"Friend of My Youth," by Amit Chaudhuri

I am often drawn to novels about India, partly because they remind me of my childhood there. Amit Chaudhuri’s “Friend of My Youth” (New York Review Books, 2017) is a novel set in Bombay (now Mumbai, but Chaudhuri mostly continues to call it Bombay, as he remembers it from his youth there). In an apparently quite autobiographical novel, the author tells of his main character’s two visits to Bombay in his fifties. The character (and narrator) grew up in Bombay but escaped it as soon as he could, studying in England and eventually moving to Calcutta. His former infrequent visits to Bombay were to see family and a close friend, Ramu. The first visit is scheduled as part of a book tour. Ramu, the friend of his youth of the title, has always lived in Bombay, and has had lifelong struggles with substance abuse, cycling in and out of treatment facilities; fortunately for him, his family money allows this. On the narrator’s first visit, he is not able to see Ramu, because he is in a rehab facility, but on a later visit, the narrator and Ramu see each other and spend time together. They are always immediately comfortable with each other, and share a preoccupation with the city of Bombay. The narrator, both alone and with Ramu, is nostalgic about the city, and each time he returns, he, sometimes with Ramu and sometimes alone, wanders Bombay, remembering areas, buildings, and experiences. He notes which areas are now gentrified, which buildings survive and which have changed. Much of this slim novel consists of the main character's musings on the city and on what stays the same and what changes. One of the major focuses of the visits and the novel is “the Taj,” the iconic hotel that has always been there, and that has recovered from the disastrous attack on it some years before. (Side note: on my own visit to India many years ago, about ten years after I had returned from living in South India as a child, but long before the attack, my trip included a visit to Bombay, where I treated myself to a stay at this landmark, unforgettable hotel.) In a visit toward the end of the novel (the visit during which the main character sees Ramu), the narrator and his family splurge and stay in the hotel, marveling at its complex structure, its history, and its survival of the attack. A reader could easily feel that not a lot “happens” in this novel, but the theme of connections to, and sometimes alienation from, the places of our pasts is a compelling one, one that many of us can relate to. The narrator’s walks through the city, meandering as they are, are full of fascinating observations. Chaudhuri’s writing is evocative. This novel is perhaps not for everyone, because of its slow pace; however, for anyone interested in the passing of time, the changes we experience in our own lives and in the places we care about, this is a meditation that might very well appeal, as it did to me.