Book Review | The Remains of the Body by Saikat Majumdar

Published : Jul 10, 2024 11:00 IST - 4 MINS READ Saikat Majumdar is a writer of sexuality. The novel is academic in another sense too for almost all its characters study at fabled schools in Canada and the US: Kaustav, a longstanding PhD candidate in anthropology; his high-school friend from Kolkata and an object of physical and emotional obsession, Avik, from another elite university who now works for a pharmaceutical company; and Sunetra, an accomplished scientist. Finally, Kaustav, the omniscient narrator’s chosen one, is torn between his unconsummated physical passion for Avik’s irresistible masculinity and his undeniable attraction for the “boyish-girlish” Sunetra, who affects the lives of the two men and from whom she seeks fulfilment of her own sexuality. While the academic convictions of the writer may not want us to settle on any one such restrictive identity name, the novel’s pattern of interspersing the heterosexual with the homosexual points towards this much neglected category, which is often ignored even by LGBTQIA+ writers and activists. Bisexuality is the novel’s central drama; it might draw readers who may not otherwise connect with its narrow world of US “grad students” and “postdocs”, the Bengali-speaking diaspora in North America, jaded researchers, and corporate consultants living affluent lives.