Another Dozen Stories, by Satyajit Ray, translated from the Bengali by Indrani Majumdar. The book features never-before translated stories of spooky, magical and astonishing worlds created by the polymath. We come across Professor Hijibijbij, the eccentric scientist, determined to create living replicas of peculiar creatures.
Then, there is Master Angshuman and his adventures on the sets of his debut film. The story, The First-Class Compartment, includes a terrifying encounter with an unruly British soldier, in the middle of the night, in a train coach belonging to the year 1932. We speak with Majumdar about these Ray’s world of fascinating stories.
Tell us about your experience while translating the stories included in the book?
Ray’s style of writing at one level is very simple, colloquial and down to earth. Yet, this style posed a huge challenge to me.
The opening story in this volume,
The Life and Death of Aryasekhar, written way back in 1968, is one that Ray labelled as ‘the only story written with adults in mind’.
Not just the theme, what was a complete departure was the use of a very strict, formal Bengali style of writing by Ray.
Reading this story one was more than impressed, and it revealed Ray’s strong hold over his mother tongue.
And here, I put in real effort and labour over my translation.
If readers like reading this book, the credit goes strictly to the writer.
Though translating the other stories meant for young adults proved less daunting, it meant reworking on the structure of certain sentences quite a few times.
In Bengali, Ray on occasions wrote a sentence so long, it almost amounted to one paragraph. In the original, it works rather well.
But not necessarily so when transforming it into another language. To ease the flow of reading, I cut it down to 3-4 sentences to retain the essence. Translating his quaint use of humour and wit is no less a challenge.
Time and again a twist in the last sentence of a story could never retain the same charm or offer a tone of the same surprise while writing in English.
I felt translating a language often meant translating a culture, too.
For instance, a story ends with a mere sentence stating that the protagonist chose to die in the early hours on the day of his niece’s wedding.
It imports a note of a huge tragedy as a death in a Bengali family meant no auspicious activities to be observed for the next whole year. I’m sure such a custom works elsewhere, too in India.
Tell us about Sandesh, the children’s magazine founded by Satyajit Ray’s grandfather, Upendrakishore Ray Chowdhury?
The strangest thing is that Ray didn’t start writing fiction until he was 40. It was only after he revived Sandesh that his writings for children were published for the first time.
This magazine was founded by Ray’s grandfather, Upendrakishore Ray Chowdhury in 1913. After his death in 1915,
Upendrakishore left his legacy to his son, Sukumar. Sandesh was nurtured by him until his untimely death at 36 in 1923.
After a couple of years, the publication of Sandesh ceased.
The magazine’s revival in 1961 was nothing short of a revolution for every Bengali, although no one knew then that by re-starting he had created a new milestone not just in his own life but also in that of the literature of Bengal.
If Ray brought neo-realism to films, it won’t be an exaggeration to say – to Bengali literature he introduced a neolanguage.
Tell us about the impact of Ray’s writings on your life.
I belong to Delhi and my family has been settled here for about a century now.
However, as we were far removed from Bengal, our family made diligent efforts to remain in touch with our roots chiefly through books, music and films.
As youngsters, we were constantly fed on Bengali children’s literature and we subscribed to many journals which, of course, included Sandesh.
And that opened up my own vista called Satyajit Ray – the writer, illustrator and designer.
This preamble was needed to point out that my idea of Ray essentially belonged to the printed world. But did Ray also make films?
Much later I was to discover him as a filmmaker. One of the fondest memories of my childhood is staring in awe at the top shelf of our bookrack teeming with bound volumes of Sandesh.
Any new translation on Ray?
Apart from his own translations and non-fiction writings, he wrote 91 short stories, 48 Shonku adventures and 34 Feluda mysteries.
Shonku and Feluda translations are now all complete.
Enough stories are still left for a possibility of another volume and what’s interesting, a selection of another set of stories await featuring the avuncular character, Uncle Tarini – a style written in the ‘stories within a story’ format.
Another volume of short stories compilation will include a couple of very interesting science fiction – Moyurkonthi Jelly (Shot Colour Jelly/ Jelly resembling peacock feather colour) and Shobuj Manush (Green Humans). Last but not the least,
I know I’ll once more face a huge challenge translating a book of his writings involving four contemporary folk tales/fairy tales.
A genre which was primarily his grandfather, Upendrakishore’s forte yet Ray’s own attempt in this league is no less appealing.
Book Details
Another Dozen Stories.
by Satyajit Ray, Indrani Majumdar(Translator).
Publisher: Penguin Random House.
Pages: 256.
Price: Rs 250