Fat fowling - The Sly company of people who care

The bookclub is doing Sly Company so I took it... and it was a fascinating read. There are a lot of thoughts running through my head after reading it. Rahul Bhattacharya came to Guyana for a year and limed with various people and created this book which we not sure if is true or not, if it is based on real people or made up people.

The India coolie who not like the other India coolies
In 2001, I got a strange email from a guy who wanted to come to Guyana to get away from India and to work with me (he thought I was some very big activist person). This opened me up to this other non-bollywood, kind of Indian person who had powerful use of English and their other languages. He encouraged another friend to come whose writing about Guyana was extremely powerful, and whose reflective piece GuyanaRama is locked in a Transitions edition. The lens through which Guyanese were viewed was one of those 'quaint' or 'absurd' ones and every one's actions seemed judged next to some kind of civilised behaviour. Rahul Bhattacharya upturns this stereotype we used to have of the India coolie.. he learns and uses creolese beautifully. He records the comments made about him (gooroo.. he come to teach the girls sex postures).. and cries when he leaves Guyana at the end of the book.


The people and the characters..
As always with many travel writers, there is a focus on what might seem absurd, or what we learn to be absurd. So there is a lot of wonderful humour, and Bhattacharya also pokes fun at himself as well as part of the absurdity. The targets of the absurd are not middle class, except when the one or two who are extremely racial.. and I would love to know how were his  interactions with the Guyana middle classes he names in his Acknowledgements . Bhattacharya captures all the local music.. including old Indian music.. and talks about food , and getting that food.. going to the wharf to buy fish in the morning, eating at Shantas and Germans and other places. Fat fowling is one of the phrases he learns.

Guyana - history
Bhattacharya captures all views on Guyana's history - including Roger Khan and others, and in his frustration at how the East Indians look to India, he did, as my friend did, wonder why the East Indians were not happy that they left the miserable India that these 21st century refugees were running from.

Guyana - land
The descriptions of the land.. and Bhattacharya manages to travel around.. are as many of us know them. "It was only the first sighting of the savannah, hours later, that aroused me to the special ecstasy of a journey. So f... g sudden'.. when sheer as cliff the forest ended and there was savannah.."  and then on seeing Kaieteur ".. the most hypnotic thing. Water fell!... ". He is obsessed with the heat and  humidity.. a lot of us probably do not take it on. he sleeps in the National Library..and records the comments made in pencil in the books. I did not get the part where he got the name for his book.

Absurd vs Noble - our story
I do not expect any travel writer or foreign writer to ever write about Guyanese as perhaps noble in their survival.. I yearn for a day that Guyana could have a Danticat or an Adichie. Bhattacharya though.. notes about the girl he took with him on his trip to Venezuela "..She was prepared to tackle the world because the world to her was not absurd. To think the world absurd is a privilege. Those who do so consider themselves enlightened. In fact, it only means their struggles are shallow. Sooner or later, the real world will rain down up on them. That, or we shall go slowly mad, or seek recourse in meditation, narcotics or writing"

The book is a great read.