Digging up dark inheritances

A story set in the unique flavours of Bengal that has drama, splendour and language to captivate its reader.

The Inheritors
Aruna Chakravarti
Penguin
2004
Fiction
Pages: 356
Price: Rs 295
ISBN: 014303216X
Paperback

Okay, I’m probably biased because I’m a Bengali, and The Inheritors has been written by a Bengali and is chockfull of Bengali ethos — the way it’s been handed down like a baton, generation to generation, waning gradually and then its paring off to a state of dull stasis where you stop and ask yourself: does any of this make any sense any more circa 2004? Well, it does — but you need to read the book by Aruna Chakravarti to figure out exactly why.

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As I was saying, I loved chiefly because it’s so Bengali, in its heart and soul, and the language that it speaks, in the gastronomical sights and smells that it cooks up, and its breaking away from the social cauldron and going very far away from it all.

The story traces the lineage of a Brahmin family spanning several generations, flits across Majilpur, Calcutta, Delhi and Koln, and straddles a timeline that begins in 1897 and ends in 2000.

In 1996, Monomohini Sen wants to write a book on her family, so she goes back in time, to 1897, and then back and forth, searching for her roots. Her aunt Alo Pishi’s diary holds the key to unearthing family secrets, scandals and bondings.

In the process, Alo gets to be the piece de resistance, the central figure in a family drama, that is, most times, shockingly mired in an ugly cult of social taboos, and yet incredibly human, elevated and beautiful.