Freedom Song

Amit Chaudhuri

• Publisher: Faber & Faber
• Year: 2023
• eBook ISBN: 9780571361540
• Topic: Literature
• Subtopic: Literature General
• Index: Literature

Khuku, a housewife, is irritated with the Muslims because their call to prayer wakes her up early every morning; her husband, a retired businessman, has been hired to cure a 'sick' sweet factory that doesn't particularly want to be cured. Across town, Khuku's brother worries about his son's affiliations with the Communist Party, but only because they may affect his ever-so-gradually coalescing marriage prospects.

Freedom Song is a work of fiction that plays with big ideas while evoking the smallest aspects of everyday life with acute tenderness and extraordinary beauty.

Table of contents

• Landing Page
• Title Page
• Contents
• It was a solitary voice
• Afternoon saw Khuku
• ‘Really? Are you sure?’
• When afternoon came to Vidyasagar Road
• ‘How’s the pain?’
• The house, if it could be called such
• Khuku and Mini sat side by side
• In the afternoon, Bhaskar reclined on the bed
• Twice a week, they’d go to a nursing home
• Now and then, their voices could be heard
• Nando had spent most of his life in Calcutta
• Half in her sleep, Bhaskar’s mother
• Sometimes when Bhaskar’s mother heard them
• ‘Borda doesn’t live far from here
• Golf Green. A maze of houses
• When they were going back down Southern Avenue
• Each day the azaan rose in the morning
• At half-past ten, a lemon-coloured Ambassador
• School had begun again
• Often, when Mini sat late
• After Vidyasagar Road had curved right
• They woke, slept, talked
• Early in the afternoon on a Tuesday
• Much would change in the next few months
• Although he knew now that they wouldn’t
• Each time a state- or government-supported company
• Women’s memories of their husbands’ working life
• And then there were only two days left
• The sound of the radio came from outside
• Beena had gone to see the play
• ‘What will it be today, Didi?’
• When she finished the song
• It was not many days after the performance
• And Bhaskar, after a gap of five days
• When Bhola came back to India
• During the first two years of his married life
• And they had social obligations
• ‘I saw you devour those sweets,’
• When Mini returned home
• The bombs exploded in Bombay
• There, near Mini’s house
• Towards the end of March
• A decision just had to be made
• They began writing names
• When Mini woke up
• There was a by-lane off Central Avenue
• And now Bhaskar wore his white bridegroom’s topor
• They were in the large room
• Where should I put these?’
• ‘Are those your parents, ma?’
• She knew very little about the company
• They had still not been on their ‘honeymoon’
• CRPF soldiers; three months ago
• They—Bhaskar and the wife he hardly knew
• And Khuku lay on her bed
• Then she remembered her friend’s arthritis
• About the Author
• Further praise for Freedom Song
• By the Same Author
• Copyright