going to the wharf to buy fish in the morning, eating at Shantas and Germans and other places. and talks about food, and getting that food. Bhattacharya captures all the local music. and I would love to know how were his interactions with the Guyana middle classes he names in his Acknowledgements. The targets of the absurd are not middle class, except when the one or two who are extremely racial. So there is a lot of wonderful humour, and Bhattacharya also pokes fun at himself as well as part of the absurdity. and cries when he leaves Guyana at the end of the book.Īs always with many travel writers, there is a focus on what might seem absurd, or what we learn to be absurd. he come to teach the girls sex postures). He records the comments made about him (gooroo. Rahul Bhattacharya upturns this stereotype we used to have of the India coolie. The lens through which Guyanese were viewed was one of those 'quaint' or 'absurd' ones and every one's actions seemed judged next to some kind of civilised behaviour. He encouraged another friend to come whose writing about Guyana was extremely powerful, and whose reflective piece GuyanaRama is locked in a Transitions edition. This opened me up to this other non-bollywood, kind of Indian person who had powerful use of English and their other languages.

In 2001, I got a strange email from a guy who wanted to come to Guyana to get away from India and to work with me (he thought I was some very big activist person). The India coolie who not like the other India coolies Rahul Bhattacharya came to Guyana for a year and limed with various people and created this book which we not sure if is true or not, if it is based on real people or made up people. There are a lot of thoughts running through my head after reading it. The bookclub is doing Sly Company so I took it.

The sly company of those who care