Solo by Rana Dasgupta

“Soine - the unique sensuality or holding an infant. Not erotic, but indecent, nevertheless, in it’s fervor.”

Rana Dasgupta is a hidden gem. He has the art of an ancient storyteller, and the surreal depth of a day dreamer. There are parts of books, when you feel you are reading a Murakami or a Kundera. Safe to say the book is strongly recommended and Rana is going to be one of my favorite authors. Strangely I found his book in the Copenhagen library even with its limited English fiction it has a some good ones.  An india origin author who writes nothing close to India, but about a completely new world of - Bulgaria, Georgia, Balkans and Europe. “We are so lucky in Bulgaria,’ she said. ‘We have the best yogurt and the best countryside.”

It’s a wonderful book - a solo account of an introvert man in love with chemistry and day dreams. The book is divided in two parts, his own life and it’s chemistry, with the chapter names like magnesium, carbon, etc like stages of life. “He and I had a debate about chemistry. I said it science of life, and he said it brought only death. Now I see that our views were simply two halves of the same thing.”

His love for chemistry and science runs deep visualising him in real and dreams with Einstein. He shares his brief interactions with Einstein and quotes him - “The highest form of musicality in the sphere of thought.”

The second part of the book is named after sea mammals - like beluga, dugong, manatee, ichthyosaur. A strange connection, like the floating fish visuals on a standby computer screen. And then there is underlying theme of music - 

“music is the reason to be young.”

“The beauty of music, whatever happens, no one can take that away from you.”

“It struck him that music and chemistry have this thing in common: that an infinite range of expression can be generated from a finite number of elements.”

Ulrich has lived over a hundred years and his memories are a potpourri of history, chemistry, literature, music, political science and floating between fiction and day dreams. His quirky thoughts were like poetry which need to be saved as pearls of wisdom: 

• Learned it was possible to be angry with people one did not know
• For wearing of blue is offended to yezidi people, and how marvellous that there can be a prohibition on a color
• When they brought in communism it was for people, so they killed the people. Now they have brought in capitalism, which is for the right, so they only kill the rich. This time you and I have nothing to worry about. 
• It was a light- headed laughter, like falling through time. 
• Twice - they tied the tails of two dogs together, and were watching them for their entertainment. 
• Irakli closes his eyes to a crack, he sees only the curved horizon of his own cheeks
• Sometimes this thing descends on me. It’s not like a curtain or a missed. It’s like a bridge falling, or a building falling, out a building, pinning me down. The only way to escape is to give in. 
• The poet shared a special relationship with his sister- he says - looking for a place to lie down in secret, we crawled beneath a table and discovered, on its underside, the scrawls we had made together as children.
• All along she was just a third world girl. Give them an inch, they take a mile. 
• A woman is supposed to love how beautiful and sexy she is. In this country you don’t know anything about love. You import Asian women to love the men, and Mexican women go love the children. So how could you know. 

I recently traveled to Bulgaria, but the way a book takes you there - it’s like living there with the locals sharing a part of their life. The world caught between the Europe and Asia, Turkish Middle East history and Russian socialist hangover, balkans and the ex- ussr, while still maintaining its unique identity. There are churches blown up over time, celebrations with rakia, pop music of 80s, and old records. There are common people living parallel lives as historical events happen around impacting them big and small. From the world wars, German revolution, chemical creation of plastic, Chernobyl nuclear explosion, defectors camp, and government vendetta. Our lives are not simple, they are complex happenings over a period of time. Ulrich, the protagonist with his ordinary life yet extra ordinary day dreams, touches chords of your heart, making a place in your thoughts and day dreams. You walk into past along with him witnessing the happenings like a wall flower. 

Probably he survived to tell his tale for the same reasons. “His resolve to be more circumspect in his attachments, and to surrender them when necessary. Later on, when he saw what happened to people who refused to give up their convictions, he wondered if this is why he survived so long.”

The story jumps from past narration to a melancholy dedication to a life lived long and lonely - “I don’t know what happens to us. It’s difficult to sustain our passions through life, and we become mournful for what we’ve given up.”

But what are we if not for our dreams, especially the day ones -“He is surprised at the quantity of time he spent in daydreams. His private fictions have sustained him from one far to the next, even as the world has become nonsense. It never occurred to him to consider greatest portion of his spirits might have been poured into this creation. But it is not a despairing conclusion. His day dreams were a life’s endeavour of sorts, and now, when everything else is cast off, they are still at hand.”