Life's like that only
RANJITA BISWAS
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With this translation, Parashuram reaches out to readers beyond Bengal's shores.
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Parashuram: Selected Stories; Parashuram (Rajshekhar Bose), Translated by Sukanta Chaudhri & Palash Baran Pal, Penguin Books, Rs. 295.
FOR readers of Bengali literature, Parashuram needs no introduction. Well, for the older generation at least. It might not be as true of the age-group steeped in the antics of Harry Potters and Supermans leaving them with little patience to savour the old world charm of Parashuram's satire and humorous sketches of everyday life. Besides, the settings of the stories could seem a bit remote and the social contexts slightly sepia-coloured.
However, once readers remember the context, it is absolutely delicious to bury oneself in the antics of characters fashioned by Parashuram, a pseudonym for Rajshekhar Bose, a versatile figure in Bengali literature. Bose was also a scientist and an industrial executive and even took a leading role in the development of Bengali printing.
His repertoire also included translation of Sanskrit classics into Bengali and compiling a dictionary in the language. No wonder then that Bose's stories — while hilarious and peppered with tongue-in-cheek observations and razor sharp wit — are also quite believable. .
Yet, Parashuram's stories have not been widely translated into English thus depriving connoisseurs from tasting the sweetness of Bengali witticism.
The current work is the first concerted effort to bring within one volume selected works by the genius. Sukanta Chaudhuri, with his considerable expertise as a teacher and a writer, and Palash Baran Pal, a physicist and researcher-writer, have filled in a void that admirers of Parashuram must be thankful for.
Humour is the staple
Though humour is the staple of Parashuram's stories, his intellectualism and social commitment that filter through the stories are hard to miss. Rajshekhar Bose's sharp eyes unerringly capture the nuances of individual sartorialstyles, mannerisms and speech to make the characters come alive.
"Shri Shri Siddheshwari Limited", the first story he penned (1922), is about a con game concocted by a band of unscrupulous men; hundreds of investors lose their money by believing in a fictitious company they float, and they get away with it too. But the story also ponders on the greed and corruption in the system. "Birinchi Baba" is another story in the same vein but here the trickster is a `god-man'. In our everyday life we come across so many characters like these that it is easy to identify with them.
Bose's satire is devastatingly spiky in the story "Chikitsa-Sankat" (A Medical Crisis) lampooning the various systems of medicine and man's credulousness. Here the bachelor protagonist goes through a litany of doctors, from medical practitioners to Ayurveds to homeopaths, though he does not suffer from anything serious.
It was just a minute accident; he had tripped on the folds of his dhoti while getting down from a running tram and fell down on the pavement. But he is made to feel ill by his well-meaning friends. Ultimately he is `cured' by a lady doctor who prescribes that what he needs is a wife to look after him. And who be the bride but she herself!
Interesting experiments
The translators have made interesting experiments trying to catch the nuances of local dialect even within the confines of the English language. `Ganderi: "... what if some shareholder submit before High Court: this dream-sheem business all fraud, they have cheated me out of my rupias?" (Shri Shri... ).
In "A Medical Crisis" there is an attempt to indicate the accent of the people from erstwhile East Bengal (bangal) by replacing `t' with `d': "The Kaviraj asked in broad East Bengal accent: "And where mighd Babu be coming from?" Elsewhere, "Tarini": `And whad mighd the patiend be suffering from?'
There are extensive footnotes to help the reader get familiar with local ethos, food items, cultural motifs, etc. A thoughtful gesture, indeed. There is a school of thought in the current translation arena that believes in doing away with footnotes altogether while retaining the words from regional language in pristine form.
The reader should try to understand them or try to find out the meanings, it advocates. On the other hand, others believe that this laborious process is slightly unfair on the reader and in the long run may even put off the reader.
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