Tradition vs. Modernity: A Study of Amit Chaudhuri’s A New World

Abstract

Regional novel is a work of fiction which deals with certain physical characteristics, such as people, life, customs, habits, manners, tradition, and language of a particular region. Regionalism does not signify the factual reporting or photographic reproduction. The regional artists focus on the features of a selected locality or region, there writers portray the typical habits of particular areas. The idea of local colour has been literally well articulated in the fiction of Jack London, William Faulkner, Thomas Hardy, Harriet Beecher Stowe, etc. As Hardy, the great Victorian novelist, keeps the spirit of Wessex alive before our mind in his novels, Narayan’s Malgudi, and William Faulkner’s Yoknapatawpha, capture the inimitable life of their region. In the same way Amit Chaudhuri has achieved greatness by writing about his region, Calcutta in his own way. Calcutta, is the literary home of Indian writing and Chaudhuri as a novelist, essayist and musician finds a sense of amity and portrays the real picture of his region. In the world of Indian fiction in English, Calcutta is the familiar pasture and is aptly called the cultural capital of India. Calcutta provides the setting for almost all of Chaudhuri’s novels. In most of his novels, the region Calcutta is the main thematic content. Chaudhuri writes about Calcutta as a complete insider and shares the way of life and essential mores. The place becomes the backdrop for the customs, beliefs and ethical codes. It expresses the authors’ point of view. Thus, the place and people being the core of Calcutta his region presents a vision of India in Miniature. This is very well presented through his novels. The main objective of this paper is an attempt to streak the cultural sensibility about tradition, rituals, family, class and identities in the novel of Amit Chaudhuri.