The Greatest Urdu Stories Ever Told
Selected and Translated from the Urdu by Muhammad Umar Memon
Selected and Translated from the Urdu by Muhammad Umar Memon
Monday, November 25, 2019
Coming Soon...
Machado de Assis: 26 Stories
by Joaquim Maria Machado de Assis
Translated from the Portuguese Margaret Jull Costa and Robin Patterson
by Joaquim Maria Machado de Assis
Translated from the Portuguese Margaret Jull Costa and Robin Patterson
100+years, 200+pages
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
The Burden of Choices
The protagonist of the novel Pain
by Zeruya Shalev is Iris, who is a victim of a terrorist bombing. But her life
is shaped not just by the bedridden chapter of her recovery but by much more
things of the past. The novel opens with a morning when her pain from the
injury has returned, which often does, and which is enough to awaken troubling memories.
Ten years have passed since when the incident happened and a mother of two – Omer
and Alma – she is also a school principal which keeps her busy but doesn’t stop
her from dwelling over the past: her teenage years when she was madly in love
with a boy called Eitan and had dreamed of becoming his wife only that he decided
to separate from her after his mother died, which brought her a breakdown; her
father who had died when she was still a child and the bombing that left doubts
and distance in her family.
Even the blame for the incident
happened with Iris lingers in the family, which she formed with her husband Mickey
– from whom she is keeping an emotional distance; lacking the passion –
meanwhile she also feels detached from her own family, particularly from her
daughter Alma. She feels that none of them is sharing and expressing enough as
expected in an ideal family. Alma and Omer have grown up and have developed their
own characters and views as adults, however she feels that all of them lack
harmony at their home and amid all this, she is trying to act as a responsible
mother if not a happy wife, struggling with the complexities of her thoughts
about the relationship and behavior family members have with each other. The exploration
of emotional complexities of a family has been so well drawn, we find an intensifying
family drama growing in the story and find similarities with the ways the minutiae
of life controls our behavior, in our own personal realities.
Alma has moved to Tel Aviv and
rarely visits home and the intimacy Iris feels with her is heavy and reserved. She
feels that she has already suffered so many losses in her life that her children’s
parting away from her emotionally is too much to bear. As she reflects upon her
personal failures in bringing up the children, she is unable to share her anxieties
and whatever the conversation – which involves poking each other or sharing disappointments
of their own – she has with Mickey, almost always contradicts to her views
about the children, which is unable to bring any peace to her. The intricacies in
the story have been dealt until they’re justified and we feel the heaviness
Iris is dealing with. The psychological observation, shifts in moods and Iris’s
mental space with the burden of the past fit all well as the story progresses.
The unexpected return of Eitan in
her life roils everything further. Now Iris is torn between her passion and
love for Eitan and her position and responsibilities, at the least, as a mother
in her family. She wants to spend much time with Eitan, without feeling
hesitation to lie about anything that comes up in between with her family,
however the news that Alma might have taken the wrong track, which may ruin her
life, alerts Iris or rather unsettles her, making her unable to focus. She
doesn’t want to miss the second chance to reunite with her love after decades
of separation but cannot also ignore the fact that she has to act as any ideal
mother would do for daughter. She is tormented1 with the thought
that she will put her family at stake for her personal passion and happiness. Iris’s
life suspended in the memories of the past now faces the difficulties in the
present. It’s hard for her to understand and accept the changes – things which
are unspoken, silences and nuances in the family and therefore she again finds
herself facing memories which are fading – like that of her mother, stubborn – of
her love, unreliable – of her daughter, burdening – of her position, saddening –
of her failures and losses, and happy memories which short-lived. The narrative
detail has been dealt with poetic luster2 and we find it flowing
smoothly in the translation.
1.
The family you make so much effort to build and
watch over will become a burden to them, and even worse, to you. That husband
of yours you sacrifice your time for so he can finish his degree or move up at
work will leave you in another twenty years for a younger woman, and even if he
doesn’t leave, he will most likely become aging, grumpy, and ungrateful, and
you’ll find yourselves wishing for a different life. Some of you may try to
realize your dream, but only a few will be lucky enough to get another chance,
which won’t necessarily be better than the previous one.
2.
After all, she’s so young, and at her age,
things change quickly. Perhaps by tomorrow morning she’ll be able to stop
worrying and in fact—she giggles under the damp towels like a girl in love—she
will be able to keep walking undisturbed along the miraculous path being paved
under her feet to the world where the years fall away, where she can step back
among the flowering plazas of time, walk over and over again in the perfumed
wadi, among the clouds of honey, on the only day of spring when it isn’t too
hot or too cold.
Through all the recollections in
the form of expectations, reservations and personal relation among the family members
at various levels of intimacy and sensitivity, all the characters make
themselves present remarkably throughout. However, we only witness the anxiety
born out of guilt in Iris and it feels that all the tension of the story puts
her in the centre of finding ways to be close to her children who suddenly seem
to be parting away from her and desire to be fulfilled with love from Eitan
forever. She is a woman who’s trying to keep the past and the present in
harmony but is also suffered by it, presenting that there are so many elements
of life guiding and shaping an individual, especially who feels that the bond
in the family is fragile and vulnerable. Iris is afraid that her children won’t
forgive her for life leaving them when finally they’re settling down, afraid of
her passion, too strong to ignore and too late to give life to, which might
cost her everything. However, the urgency of rescuing her daughter from the
cult of misguidance proves her passion unimportant.
Finally, when Iris decides to
free her daughter from the enslavement of her boss, possibly a cult guru, she
finds similarities between her daughter and herself – both slaves to something
or somebody. This gives her courage to try her best to establish or rejuvenate
the emotional connection with her daughter. The novel ends in a positive
ambience and it looks like all veils has been lifted and doubts cleared, a
family coming together as if nothing wrong has ever happened within them – no
hatred or distrust but always a subtle love canopying the family. A mother-daughter
confession that they always cared for each other and were never emotionally
detached is one of the touching sequences in the story.
Pain is a story of burden and complexities of choices, of
motherhood and parenting, of coming of age and passion driven solitude, of
belongingness and abyss in relation, of estrangement and ignorance, of
imperfection in a family and an individual. We may take it as a psychological
exploration of love and memories, and a struggle between independence and unalterable
responsibilities and connections, choices and complexities. Pain is a perfect novel that once again proves
the power of this form.
Author: Zeruya Shalev
Translator: Sondra Silverston
Publisher: Other Press
Page Count: 356pp
Price: $12.19
Author's Photo Credit: https://www.otherpress.com/authors/zeruya-shalev/
Review Copy Courtesy: Other Press