The Middleman: Mani Sankar Mukherji

Image Credit: Penguin Books India

Wow its already the first day of the last month of the second last year of this decade. I wonder how many books I have read this year. I have no idea. From next year, beginning with January, I am going to keep a count and I have kept a loose goal of around 50 to 60 books. I think for someone like me who lives and breathes books it is not a very stressful proposition. Hmm…

To get to my review, I finished “The Middleman” by Mani Sankar Mukherji, one of India’s most famous Bengali writers. Surprisingly, I had not heard of him until I chanced upon the The Middleman, which tells the story of Somnath Banerjee and his struggles to find a job. Now, that is a very reductionistic version of the story.

Somnath’s struggles take place in 1970s Calcutta when a job and a marriage defined men and women respectively. Not that much has changed today but then it was a matter of life and death. Both of Somnath’s elder brothers are the pictures of perfectionism – well-educated, highly placed and married. In short, they are “settled.” But a year of searching has not yielded any result for poor Somnath and his friend Sukumar and millions of other youngsters in red-tape ridden Calcutta. “What’s my fault? The only thing I haven’t been able to do is to get a job,” laments Somnath when frustration hits its peak. Driven by societal biases and pressure, Somnath tries his hand at business and that is when he truly gets entangled in the web of corruption.

Sankar unfolds a tunnel of deception and pretenses that throws light on the sleazy side of the city. For Somnath to be successful in any manner he needs to bribe, cut corners and smooth talk his way around authority. Being innocent to the ways of the world he gets sucked in deeper as his desperation to succeed and land a job mounts. He realizes with bitter consequences that the greed for money has no limits.

The portrait of Sukumar is also powerful. He is the perfect example of how society can drive a person to madness because he does not fit in. Sankar sketches portraits of men and women within the frames of an opinionated society overflowing with proclivities. Somnath undergoes a moment of emasculation when his father attempts to marry him off to a girl who has a, “slight defect in her left hand,” but is considered a good match for a boy like him who is unemployed. Of course he can take over the girl’s father’s business so he gets to kill two birds with one stone. But this incident is extremely humiliating for Somnath because marriage is the first priority for girls in this society and a man without a job is considered as burdensome as a girl who is unmarried. “Fortunately I have no sons, so I need not worry about jobs anymore,” says Dwaipayan’s friend, Sudhanya, when the former expresses concern over his son Somnath.

I discovered that Sankar had a more internationally acclaimed novel named “Chowringhee.” I had heard of the movie but didn’t know there was a book. The Middleman, known in Bengali as Jana Aranya has also been made into a film by the renowned filmmaker Satyajit Ray. This book really had some tense moments, some poignant ones, a few scenes that movingly highlighted Somnath’s naiveté and some brilliant passages especially in the last 70 or so pages that etched the dark, rotten, uncompromising yet extremely pliable and lascivious side of the city. And Sankar's epilogue in the end, which reveals that many of the incidents were based on experiences that he was a witness to or undergone himself, makes the book more fascinating.

Verdict: Wonderful read that gives insight into the workings of a society and its people

Rating: 3.8/5