East-West (Purbo-Paschim) Part II by Sunil Gangopadhyay

Outside a plush hotel in New York, an Indian youth is seen waiting for an appointment. He is desperately in need of a job. He is Atin, the young boy of Part One who gets mixed up in politics, and is obliged to leave the country, much against his will. He is still a revolutionary at heart, he hates his exile in America.

The large canvas of this novel covers three continents, but more particularly the dramatic events following the partition of India, the political unrest in West Bengal, the plight of the refugees and the birth of a new nation, Bangladesh. The social and political reality instead of remaining a backdrop takes on centre stage where simultaneously individual lives unfold, each with it's own account of love, hate, passion and betrayal. The author takes a dispassionate look at the Naxal revolutionaries, exposing their vulnerability, the colossal tragedy of so many promising lives coming to a pointless end. On the other side, in the other Bengal, events move to an inexorable climax, while the fictional characters flit across the stage, the shadow of actual historical figures loom large — Ayub Khan, Yahya Khan, General Niazi and the day by day account of how the mighty Pakistan Army, one of the best in the world was doomed to a most humiliating defeat.

This novel of epic proportions is an unique experiment in blending fiction with facts, an attempt to truthfully capture a swiftly moving course of events, a compelling novel difficult to put down. This novel had won the prestigious Ananda Puraskar in 1989.

For Bengali original, see here: 1 + 2.

East-West (Purbo-Paschim) Part I by Sunil Gangopadhyay

                East-West is a Bengali novel set against the backdrop of the biggest exodus in human history—the 1947 partition of India. That a newly born country could exist as two geographically separated units was also an unheard of event. But the inevitable had to happen. Culturally and linguistically dissimilar, East and West Pakistan had to forge their different destinies.

             This novel is a record of those tumultuous times in East Pakistan as well as in Indian Bengal. But their problems were vastly different. The story, revolving around two college friends, both Bengali though one Hindu and the other Muslim soon takes into its expanding orbit other characters, families, issues. The two friends drift apart, separated by the political division, then each is caught up in his own problem. There is no sentimental reunion, in fact the novel precariously poised, steers clear of sentimentality. There is the unspoken and inescapable bitter conclusion— perhaps the twain can never meet. Under the deceptively simple surface are hidden deeper and more complex human issues. East and west were initially a demarcation on the map but soon west recedes further as younger people from the east migrate to the US and the UK leaving the aging parents at home. Sunrise and sunset are two other symbols spun into the fabric of the novel, pointing to the evolution of human life, the movement from birth to death. Thus from a partition novel set at a particular place and time, it rises to the level of the universal, encompassing the entire gamut of human emotions and cultural encounters.

             

Bengali original: Download here: 1 + 2.