FAMILY SAGA
Sara Rai’s memoir, Raw Umber, is as much about her ‘extraordinary family’ of litterateurs as about the changing contours of 1960s’ Allahabad
In these remembrances of her “extraordinary family” of writers, artists and others with a creative bent, Sara Rai evokes a 1960s haze of Civil Lines bungalows in Allahabad. From there, she meanders through the history of her grandfather, Premchand, and her father, an artist who ran the family publishing house. A literary and acerbic grandmother, bed-ridden aunts, and other characters appear in an often uneven tour of Rai’s richly branched and multi-coloured lineage in Raw Umber: A Memoir.
Benares also frequently features in her essays, as she travels to the village in which Premchand was born, in a now-crumbling house, near a now-dry pond, to see a commemorative bust of the writer that does not resemble what she remembers. Privilege and pedigree attempt to put a faint sheen on even dull substance. In Rai’s recollections of her childhood home, every piece of china is itemised, and the minutiae of their lives are faithfully recreated, down to their Player’s cigarettes and Ambassador whisky. Such a string of names may supply jolts of nostalgia to readers who are already part of the writer’s milieu, but it fails to bring light to another kind of reader. The kind who may feel a sneaking satisfaction that these bungalows stood within suffering distance of a rubbish-choked nullah.
But those are the hazards of a memoir. A life that seems coherent and meaningful to the one who lives it cannot be explained thread by thread to someone else. The fabric of that life does not lie flat, but flaps in the wind of an unreliable recollection, patchy with fleeting shadows and sunlight. And when the purpose is documentary, the result may not be entertaining. The essays in this book were written at different times, which adds to our mild confusion. To be fair, Rai alerts us at the outset to the memoirist’s vagueness about what happened and what did not happen in these houses. What persists, she writes, are the sensory impressions received at that time.
Her honesty stretches to her childhood diaries, in which, she acknowledges, she made herself out to be more dramatically sad than she really was. Even in that private world, she does not escape the self-consciousness of being the progeny of litterateurs.
“Old Blood” is one of the chapters that supplies the immediacy and power a reader looks for. It is an essay on death, beginning with the deaths of Rai’s mother and aunt within hours of one another. Even darker than that unforeseen death is the methodical, ritual erasure of the loved one, all photos locked away so as to not cause suffering. The book is filled out with four short stories by writers of this extraordinary family, ending with Premchand’s classic short story, Ramlila.
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In Sara Rai’s recollections of her childhood home, every piece of china is itemised, and the minutiae of their lives are faithfully recreated