Railways, Revolution And Rustic Charm

Gautam Choubey, who spent his early years in a railway colony in Jharkhand, uses tales from the lived experiences of the ‘railway people,’ matches them beat by beat with facts, and peppers them with telling pop culture references to spin a narrative that is pacy, immersive, and refreshingly new for readers of Hindi literature. While the title is a ‘striking’ giveaway of what a reader can expect, the story of Devanand Dubey—a diffident casual worker in the Indian Railway and a movie buff—takes unexpected turns, traversing locations from Rangoon (modern-day Myanmar) to various towns and cities in the then-Bihar and Bengal (both fictional and actual ones); from the Battle of Buxar to the legend of the flying sanyasi.

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The Railways and a Revolution

The Indian Railways is a strong, standalone character in this novel, like in the short stories of Devendra Ahuja and Martin John. The story chugs along on its tracks, sometimes harking back to the era when British Sahibs ruled the roost, but mostly grappling with its post-colonial conundrums. There is meticulous attention to detail in chronicling significant past events, including the baffling trajectory of the 1974 Railway Strike, and the ones that preceded it.

The author paints a layered picture of the strike, its rank and file, its dissenters, and through them, of a country struggling to make sense of its identity and purpose. The role of industrialisation in post-independence India and the subsequent middle-class aspiration for a salaried life with job security highlight the social dynamics. At the same time, through characters from different faiths, castes, and regions in India, who coexist happily in the railway colony, Choubey showcases the lower-middle class’s collective contribution to building and reshaping India, brick by brick, one strike at a time.

Women Heroes in a Man’s World

Devanand Dubey comes across as a simpleton, an obedient son of a disciplinarian, working hard to make ends meet with his meagre income and hoping to live happily ever after with his free-spirited, newlywed Madhavi, who by contrast, is no ordinary girl next door. Unafraid to speak her mind, she often comes barrelling at her husband, seeks an explanation for every inaction, filial or political, and later, emerges as the local leader of the JP movement, organising anti-hoarding raids and sheltering runaway student leaders. While the couple’s banter adds an endearing charm to the story arc, it also shines a timely light on the unknown foot soldiers of India’s social movement and their sometimes strained relationships with the central leadership.

Choubey’s feminist gaze in the characterisation of Madhavi is commendable. He creates an unapologetic and outspoken woman whose candour is a rarity in literature. Using her as an access point, the author explores the lesser-talked-about role of women like her who held fort both at home and on the front during one of the most turbulent phases in Indian history.

He expands on this theme with a few other female characters such as Madhavi’s mother, who once dreamt of eloping with Raj Kapoor like Nargis did in Chori-Chori, but also played a role in the 1942 Quit India Movement. Or Miss Debby, Devanand’s cousin with a secret double life, who would headline Railways’ protest meetings, and move clandestinely in anti-establishment circles, mobilising peasants and students.

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Many Lenses, Many Voices

The author lends a multi-linguistic texture—English, Hindi, Bangla, Urdu, and Bhojpuri—to the storytelling set in his home state, utilising the vocabulary, grammar, and idioms of Bihari Hindi to his advantage. The use of both literary and colloquial language reflects Choubey’s linguistic fluency, which he uses as a tool to make an underlying commentary on the multilingual voices of the marginalised, who speak many tongues but stand united in their attempt to mainstream their concerns before the government. 

The non-linear structure gives ample space for other characters to take centre stage here and there. It is as much a story of Devanand and Madhvi as it is of Dev’s colleague Chatterjee Babu, his missing elder brother Harish, his friend Nepal, who dreams of being a novelist, and of the Anglo-Indian community that finds itself dangerously pushed to the margins. Furthermore, the author is not the only narrator in the story; raconteurs like Dev’s father Ramdarashan, the World War veteran Sipahi Baba, and the cynical Satya Rao revel in the magical and the supernatural, sometimes offering philosophical critique of conventional storytelling. The author uses the fluidity of time to weave a tight storyline and unfold it in bursts. Wars with Pakistan and China, and the havoc they wreak on ordinary people’s lives, make the novel contemporary in its concerns. Likewise, the references to radio and newspapers, which once formed the bedrock of truth in public discourse, remind you painfully of the credibility the media once enjoyed.

The novel, in all its glory, re-evaluates the power and its clash with dissent as it matter-of-factly revisits the turning point in the labour rights movement in the country and introduces its readers to the human side of this historic strike, which lasted from May 8 to 27, 1974. The labour movement and systemic oppression, that Chakka Jaam explores in great detail, changed the course of national politics in the Emergency that followed in the subsequent years. It can be safely marked as one of the most authoritative accounts of this event, which brings focus to working-class struggles, labour politics, and state suppression.

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Leaving a Literary Mark

Choubey’s debut novel is a valuable contribution to contemporary Hindi political fiction and will be long remembered for its literary merit. Rooted in social realism, its astute social commentary, sharp portrayal of the clash of hope and despair, and its politics of remembering are likely to invite comparisons with Srilal Shukla’s seminal Hindi novel, Raag Darbaari and Phanishwar Nath Renu’s Maila Anchal. Both novels offer a searing critique of the systemic failures within Indian society, with Chakka Jaam forging its distinct identity as the working-class cousin of Raag Darbaari. While Raag Darbaari belongs to the literary lineage of post-independence disillusionment and captures it through a satirical lens, Chakka Jaam picks up the baton to explore the human cost of resistance and revolution through the emotional landscape of its charajharkhancters in pre-Emergency India with an earnest, reflective, and intimate narrative. It’s the novelist’s tribute to those who led from the podiums and those who fought from the picket lines, unknowingly caught in the churn of history.

Chakka Jaam is a tender, timely, and a timeless tale well told—a love letter to the collective strength of the urban working class, which witnessed the fragility and futility of protests, saw their rise and subsequent fall, and went on to remember, reconstruct, and relive the industrial unrest, one story at a time.  

(Shillpi A. Singh is a freelance journalist and translator, specialising in art, environmental issues and cinema)