Insomniac

IndianPoetry:Part2 The Writers Amit Chaudhuri On constantly mishearing "rioting" as "writing" ontheBBC There hasbeenwriting for tendaysnow unabated. Peopleareanxious, fedup. There iswriting inParis, indisaffected suburbs, butalsoinsmalltowns, andoldoneslikeLyon. Thewriters havebeenburning cars;they've thrown homemade Molotov cocktails atpolicemen. Contrary toinitial reports, thewriters belong toseveral communities: Algerian andCaribbean, certainly, butalsoRomanian, Polish, andevenFrench. Someareincredibly young: theyoungest isthirteen. Theystandedgily onstreet-corners, hardly looking ateachother. Long-standing neglect andanabsence ofbothauthority andemployment haveledtowhatarenowtennights ofwriting. Insomniac Amit Chaudhuri There isthat crack oflight which becomes clearer after a fewmoments. Though youshutyoureyes that clarity neither develops norchanges. Thenyoumoveinandout with your breathing. And,notsleep, buta wholeuniverse comestoyou, newsprint, anunfair observation, thetwilight ofcharacters. Until eventhat fades andyouareleft withthespacesitoccupied, thefalse, heavycalmofwaiting, and,that crack oflight, nowbecome mortal, become vulnerable, announces toyouthesafety andcomfort ofwhatistocome. Amit Chaudhuriwas born inKolkata in1962andgrew up inMumbai. Hisfiction, criticism andpoetry have appearedintheLondon ReviewofBooks,Times Literary Supplement,Observer, Spectator,Granta,New Republic,and New Yorker. Chaudhuri isthewinner of several international and national awardsfor hisfive novels, themostrecent being TheImmortals (2009).He is theeditor ofthePicador Book ofModern Indian Literature; istheauthor ofa shortstory collection, a bookof criticism, a bookofessays, andtwopoetry collections; andisa trained andcritically acclaimedsinger inthe Hindustani classical tradition. November- December 2010 i 41

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