The Greatest Odia Stories Ever Told is an anthology of twenty four short stories, and it has collected under
its umbrella, the first modern Odia short story to experimental contemporary
stories, written by multiple generations of authors. Rich in voices, subjects, themes
and techniques, the collection depicts both the historical development and
transformation in the art of short story writing, particularly in Odia language,
but also in wider context, by establishing socio-political influence taking
human characteristics on the main ground. About the stories, like said in the
introduction by one of the translators in the trio – …Their tone varies from pathos to irony to satire to humour to righteous and
indignant condemnation. They take aim at social conventions, political
corruption, religious insincerity, caste restrictions, abuse of power, and
hypocrisy in all its forms…
The first story by Fakir Mohan
Senapati (the father of modern Odia prose fiction) Ananta, The Widower’s Boy is about a boy, quite troublesome among
the villagers, from the family of bravest and strongest parents, who turns into
the village savior. As we move on, we come across the stories that feature
characters from all branches of life and settings – from rural villages to
towns. Few glimpses is like: A bullock cart rider’s vibrant days end when
modernism takes away his customers and makes his life difficult; A frustrated
staff, as a revolt, lets his pet goat eat the important files in his office; A
Banyan tree in the village becomes the centre of politics, power and bloody
clash until it is poisoned; Village watchman and storyteller draws his
inspiration and understanding of politics, peace and independence from the
Indian mythologies; The tale of a snake charmer who transforms into a snake for
penance. It’s hard to write few words that define all these stories,
nonetheless they certainly open up a new space-time and its tangles to the
readers, like: In a primitive Indian village, a western anthropologist and his
interpreter get to hear the chronicle of an old woman who returned again to the
village after living ten years as a crocodile; Amidst the strike lurking in a
mining town, an innocent man is locked up and tortured brutally by the police,
and his wife has to pay the horrible price for his release; A married off girl taking refuse in her father’s house leaves one
night, and returns again after three years with a child and faces off the
villagers; After getting a letter that his reclusive father in the village has
gone insane, the son brings his father to the town to take care of him, only to
find out that his father has turned into a greater and sensitive human being.
And the two stories forming the appendix in the collection are the pioneering work
of prose fiction in the Odia language. Like Rebati
(1898), in which the outbreak of cholera brings down the well-to-do family in
a village and along a burgeoning love between an orphan boy and Rebati, the
daughter of the family, who wanted to learn to read, and The Sanyasi (1899) in which a man, who after the death of his wife,
turns into a sanyasi.
Most often we find smaller
details, running along the main narrative, that add liveliness to the stories
and are marked with the interactions and intricacies found in the setting.
Therefore, we can hear speak not only the intention but also the intensity and
grandeur of the formation1. Since the anthology is composed of
varieties of themes, some are profoundly rich in emotions while others describe
the passage of time that is heavy and tension that are identifiable. We take chute-the-chute:
leaping from political satire to primordial human pathos, magic to social
realism and likewise.
1. Five
years went by, with days good and bad, all ultimately drowned in the boundless
depths of Time. Many, dragged out of dark despair, reached the blinding
illumination of happiness, while others, deprived of joy, were submerged in a
bottomless ocean of grief. Who could count the number of human beings Time
sent, against their wishes, to their deaths, just as it showered blessings on a
grieving world by bringing forth a bountiful crop of babies, as lovely as fresh
flowers?
The mere detailing2 is
enough to qualify the stories’ brilliance and expressiveness. The stories have
not only brought together the oddities, troubles and sentiments rooted in the
timelines of the Odia region but also the collective experience of people that
has surpassed regional boundaries and resembles & reflects the underlying realism
that comes in cultural and traditional disguise but are crude and common to all
human experience: conventions that hinders love, power and politics that
backfires the commoners, hypocrisy that reigns the conscience, and complexities
that are accidental, inscrutable and inescapable. The stories in the collection
are crafty but simple and we find multiple layers of larger picture as we
re-read these stories. Also visible are the caste-based discrimination and women
experience and position in the society, though not always weak but at the same
time ever in the margins of power and head-on with struggle.
2. The
first time he came to our village he was with a bright-built woman–Malli, the
bamboo-queen. She’d climb to the top of a bamboo pole and spin on her belly,
like a wheel. Savara would cut her into pieces and then make her whole again.
He’d hypnotize her and ask her what he’d hidden in the pockets of the people in
the crowd. She always came up with the right answers… The applause that
followed would be thunderous and coins would rain onto Savara’s plate, some
falling on the ground… Then, bowing low to the audience, he’d announce, ‘That’s
all for today, sirs and masters.’
We have to thank the translators-trio,
Leelawati Mohapatra, Paul St-Pierre, and K. K. Mohapatra, for these hand-picked
stories and of course for this prolific translation of finest Odia short
stories that’ll certainly find its way to the readers searching for some
magical and palpable concoction.
Selected and Translated by: Leelawati Mohapatra, Paul St-Pierre, and
K. K. Mohapatra
Publisher: Aleph Book Company
Page Count: 230pp
Price: $30.12
Translator Photo Credit:
1)http://www.alephbookcompany.com/authors/paul-st-pierre/; 2)http://www.alephbookcompany.com/authors/leelawati-mohapatra/; 3)http://www.alephbookcompany.com/authors/k-k-mohapatra/
Review Copy Courtesy: Aleph Book
Company
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