The Greatest
Bengali Stories Ever Told translated by Arunava Sinha do something similar: the
collection brings together the work of the most famous and not so famous
Bengali writers coming from different periods and places of Bengal and covering
a huge landscape from Bengal’s past and present.
Alas,
it is hard to understand whether it is by design or accident. Sinha informs us,
in the introduction, that his choice of stories isn’t based on any scholarly or
thematic consideration; instead on what he considers best stories or stories he
has been able to place himself. On a
more informative note, he informs us that Bengali short stories can’t be traced
to any particular period or group of practitioners of the form; they were
always being written; they were always there, evolving with time.
The first story
in the collection is Rabindra Nath Tagore’s famous Kabuliwallah. Having seen
its movie adaptations, which were lengthened by songs, I felt the story ended
too soon, although it read surprisingly
fresh. Mahesh, by Sarat Chandra
Chattopadhyay, tells the story of a Muslim man who owns a cow called Mahesh and
takes care of the animal with fatherly affection and care. One day, due to
Mahesh, misfortune visits him and enraged he hits Mahesh on its head killing
the animal. The village turns against him accusing him of cow slaughter. It was
written around a century back.
Einstein and
Indubala deals with our preference for entertainment over scholarship. Einstein
visits a small town to deliver a lecture. On the day the lecture is scheduled,
there is another event in the town which everyone is awaiting: a live
performance by Indubala, a cine sensation.
When Einstein arrives at the lecture venue he finds all the seats empty.
The guard informs him that everyone would have gone to watch Indubala
perform. Finally the scientist goes to
the place and finds the organizers of his lecture sitting there. Bibhutibhushan
Bandyopadhyay had written it based on a report he had read in a newspaper.
I found Sunil
Gangopadhay’s Post Mortem too incoherent. It reminded me of what the writer had
once told about writing short stories. In his initial days as a writer he was
reluctant to try out short stories, until a friend told him one day that writing
short stories was easy: write what you do in a day, from the time you get up to
the time you go to bed, and stop somewhere, and you have a short story.
Swapan is Dead,
Long Live Swapan by Udayan Ghosh deals with Naxalism, the only story in the
collection to deal with the socio-political issue which had rocked Bengal in
the 70s. I also liked Mahaswtha Devi’s Urvashi and Johnny which is about people
who call streets their home. There are a few more in the collection.
The literary merit
of the stories notwithstanding, the book’s title -The Greatest Bengali Stories Ever Told
- could be a little more understated as also the title of its introduction where
Sinha justifies putting together the collection – My Love Affair with Bengali Stories.
