“Kaalchakra ke rath mein che tho chakka hai— jungle, nadi, samaaj, history aur kranti. Bas ek chakka ka jagah khaali hai, pichhe ki taraf. Isi mein aadmi ko apna chakka fit karna padta hai."

“The chariot of time has six wheels—one each for forest, river, society, history, and revolution. There’s a spare axle though, towards the rear end. Man must find a way to fit his wheel therein."

These lines from Gautam Choubey’s Chakka Jam summarise the existential tension that gives this novel its raw energy: an individual’s frantic pursuit to find a place in the relentless march of time and history. Devanand, the wistful protagonist of Choubey’s dazzling debut, is often reminded that his sole purpose is to ‘survive’ life by matching the ferocious pace at which the world around him hurtles forward. Like Hugo Cabret in Martin Scorsese Hugo (2011), he, too, believes the world is one seamless machine he must fit into. However, unlike Hugo’s highway, the narrow lanes of Chakka Jaam lay scattered with unaccounted, rejected parts, undermining the one-piece efficiency of the great machine. As the story unfolds across a sprawling yet intimate storyscape—that stretches from colonial Rangoon to JP’s Bihar, from village Ramlila to Bombay cinema, and from cold truth to magical realism—Devanand appears to identify more closely with the spares than with the masterplan itself.

At its core, Chakka Jam is a love story of Devanand Dubey and his reasonably demanding wife, Madhavi. It is an intimate account of a disjointed family, with loved ones missing, forgotten, and spurned. Dev is quintessentially a Bihari everyman, who has chosen to name himself after superstar Devanand, and whose life progresses in the shadows of history and destiny. Born on January 30, 1948, the day Mahatma Gandhi was assassinated, he is teased as carrying ‘Gandhi Ji ka Shrap, a symbolic curse that haunts his ‘opulent’ hope of watching a Devanand film in technicolour. He treads carefully, plans meticulously, and tries often enough, only to find his hopes run over by the marauding chariot of time.

“Uski abhilashayein, uska prem, uske........

© News18