Two translations of classics of Bengali literature make them more widely accessible.
Sunil Gangopadhyay’s celebrated Araneyer Dinratri now reaches a wider audience thanks to its first English translation Days and Nights in the Forest by Rani Ray. The novella holds a mirror to Calcutta of the 1960s when intense intellectual and artistic activity coupled with an economic slump led to discontentment and anger. Each of the four young men who set out on an unplanned, whimsical journey to Dhalbhumgar — Shekhar, Ashim, Sanjoy and Robi — seek to escape the pain that they, consciously or unconsciously, associate with the city. But the time they spend in a place they initially think is an idyllic retreat does not offer them solace. On the contrary, the forest where they hope to be carefree opens old wounds and lets loose past demons.
Ironically, they are unable to let go of the city. They are amazed that eggs and meat are not always available in the little market; beautiful sunsets remind them of films, the only times they had seen them; cricket scores are still sought after.
The contrast between the four men, and later Jaya and Aparna, and the tribals is stark. There are references to ‘civilisation’, and the friends can only think of western society on witnessing the openness that characterises the tribals. That the latter’s way of life is being encroached upon is one of the central motifs, one that resonates even today.
— Vineeta Rai
DAYS AND NIGHTS IN THE FOREST
Author: Sunil Gangopadhyay (Trans. Rani Ray)
Publisher: Penguin
Pages: 178 + xiv
Price: Rs 250
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The evolution of women’s writing is the story of a civilisation inching towards modernity. Which is what makes this anthology of short stories written by women over a hundred years so interesting. Read together, they signpost the many waves that buffeted Bengal society through the 20th century — rising nationalism, the erosion of the zamindari, the rise of the middle class, the disintegration of the joint family, the influx of refugees from Bangladesh — by way of its impact on the inner lives of women, on their hopes and frustrated dreams.
The ‘feminist’ agenda, anger at the skewed balance of power between men and women in our patriarchal order, and the many ways in which it limits women, informs all the stories. Rokeya Sakhawat Hossain’s The Fruit of Knowledge, a delightfully irreverent debunking of the Adam-Eve myth (1922), Giribala Debi’s hilarious, yet poignant tale of the struggle to get the beautiful, but dowry-less Baruni (1920) married, Nabaneeta Sen’s Proprietor about the constant danger a middle-class working woman faces of being misunderstood by husband, children, even her own parents, or even Suchitra Bhattacharya’s Mindscape (2005) which has four friends reconstructing the lives of two of their friends involved in an illicit relationship — each story is charged with anger at the lot of women.
— Gargi Gupta
VERMILLION CLOUDS
Translated: Radha Chakravarty
Publisher: Women Unlimited
Pages: xxv+231
Price: Rs 350