Written in wonderfully terse verses, Joe Roberts? pithy novel brings into life an Edward Lear from his fecund imagination
Ningthoujam
She sate upon her Dobie,
She heard the Nimmak hum,
When all at once a cry arose,
?The Cummerbund is come!?
?From The Cummerbund, An Indian Poem by Edward Lear
Bengal, the Cold Weather, 1873: A Dream of Edward Lear in India
Joe Roberts
Tranquebar Press
Rs. 195
Pg 138
Edward Lear docked at Bombay on November 22, 1873. And thus began his tryst with India. Between 1873 and 1875, he travelled across the length and breadth of India to sketch some of his best landscape paintings. India drove Lear ?nearly mad from sheer beauty and wonder of foliage. O new palms!!! O flowers!!! O creatures!! O beasts!! Violent and amazing delight at the wonderful variety of life and dress here? Colours, and costumes, and myriadism of impossible picturesqueness!!!? This endearing 19th-century traveller and ?nonsense poet?, although deeply loved by his friends, was a desperately lonely and melancholy man, who suffered from a crippling condition that has been thought to be a form of epilepsy: his ?demon?, which he tried to exorcise throughout his life.
Capturing almost all of these vicissitudes in Lear?s life is Joe Roberts? Bengal, the Cold Weather, 1873. This is Roberts? first novel and it comes after three travel books. The novel also carries the theme of fascination with the surroundings, as he soaks up the vivid imageries of Bengal in the past and narrates them to the reader. In wonderfully terse verses, this pithy novel brings into life a Lear from Roberts? fecund imagination. In the preface to the novel, he tells the reader that the book is an outcome of a dream; a vision where ?Lear and his servant Giorgio wandered into a black and white Bengali film?. Based in 19th century Bengal, we meet the bhadralok gentleman, Raja Pannalal Chandranath Dey, a great admirer of Lear?s landscape paintings; we also meet Hathi Das Baul, the giant minstrel whose dance shakes the very foundation of the earth. Then there is William Williams of the Williams Hotel, the Welshman who ?smells of mould?.
Interspersed with ancient folklores of Bengal and with lovely descriptions of Taragunje and Calcutta, in which Lear ?finds echoes of Corfu Town?, we get a glimpse of an Englishman?s Bengal. With snippets from his childhood, the novel delicately traces Lear dealing with his epilepsy and his fondness for his sister Ann. Born 20th of 21 children to a London stockbroker, Edward Lear was looked after by his sister Ann, who was 21 years older to him. With Giorgio, his Albanian servant, the sole person privy to his epileptic attacks, Lear keeps his ?shivers? under control; nevertheless he is always jumpy, scared that the ?demon? would ruin everything. The last chapter, however, describes a 61-year-old Lear who gives in to his ?demon? or rather conquers it. For, he realises that ?he is not an important person? none of us is. That?s the beauty of it. We?re figures in a landscape. A small part of the composition?.