HYDERABAD: TThe picture of India in several books written by Europeans is never complete without that cliched mention of snake charmers and mahouts decking up elephants. Back home we laugh with such mentions and wonder when did we last see a snake emerging from the basket and dancing to the tunes of a been. And this is exactly what journalist-turned-author Nidhi Dugar Kundalia explores in her book ‘The Lost Generation’.
The book brings alive the portraiture of dying professions in the country or what it once was or is reminisced with. She does it with a skillful mastery taking the readers to the place where the practitioners still cherish, polishing a ghost shine that evades with each passing day. The reader moves with her profiles but only grasps them like dry, veined, netted leaves that once were. And the burden of cultural exhaustion is felt immediately.
The author has divided the book into 11 chapters that take the reader on detailed trips to the lives of bhishtis of Calcutta carrying the burden of ‘heaven’s mercy’ on their backs in goatskin bags, scribes of Delhi to ittarwallahs of Hyderabad distilling floral scents in huge cauldrons. Being a journalist, the author has an eye to dig deep into intricate life details of the people she features in the book. She uncovers the historical layers, brings into open the stale air surrounding these practitioners and shakes the thin curtains that might blow any day and push them into complete extinction.
She makes her work as a chronicler clearer when she talks about bhishtis of Calcutta, their survival in a giant metropolis, the once-in-a-blue-moon summons in the serpentine lanes and by-lanes of Central Calcutta, Burra Bazaar and Bow Barracks. Nidhi tells how they are almost the last generation of the bhishtis whose profession has almost become extinct thanks to electric pumps and bottled water. Nidhi describes to the readers his wounds in a surreal tone. She takes almost an Orhan Pamuk style recounting ‘red rain’ as seen through the bhishti’s eyes.
She doesn’t just take the reader inside the lives of the people featured, she makes you see what otherwise goes unnoticed and is of much significance. For example, petrichor–the scent of rain mingling with the earth–is captured by ittarwallahs in a tiny glass bottle better known as khaki or mitti attar. Who could have ever thought of that but the ittar wallahs. She roams with him in the Charminar area, declaring through the words of the ittarwallah, both the importance and non-importance of his profession.
But his devotion to his profession is the ultimate as he says: “If not money, my ittar earns me respect.” It makes the reader wonder what is significant and what’s not. The contrast between what’s gone and what’s coming releases the tension these people are dealing with. And Nidhi has succeeded in capturing the same. A reader can unearth a lot about what India is losing and even after finishing the book the same stays with him/her like a ghost tale.