A protest or a sense of humour?
Farida Shaikh finds a set of short stories riveting
21 September 2007, 18:00 PM
Radha Will Not Cook Today and Other Stories
Purabi Basu
Edited by Niaz Zaman
writers.ink
Radha Will Not Cook Today is the English translation of Arandhan. Reading the short story, with lyrical intermissions, was beautiful indeed. However, the perception of the reader takes a restless turn in search of the connection between the title of the story and the narration that follows.
Radha Will Not Cook Today. Is this an announcement? If yes, what is the reason? Or is this a kind of protest? If so, why is Radha protesting? Or is this a joke, her sense of humour? Hyperbole?
As the story builds up, it is obvious that Radha keeps the reason for her not cooking that day private, to herself. Why Radha will not cook on that day remains a mystery for the reader, even when the story ends. Sadhan is her four-year old son, who is hungry and she breast-feeds him. Even in a village situation this act is a bit of a mismatch.
Just as Radha chooses to remain silent and calm, though all around her people are agitated over her behaviour, yet even to her own self, Radha does not refer to the festival of abstaining from cooking. She remembers it and is observing it, while all the other members of the family may have forgotten about the day. It then is a kind of abrupt behaviour on Radha's part, and the reader is in mid air. Radha will not cook today. Is this by choice? If it is, then she is a rebel, which she probably is not, or is celebrating the festival. She is a happy, religious woman, or it may be a coincidence of choice and celebration.
Arandhan is a Hindu festival of abstaining from cooking, observed on the last day of the Bangla month of Bhadra corresponding to 15 September. Inclusion of this note in the translation would add much more enjoyment to the reader of the story.
Omni Books launched Radha Will Not Cook Today and Other Stories by Purabi Basu and edited by Niaz Zaman on 17 July 2007. It is a collection of sixteen short stories translated into English. The writer is a pharmacologist who lives and works in the United States, but her first love is Bangladesh and writing in Bangla. Besides producing several anthologies of Bangla short stories, the writer has edited and translated into Bangla feminist stories from many countries around the world.
Womanhood and reproductive health are central to the stories titled Mother Earth and Once Upon a Time, Daughters Were Born Here. Biological explanations for changes in the female reproductive behaviour in a couple and a community are interwoven with personal emotion and socio religious signs. Both the stories are in a fragmented style of writing. The former has been translated from the Bangla 'Dharitri' by Saeeda Khan and Syed Bayezid while the latter has been translated by Shabnam Nadiya. Another translation by Nadiya is The Rage of Moonlight; the Bangla title being 'Josona Korechhey Aari.'
Anxiety and tension built out of fear of the unknown, as disturbances with a hidden communal strain spreads fast through the city, shows up a 'stubbornly independent' woman rushing her son to safety. That is the tale narrated in Prisoners, translated by Hasan Ferdous.
Exiles Forever is 'Ajanma Parabashi' is an allegorical story, and may have mythological connotations which are not obvious. Well translated by Niaz Zaman, the story is about two opposing groups of people, the Tutki and the Toytoy. Aloy, Niloy and Somoy are three brothers who grieve for their departed parents and then part, to veer off into three separate directions for their survival. The end of their journey settles the dilemma over choosing between returning to a life of uncertainty and pursuing an unfulfilled craving of their hearts.
Translated by Khademul Islam, the story Unknown Face begins and ends on the same note: the commitment and misrepresentation of the self. Intrusion into the private spaces of an individual, the pretension and the façade that regular in day-to-day life are here portrayed in their stark reality. I, or the self, is always hidden behind multiple masks. Much of the narration is monotonous and repetitive.
Introspective in mood, Returning Home: 1972, is the story of Jaya who is returning after a short absence to her home which is no more a home. The translation brings up a certain ambience due to death and desolation.
Sanjukta Dasgupta's translation, Saleha's Desire, is about a wretched village girl and her zest for life. The Eternal Journey revolves round the Diaspora, pain and suffering on account of personal loss. The translation of the Bangla original 'Abinash Jatra' by Jyotiprakash Dutta was published earlier in The Daily Star.
Diurnal, 'Chabbis Ghanta' or the twenty four hours of a day, is a tale of Susil's shop where his father's contemporaries come either to make a phone call or collect a fax.
Christmas trees in January are the motif in 'Januarir Krismas Tree', translated by Shafi Ahmed and Renata Laqueur . The story is about western ways of life and understanding the visible differences in non-western ways, lumped together called 'Indian.'
Also translated is 'Siri, The Stairs. It is about Saleha, a favourite name with the writer, who lives a hard life herself and yet is always available to help others. Design to Disaster in Bangla is 'Paricharjita Tober Galpo' is the second and The Myth of Metamorphosis, 'Protimapuran', is his third translation.
The sixteen stories in the anthology are bound in one hundred and twenty six pages by the lucid and readable translations of twelve writers from Bangladesh. Except for one, matribhumi provides the colour and the texture to the narratives. Even though feminism and allied scientific data are the predominant theme, contemporary socio-economic aspects cover some of the other stories, making the collection interesting and enjoyable for the reader.
Farida Shaikh takes interest in social studies and reviews books.
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