TRANSLATION
Tagore in the new millennium
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`Both A Grain of Sand and Yogayog will hold even the casual reader's attention till the end.'
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RABINDRANATH'S novel Chokher Bali (1903) has been resurrected four times in its centenary year — first as a film by Rituparno Ghosh and subsequently in three new English translations by Sreejata Guha (Penguin), by Radha Chakrabarty (Srishti) and by Sukendu Sen (Rupa & Co). To what do we attribute this sudden and excessive interest in an intense four-cornered love story which hardly any one among Tagore's Bangla readers would rate as his best novel? A fairly competent English version by Krishna Kripalani titled Binodini has been around for a long time, but that faded Macmillan format would hardly attract new readers today who, after seeing Aisharya Rai as the high voltage Binodini, might have a different expectation from the book. It has to be mentioned however that unlike in the case of Devdas (which too was translated into English by Sreejata Guha to coincide with the release of another much-hyped film), this time Penguin has resisted the temptation of putting Aisharya Rai on the cover.
Chokher Bali is a novel of illicit love and forbidden relationships within a family, and almost claustrophobic in its near exclusion of open space and public events. Of the two male characters, Mahendra is the only son of a rich widow, pampered and selfish — the other is his idealistic friend Behari, who, despite being loved and admired by two women, remains unmarried till the end. Mahendra's obsessive involvement with his newly married wife drives his jealous mother to bring a young widow in the house in order to distract her son. This woman, Binodini, with her beauty, wit and explosive sexual energy sets off a chain of desire and misunderstanding in which all the characters gets hopelessly embroiled. The action is as much in the minds as outside and Rabindranath in a retrospective note on the novel, written in 1940, drew attention to this psychological depth which was a novelty in Bangla fiction at that time. But why should this appeal so much to the 21st Century reader as to merit multiple new translations raises a question.
The answer probably lies in an extra-literary domain. When the works of Rabindranath, after some delay, finally came out of copyright in the new millennium, a virtual scramble started among English publishers in India to cash in on the brand name Tagore. Earlier, permission for translation had to be procured from Visvabharati, not an easy task; as a result Macmillan retained a virtual monopoly of publishing Tagore in English translation for many years and they were not particular about quality. Now many players have entered the free market. In the new dispensation, Rupa & Co promptly launched a series they called "Rabindra Rachanavali" but all they did initially was to recycle in attractive packaging old and often substandard translations without any revision, or any editorial framing. In most cases they did not even mention that these are not new books — merely reprints of editions available for a long time.
Yogayog (Nexus) is in fact is one of the few new translation of Rabindranath that Rupa & Co have published (Chokher Bali is another) and the quality of translation by Hiten Bhaya is so much superior to their recycled stuff that one wonders how this miracle happened. Of the eight Bangla novels written by Rabindranath Tagore (12, if one counts the novellas) Yogayog is the only one never translated into English before this. It is an unusually poignant but relatively less discussed novel overshadowed by the politically charged novels like Gora and Ghare Bairey. The politics in this novel is not of the nationalist variety — it is set against the decline of the landed aristocracy in Bengal and the emergence of an entrepreneur class. The central character Kumudini is caught in this clash of values. The last daughter of a zamindar family of refined taste but depleted resources, she is married off to a self-made man proud of his enormous wealth. Although mentally prepared to ignore the crudeness of the man and love the abstract idea of a husband, Kumudini finds it difficult to accept her husband's hostility to her brother. This elder brother Bipradas is an idealised character — liberal, intellectual, compassionate and artistic with an attractive aura of melancholy about him. His illness could be a metaphor for the precariousness of such a man's survival in the world of buying and selling. Unable to make money he sinks deeper and deeper into debt until the entire family property gets mortgaged to Kumudini's husband. Kumudini is caught between her duty to her husband and her desire to be with her sick brother, nursing him, playing music with him and reading together. The husband and the brother are projected as opposed cultural types. The grossness of the husband is further underlined by his blatantly carnal relationship with his brother's widow during Kumudini's absence. The novel ends with Kumudini's discovery of her pregnancy which compels her to go back to her husband. The biological entrapment of women is highlighted with a ruthlessness surprising in those pre-feminist days.
Yogayog is indeed a powerful feminist text despite (or because of) the fact that it ends with a woman's defeat. Nora's slamming the door behind her had heralded an entire movement in Europe, but the door closing in on Kumudini to imprison her forever is a more searing image in our society. The novel was first serialised in 1927-28 and is thus among Rabindranath's later novels while Chokher Bali is among his earliest. The metaphor-laden language of Chokher Bali has by now changed to the bareness of symbolic statement. In Yogayog, music is used as a signifier for resistance to materialism .One of the most memorable moments in the novel comes just before the end when brother and sister play raag bhairavi on their esraj together as the rays of the early morning sun pour on them. The use of the Meera Bai story as a subtle subtext is another example of this economy.
I will refrain from making the customary comments on the quality of translation. Not re-reading the original Bangla novels for the purpose of this review was a deliberate decision. The target reader of a translated novel is not the one who will compare the two texts paragraph by paragraph but one who is willing to be seduced by the narrative as it is available in English. Both A Grain of Sand and Yogayog will hold even the casual reader's attention till the end. For the reader whose interest is more than casual, A Grain of Sand provides, in addition to Rabindranath's own note on the novel, a brief but perceptive Introduction by a young critic Swagato Ganguly. In Yogayog Hiten Bhaya provides extensive notes at the end explicating how certain myths are integral to the novel. He also provides in translation a highly interesting statement made by Rabindranath when he decided to change the title of the novel from Tin Purush (Three Generations) to Yogayog. I have never come across anywhere else an attempt to theorise the act of naming a novel.
A Grain of Sand (Chokher Bali), Rabindranath Tagore, translated by Sreejata Guha, Penguin Books, 2003, p.287 Rs. 250.
Yogayog (Nexus), Rabindranath Tagore, translated by Hiten Bhaya, Rupa & Co, 2003, p.322, Rs.295.
MEENAKSHI MUKHERJEE
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