‘The Dead Fish’: In Hindi writer Rajkamal Choudhary’s novel, desire festers in a dark city

What does desire smell like? For the poets of Kolkata, it may once have smelled of bela flowers, devotion or a monsoon-soaked afternoon. But for those who have slipped past the edge of yearning, the smell suffocates. Rajkamal Choudhary’s Machhli Mari Hui – now resurrected as The Dead Fish through Mahua Sen’s translation – strips the romanticism of both the city and the body, offering a version of desire that has long festered and is rank with decay. The Dead Fish follows its protagonist, Nirmal Padmavat, through his failures and futile attempts at giving and receiving love, foregrounded against a dark Kolkata that has no tenderness to offer. Nirmal isn’t the sole dark figure against a glittering city, but emblematic of the cityscape populated by figures that are as alone, pained and yet hoping for tenderness. As he moves from sullen beds to stagnant corporate offices, the reader, too, suffocates.

Yet, this suffocation is much more than an artistic choice. The Kolkata of the novel has no ambling trams, no sepia-tinged yellow taxis, no poetry or literature. But this is the Kolkata that remains once Choudhary tears away at the plush layers of nostalgia. The skeleton of the city is revealed: of profit, capital and bodies reduced to economic...

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