Aruna Chakraborty has done an honest job with this Sahitya Akademi award winning novel. However, the task of compressing a serialised 900-page picaresque novel with a cast of thousands, into two-thirds its length and translating as you go along would stretch anyones creative resources. When the original is, in addition, a period piece written with lashings of idiosyncratic dialect from 150 years ago, the problems mount. The fact that large portions of the potential readership will be comparing, perhaps unfavourably with the TV-soap as well as with the Bengali original, makes things even worse. But then, translators must live with such inevitable comparisons.
Sunil Gangopadhyay picked a time and place loosely known as the Bengal Renaissance as the backdrop for his mammoth effort. It was serialised episodically in Desh magazine over nearly three years between 1980-82. It was an instant hit because of his fresh and iconoclastic approach to portraying many legends. His grasp of Bengali in its many avatars makes him a pleasure to read anyhow.
The Bengal Renaissance took place roughly between 1825 -1870. The book centres on the last 30 years just after the death of Raja Rammohun Roy. That era featured a succession of socio-religious reformers starting with Ishwar Chandra Vidyasagar, and Maharshi Debendranath Tagore and ending with Keshab Sen. Aided and abetted by liberal white men, they succeeded in banning Sati, eroding caste barriers, establishing an alternate religion in the Brahmo Samaj, kick-starting a modern educational system, setting up womens educational institutions and legislating for Hindu widow remarriage.
Also Read
It was a period of creative flashpoints for Bengali literature. The concept of Bengali prose (and blank verse) was invented as the language moved out of its medieval Gita Govinda style religious-erotic verse mode and into the age of the Rammohun-Vidyasagar polemic and the novel. Bengali literature also produced its first secular dramatists in Girish Ghosh and Deenabandhu Mitra and its first blank verse epic in Meghnad Vadh Kavya which turns the Ramayana on its head with its portrayal of Indrajit as the classic tragic hero.
There was a lot of soul-searching for the Bengali bhadralok who was jerked out of his obscurantist, hedonistic cocoon and into the era of European education. Many, such as the poet Michael Madhusadan Datta and the fearless editor, Harish Mukherjee, as well as the entire Young Bengal brigade were torn between their love and admiration for English knowledge and learning and their reluctant recognition that they had to write Bengali to be accessible to the masses. There were also Nabin Chandra Singha and Pyarechand Mitra who wrote delightfully about the nightlife of that period. Almost incidentally, the annexation of Oudh, the Sepoy Mutiny and the replacement of John Company by the Queen-Empress also occurred.
It was not a mealy mouthed period. The social mores of centuries were in the process of breaking down. There were men like Harish Mukherjee, Girish Ghosh and Michael who combined deep reformist instincts with continuous and enthusiastic whoring and drinking. Gangopadhyays enormously interesting episodic novel is woven across this vast canvas and incorporates most of the above historical characters and many more. He derived his necessary dramatic tension by focussing around Nabin Singhas family and its relationship with the equally well known Mukherjees.
The book is meticulously researched despite the occasional error such as categorising John Drinkwater Bethune as a Senior Wrangler from Oxford. The novel was good enough to titillate even non-Bengalis and Bengalis without a penchant for navel-watching.
Part of the charm lay in an outsider viewpoint. The author was not just transmigrating in time and space. As a Partition refugee from a poor East Bengali family, he wasnt born into either the dialect or the mindset. While using filthy language which caused some controversy, for he was portraying Bengali icons, he managed to remain a detached observer. Unfortunately, those are just the key areas where this translation continually strikes false notes. Readers who have an acquaintance with the original end up wondering just where the undertone of prurience creeps in. Still, if you like your prurience somewhat stilted and mannered, and backed by lots of action, this is a great read even in translation.