Stories have always had a very strong relation with me.
Books have been my best companions and since childhood, growing up in a Bengali
household, short stories have dominated my love and longing. I still remember
the magazine “Desh”, which we used to subscribe. My mother and my aunt would be
busy following up the sequence of the novels (I think those were the days of
Pratham Alo and I was in school, in
primary classes), while I used to look forward to short stories. The novelty of
idea, the fast pace and the lingering aftertaste, which baba (my father) used
to quote as “” Shesh Hoiao Hoilo na Shesh”.. always stayed with me. The short
stories written by the English writers came to me later and then too I read O
henry and Oscar Wilde. Contemporary English authors like Jack London and even
Fitzgerald, I read much later. But Bangla short stories and thereby the authors
seemed too lucrative and too loving a territory for me. We used to subscribe to
Anandomela as well, but the short stories in Desh and in the Puja Barshikis
were something I coveted for always. And
soon, Subodh Ghosh (his 3 volume short stories I still carry along with
shifting cities), Tarashankar, Bibhutibhushan and my all-time favorite Manik
Bandopadhyay came along. Travelling in
different cities, settled somewhere where access to Bangla books are less, and
of course having circle of friends from all over the country, having a spouse
who doesn’t read Bengali (I am married to a Kashmiri), made me love these
stories even more as anecdotes, I mentioned to these friends. And often
struggle to find translations. How would I ever be able to explain the
phenomenon called Parashuram to anyone, who is not oriented to the warp and
weft of the language, its wry humor?
These days, I am delighted to see so much of translation
works happening and thanks to Arunava Sinha. Half of the books by Bengali
authors that I have gifted to my non-bangla reading friends have been his
translations. Hence needless to say, the moment I saw this book published, with
an interesting title- The Greatest Bengali Stories Ever Told,
I downloaded the Kindle version and now that I am done, I want to speak of few
of the stories which have moved me completely. Not that I haven’t read them
earlier. Narendranath Mitra’s Ras I had read and so did Ashapurna Devi’s story,
still in this collection few stories just stand out for me, with multiple
possibilities..
They are:
·
Einstein and Indubala (Bibhutibhushan
Bandopadhyay)
·
Thunder and Lightning (Ashapurna Devi)
·
Ras (Narendranath Mitra)
·
News of Murder (Moti Nandy)
·
India (Ramapada Choudhury)
Of all these
stories, the first fours almost weave and complement each other, as I try to
look at them from the perspective of Personal is Political.
Well personal is
political is an essay by Carol Hanische, an interesting piece written
to analyze the feminist movements and its peripherals. Hanische through her
experiences found that often women groups were criticized of bringing the
issues of their personal life into political discourses. And the second wave of
feminism tries to argue and dismiss the concept of both being different. In fact
why more and more women were not joining the movement was because the
liminality was not clear to them and they found the movement theoretically too
conceptual to be of any use to their lives at home. Personal is indeed
political at every sphere and for the feminist movement more so, since every
single experience of oppression or love that the woman goes through is a result
of an all-encompassing patriarchal system and hence to make someone understand the
system and to defy it, be angry or have the desire to break the shackles, it’s
important to engage with her through her home and personal life and family.
Hanische said (aptly)- “One more thing: I
think we must listen to what so-called apolitical women have to say—not so we
can do a better job of organizing them but because together we are a mass
movement. I think we who work full-time in the movement tend to become very
narrow. What is happening now is that when non-movement women disagree with us,
we assume it’s because they are “apolitical,” not because there might be
something wrong with our thinking. Women have left the movement in droves. The
obvious reasons are that we are tired of being sex slaves and doing shitwork
for men whose hypocrisy is so blatant in their political stance of liberation
for everybody (else). But there is really a lot more to it than that. I can’t
quite articulate it yet. I think “apolitical” women are not in the movement for
very good reasons, and as long as we say “you have to think like us and live like
us to join the charmed circle,” we will fail.”
This has stayed with me since the time I read Hanische and
her essay and others speaking on the same area. And I now try and look into
things which speak about this strongly.
These stories to me bring back the gender lens.
Interestingly Einstein and Indubala, many may
disagree with me and I when had read it first, had typified it as a sexist
story in parts often (quite wrongly). At multiple instances the story refers to
the decision of everyone especially the males to go and see Ms. Indubala’s
performance alibi the women’s demand. This angered me, since even today such
stereotypes exist be it in office or at home. However now when I reread it and
in the light of Hanische, it seems so political to me and refreshingly so.
