In India’s literary hierarchy, it is perhaps the Bengali output that occupies the upper rungs. Their traditional tryst with the written word has brought the country global levels of recognition. Still, there might be one odd person who has not fully grasped the region’s contribution, and it is mainly him that The Bengal Reader addresses. Put together with utmost fidelity, in the hands of its stunning editor/translator Arunava Sinha, the book spans history and culture, fiction and non-fiction, including poetry, memoir, satire, farce, travelogue, and even a recipe, along with short stories and excerpts from novels. But most of all, the book serves as a microcosm of a formidable and collective intelligence.
From life-changing issues like Sati (plea against concremation) and widow remarriage to tracking Pather Panchali, with Shoubhik’s 1955 film review and Bibhutibhushan Bandyopadhyay’s excerpt, it’s a wide arc. There are bursts of verse now and then. In a Hungryalist poem, an anti-establishment movement originated in Bengal, Shaileswar Ghosh writes: “The touch of my breath split the Communist Party into two”. In a Naxal one by Dipak Roy, “Those who were let out of the bus yesterday/To be shot dead lay on the road all night”. As Sunil Gangopadhyay calls out to the mythical Neera, in Kabir Suman’s It’s you I want, the wanting gets into every line. Whether in Shirshendu Mukhopadhyay’s latest novel or in a teacup, it’s you I want.
Life narratives stand out for the cameos they provide, like peeking into someone’s private diary. There is the exhausted mother in the excerpt from Rassanduri Dasi’s memoir, where childbirth and kitchen duties align with her account of accidental fasting, because this mother has simply no time to eat. Krishnabhabini Dasi talks about a Bengali woman in England. While Binodini Dasi rues: “All wretched fallen women in prostitution like us have to contend with upheavals constantly…” Chandramukhi tells Devdas, as cued by Sarat Chandra Chattopadhyay, “I do not believe that Parvati betrayed you. On the contrary, I believe you have deceived yourself.” A home truth most men pay a fortune to hear even today.
Intrigue and mystery quicken the pace. Who killed the man who went to house number 13 in the story written by Swapan Kumar? We are almost present in room number one of a hotel when Ivy Shome is murdered in Sandipan Chattopadhyay’s tale about a couple who’d just celebrated “the tenth anniversary yesterday of our not divorcing”. In The Strange Death of Anindyasundar, probably an ancestor of the novel The Seven Moons of Maali Almeida, it is a straightforward case of “who killed me?”. Mahasweta Devi’s Cause of Death is perhaps the easiest whodunnit to solve: the culprit is ordinary poverty.
Uttam Kumar’s honest recounting of how he almost left films to join a humdrum job, Soumitra Chatterjee’s soliloquy, Mrinal Sen’s musings and Ritwik Ghatak on the film he wanted to make about Vietnam zoom in on the cinematic world. For comic relief, a rat is chased by a cat into a sleeping woman’s mouth, and all precautions must be taken to avoid a dog going after the cat in a fable by Shibram Chakraborty that is full of English puns. Grave questions spiral through the pages. Abhijit Majumder asks poignantly: “And so it seems to me, as we stand in the midst of this intolerance and violence all around us, that perhaps this masculine society would benefit if all of us could become a little feminine today. Why don’t we (become)…a little bit of chhakka?”
And now for my absolute favourites—and sorry that they are all short stories. A desperate waiting in On the Edge of Life by Permendra Mitra, in which “Rajani, whose beauty and youth are both things of the past, must still be gazing hopelessly down the road at this late hour…” A father deceived for his own good in Bimal Mitra’s casually tragic A Twenty Minute Story. In Ashapurna Devi’s Chhinnamasta, there’s the moment a mother-in-law finds out that “in practice, it turned out that going mad wasn’t all that easy”.
From life-changing issues like Sati and widow remarriage to tracking Pather Panchali, with Shoubhik’s 1955 review and Bibhutibhushan’s excerpt, the book is a wide arc
Be it the Amrita of Maitreyi Devi’s novel It Does Not Die, or Mandar of Distance by Sirshendu Mukhopadhyay or the always-betting heroine in Suchitra Bhattacharya’s story, or Hirimba speaking to Ghatatkoch in Manohar Mouli Biswas’s dialogues, inner worlds remain in a constant state of unfurl. Rereading The Postmaster by Rabindranath Tagore still fails to leave the eye dry.
Excerpts from writings by Mani Sankar Mukherjee, who passed away recently, and Buddhadeva Bose, whose 1967 novel Raat Bhorey Brishti (It Rained All Night) was banned long ago for obscenity, bind the anthology’s relevance in current bookshelves to this being Sinha’s hundredth translation in what can only be called the state’s tourism brochure. It’s the general shubhodrishti (first encounter) of stories—stories that carry one part of the world to another.