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Of friends, teenage angst and turbulent '70s

Mandira Nayar

Author Sudeep Chakravarti. — Photo: Rajeev Bhatt

NEW DELHI: For a country where boarding school graduates have held more power from political corridors to boardrooms across India, the picture of this "insulated" world is still shaped by the words of Western writers. Stepping into this territory, Sudeep Chakravarti is one of the few "desi" writers who venture into "brown sahib" territory with four friends on Planet Mayo with "Tin Fish".

While his work is a coming-of-age book set in Mayo College, it is not only about long conversations after lights out, hormones and midnight feasts. "Tin Fish" brings alive the turbulent times of the 1970s with naxalites, the Emergency and the death of innocent dreams, through the eyes of Brandy and his friends, Fish, Porridge and PT Shoe.

"I thought of the book about six years ago. I spoke to David Davidar, the head of Penguin India at that time, and he told me that it was a good idea, but it would only work if it was black and funny. I told him it could be only that, as that is what I am," he says.

Written between lunch breaks, late at night, on trains between greasy food and cups of "chai" and in airport lounges, Sudeep -- who has 20 years of journalistic experience behind him -- claims that moving from the word-limit to pages was not easy. "I was tough as the longest piece I wrote was for a research magazine and it was 4,500 words. When I wrote 2,500 words, I got drunk. When I finished the manuscript, I got drunk again," he says laughing.

While the book brings out the warm feeling of friendship, the bonding between friends and teenage angst, it is not all about happy sunshine moments in a boarding school or gang `rivalry'. With a dark side, it has undercurrents of the changing times from Zeenie Baby to `urine therapy' and the Emergency and like any work set in that era, it cannot be apolitical.

The child of these times, the book might have elements of his life but it is not autobiographical. "The book is not my story. There was a Porridge when I was in school, but the book is not about me. The protagonist is Bengali and I am Bengali. But the similarity ends there. When I wrote the book first, I put a lot of myself into it. But when I read it, I realised it was boring. So I edited my ego out," he says.

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