Matthew Dennison

The day the music died

The Immortals, by Amit Chaudhuri

issue 18 April 2009

An earnest young man upbraids his singing teacher. ‘Why don’t you sing classical more often?’ It is Bombay in the early Eighties. The young man’s father has enjoyed a successful career in management, with the result that ‘his childhood had been almost entirely chauffeur-driven’. His singing teaching, peddling remarkable gifts to earn an unremarkable living in the rambunctious city in which his talent is only one among many, is older and pragmatic.

You cannot practise art on an empty stomach. Let me make enough money from these lighter forms; and then I’ll be able to devote myself entirely to classical.

The argument is not a new one. Amit Chaudhuri’s latest novel successfully revisits a debate about the role and place of art in the human experience. It does so with insight, irony and humour.

The young man is Nirmalya Sengupta, the only child of Apurva and Mallika Sengupta.

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