Cambridge Company: Book Review

Cambridge Company: Book Review

FPJ BureauUpdated: Thursday, May 30, 2019, 10:44 AM IST
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Title: Cambridge Company

Author: Farrukh dhondy

I was living in London when I read an item in the newspaper about a school teacher called Farrukh Dhondy whose book of six short stories about immigrant and English teenagers in East London had created street protests by a political party, I forget which. That intrigued me enough to go out and buy “East End At Your Feet.” I enjoyed the author’s writing style, control of language and subject to want to read this Pune-born Parsi, Dhondy, and look out for his books ever since.

He lives in London and seems to be a prolific writer and I was pleased to read his latest book, “Cambridge Company”. It is obviously about his student days at that University where he read Natural Science at Pembroke College. He spent more time however, writing books, acting and writing plays for the college’s Pembroke Players.

This book, I imagine, is written with nostalgia for those long-gone student days, and to match the subject’s mood, the writing style is simple without multi-syllabic, curlicues that take time off for the reader to look for a dictionary. Pleasantly too, the chapters are short, each almost about a page and a half so that your mind doesn’t wonder.

Not much new to learn in this book about English university life, however, except known facts about racist landladies whose rooms-to-rent are already occupied for coloured applicants; the clothes worn by the locals as different from those fresh-off-the plane, Indians in brown tweed jackets; the class difference between U and non-U English people and their various accents. Oh nothing new, we already knew all that!

It is lightweight reading about Dhondy’s arrival in England and his settling down to University life, to which he was somewhat familiar with reading “Brideshead Revisited”. But if the reader hasn’t read the Evelyn’s Waugh’s classic, this other book is interesting and even at times, amusing.

You read about Dhondy’s room in the college “block” which I think is divided into a “staircase” per section, and a servant, a “bedder” is assigned to each staircase’s rooms. Dhondy, on his first visit abroad (I presume) learned to wash his own clothes (after first messing up the washing machine in the basement); cooking eggs with the pan, and kettle before burning up his new purchases on his room’s stove.

These little vignettes in the aforementioned short chapters make up the reasonably short book (228 pages). In general, the subjects are all light enough to make the entire read welcome while waiting at an airport for a flight or even on the plane on a not-very-long-haul flight.

When I think about it, the book did not give me an idea of student life in Cambridge. Except for the first couple of chapters when Dhondy finds his way around the Quad, the writer takes the reader’s knowledge of Cambridge life.

Then again, I may have misread the book’s title, but here the word “company” meant his Indian friends: Dolly, Darryl, Adil, Mala and John Snow, the Englishman be met first in Bombay. Of course he met Berry his neighbour in the “staircase” who once saved him from a homosexual encounter, and then Enid with whom he had an explicitly written affair. These and other love-making interludes in between theatre and travels to Scilly Islands and hitch-hiking to India make the book a little confusing.

Then again, did I have to know that Mala who later followed him to England, had divorced parents, whose mother married again to a step-father Mala called Tutu, and whose own father was very important in the army, a general or someone terribly important? Did I have to know that the very likeable Darryl belonged to a very wealthy Bombay family who practically owned most of Bandra? Was it important to the book’s narration that Darryl’s cousin was Dom Moraes (who doesn’t appear in the narrative)  and whose father was the editor of the “Times of India”?

These nostalgia items sometimes get a little confusing as the reading jumps from one casual subject to another. One almost gets the feeling this book was written for family and friends who were familiar with other family and friends. We outsiders were let off to find our way around. Rajiv Gandhi was there too, but casually because his was a different crowd and anyway, he failed and was sent down! Ayub Khan’s son also gets a look-in, but heavy drinking parties and big money wasn’t Dhondy’s scene.

Finally, it is a pleasant read, but it is deadly lightweight. I’m glad I read it, but I didn’t learn anything about Cambridge.

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