Fascinating Stories

I read the book Fascinating Stories, a collection of 17 short stories by Bibhutibhushan Bandyopadhyay, translated from Bengali by Ashoka Dev Choudhuri and published by Sahitya Akademi. The translator has written and talked about Bibhutibhushan widely, and this representative collection tries to "..bring to life the face of Bengal as it was at the beginning of the 20th century".

The translator says that Bibhutibhushan concentrated on the central passion of the story and let the writing style take care of itself. So, the construction of sentences in his work may look as loose and parts of his work would look superfluous, but still building up the overall emotions in the story. However, this poses a problem for the translator, as "..one is faced with the dilemma whether to present him in bright, smart English or to communicate his ideas and feelings in a style which has something of the flavor of the original". In this book, the translator has chosen the latter approach. Another challenge with translating Bibhutibhushan's works, Ashoka Dev Choudhuri says, is finding an appropriate English version for the author's language, which, in spite of being simple, creates a magical world that is the hallmark of the great writer.

Three stories in this collection - The Palmcake Festival, Bama - My Savior and Khuku the Menace - I have read in other collections of Bibhutibhushan's stories, like in A Strange Attachment. In A Strange Attachment, the title story was the only ghost tale in the collection. However, in Fascinating Stories, there are as many as six stories (The Ghosts in the Spicebags, The Medal, Casting a Spell over a Tiger, The Story of Kashi Kabiraj, The Haunted Bed, The Sword of Rankini Devi) that are related to ghosts, spirits and the supernatural, which was actually one of Bibhutibhushan's favorite themes. These make a very amusing reading.

The translator mentions that Bibhutibhushan didn't enjoy writing about "dramatic and unexpected things" in his stories. He leaves many of his stories at a loose end, like in The Woodcutter, which just provides us "a slice of life but more than that perhaps instill in us a sense of continuity and tenderness of life". Even in his ghost stories and in stories like Bama - My Savior which would have been written by a different author in a totally different fashion, like a thriller probably, Bibhutibhushan doesn't give too much emphasis on creating drama; His main focus is on portraying human emotions and character. The translator says - "His distrust of the dramatic is a part of his benevolent view of life which hates to highlight social clashes and conflicts. He is painfully aware of the inadequacy of the world we live in, the poverty, the social ills and the injustice we suffer everyday, but like Chekhov and Tagore he accepts with a tinge of sadness both the inadequacy and the varied richness of life and nature".

Stories like The Palmcake Festival, For a Handful of Rice, Borobagdini Died and My Teacher Bidhu Babu show people struggling for their daily meal. Often the misery of people is shown from the view angle of little children, their hopes and dreams, like in The Palmcake Festival. In other stories, we see images of a lazy day of life in rural Bengal, which makes the reader "share the happiness of the truant boys roaming about the fields in gay abandon in a glorious summer morning in Bengal". In Hazards of a Master Angler, we see a group of children giving a try at fishing, and in A Difficult Day for Harun-al-Rashid, we see two children collecting jackfruits for their teacher's kitchen, as a bribe to him for not caning them in the class.

Reading these stories was a good experience. However, there are several printing and formatting errors in the book (as is seen in most of the books published by Sahitya Akademi), which came like "pieces of salt in the payasam".