Einstein with all his knowledge and his idea of space can be of no interest to
women or men of a different class, the non-intellectuals, and I am not invoking
caste here. However together they all represent whom is the question and whom
do they choose? It is pertinent today especially in a majoritarian democracy
where doles and benefits seem to be a political choice of winning votes, shall
we raise our noses demeaning the choice of many (which I do often) or try and
see the political significance of the choice of others. Women find Indubala
more endearing than Einstein, someone they may not even have heard. Rightfully
so, since he doesn’t even understand them, doesn’t try to engage. In fact he
really thinks that French pamphlets will work in India? Einstein hasn’t reached
their home and their hearths. However, somehow Indubala’s presence also seem to
liberate the men from their façade, alibi accompanying the women. This story in
fact is the icing on the cake.
Ashapurna Devi, stands for her stories set in the private
spaces- home and family. She always presents a slice of intimate lives within the
4 walls of the home, the daily chores, the interplay of relations, with the woman
at the centre. In the introduction to Prasenjit Gupta’s collection of Ashapurna
Devi’s short stories Jhumpa Lahiri mentions: “The home itself, as both physical setting and symbolic space, is the
most central feature of Ashapurna Debi’s stories, and it frequently plays a
complex and contradictory role. At times the home represents an adversary, a
physical prison, a site of constraint beyond which the truth about a family
cannot be disclosed. At other times her stories endorse the home as a haven, a
refuge representative of ownership, comfort, and escape, which protects the
individual from the danger and disorder rampant in city life. This polarized
notion of home, as both prison and sanctuary, provides perpetual grist for
Debi’s fictional mill”.
Thunder and Lightning is no exception. However here the
protagonist Bula almost poses a very political question through living her
personal life and her choice of financial access. Bula, the rejected wife and the
ever-servile daughter-in-law leaves her in-laws house to join films. The family
disowns her, however is seen at an interesting quagmire when she sends money
order. And this also exposes the biggest question- is financial independence
the way to woman’s liberation, so called economic empowerment, or its merely a negotiation
tool, softly buying and bribing existence- since the so called inherent right
to dignity is not there. Also for Bula, home and her access to family become
symbolic of her existence-the lines between oppressors and the oppressed
becomes blurred here.
Ras by Narendranath Mitra
again brings forth this question of economics in marriage or family. This translation
was published earlier in Caravan (http://www.caravanmagazine.in/fiction-poetry/ras)
However in this rural economic setting there is more to the story that mere economics
and games around it. This is equally the story of two distinct women- Majubi
and Phulbano, women who were open and unabashed about their choices and their
desires. That is incredible. Phulbano seeks divorce from her first marriage due
to her dissatisfaction with an older husband and Majubi, being divorced by
Motalef, is clear about her options. The interesting part of the story is, one
cannot distinctly side with anyone. At one point I may hate Motalef with his
schemes and transactions, however did Majubi doesn’t appear to be a victim.
This interplay is what made Ras remarkable to me.
News of Murder by Moti Nandy
reminds me of an essay I read sometime back about the anxiety that all women go
through in fear of violence of any form. It said that the fear of rape
permeates our lives. And the social
stigma associated with it. The cage seems to suffocate the living. Bibha’s
paranoia was brought upon by her family and its confines. A small news on the newspaper,
having the name of the victim same as he name, got the family fussing over her
apparent security and more of saving their honor at the cost of her impending
confinement. Something I think women go through at every point in their lives.
India by Ramapada Choudhury
of course needs to be looked with a different lens. The last few lines, is still
going through my mind- “The train left. But everyone at
Mahatogaon turned into beggars. All those people who lived off the soil- all of
them had been turned into beggars”. Isn’t this something too well known to all of
us- we may not even need the Americans throwing off coins as amusements. There
are structured organizations to do the same, banks, UN agencies with doles and
schemes, with good intentions of helping communities. This reminded me of Damisa
Moyo, the African author and economist who writes critically of the aid
culture, ripping communities of their rights and dignities in the pretext of
help. This is indeed a very interesting piece
and I am planning to use this as a story for discourses on development,
sometime in a group.
However, it’s a very interesting collection
and of course contributed to making my Saturday a great one.
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