every imprisoning shackle, there are fetters of custom, of character, of time, and finally, there are the bonds of blood, of love. Freedom has its responsibilities. Its agonies. Its loneliness.”
All made somewhat bearable when there are others to share them with.
Anushree Nande is an independent writer, editor, and publishing professional currently based in Mumbai.