Short takes
Multi-hued nuggets
Randeep Wadehra

Selected Gujarati Short Stories; Selected Malayalam Short Stories; Selected Punjabi Short Stories; Selected Tamil Short Stories.
Edited by Rajendra Awasthy. Fusion Books. Pages 143, 172, 134, 177. respectively. Rs 95 each.

Literature — whatever its genre — mirrors the prevailing conditions in a society, and yet remains relevant for all times to come. As Ezra Pound said so emphatically, "Literature is news that stays news". While going through the four volumes of this collection one becomes aware of the cultural wealth we are blessed with, the fertility of our regional literary landscape is heartening indeed. However some of the stories confuse, as they do not appear to be archetypal regional writing. For example, Oh, Meghamala! by Gulabdas Broker depicts the plight of a schoolgirl, Meghamala. She has a younger brother. Having lost both their parents, the two kids are brought to Calcutta by their uncle. Unable to put up with the ill-treatment in her uncle’s home, and hungering for love, she elopes with an unscrupulous man, who deserts her in Delhi. It does not take her long to become a prostitute. This story tells us nothing about Gujarati society. In the only verbal confrontation in this narrative Meghamala addresses her brother as "Khoka", a typical Bengali expression. Moreover, the tale, in translation, fails to evoke empathy. Here I would like to quote from the preface to the Nigger and the Narcissus by Joseph Conrad, "A work that aspires, however humbly, to the condition of art should carry its justification in every line".

Translating such a range of stories, from four languages, must have been a daunting task. So, one is not surprised to find a number of translators doing the job to bring out these volumes. However, one detects a tendency to remain a bit too faithful to the original, making the finished product unimaginative, bland and tepid in the process. For example, in Kandaswamy’s Bird-Hunting we have such expressions as "she clean toweled the chair" (p.154). Somehow, the definite article has been omitted while referring to the protagonist who is referred to as "teacher" instead of "the teacher". Perhaps the translators thought that the South African poet Roy Campbell was right when he said, "Translations (like wives) are seldom faithful if they are in the least attractive." Rest assured, lack of charms is no guarantee for loyalty. Worse, the proof-reading is substandard. Editorial diligence could have come into play here.

Having said that, one enjoyed the stories like Muthuswamy’s Fortress of Fancy, Devendra Satyarthi’s Dasaundha Singh, Gur Baksh Singh’s The Guard of Many loves, Pottekatt’s Nishagandhi, Mukundan’s From Dawn To Dawn, Suresh Joshi’s The Cycle and Saroj Pathak’s The Trump Card. Lovers of Indian literature would like to have these for a leisurely read.

Nevertheless, Fusion Books ought to be congratulated for this signal service to indigenous literature that makes no pretensions of catering to the western, especially Anglo-American, markets.

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