Hindi Short Stories
Introduction
What is a ‘short
story’? Does the modifying tag ‘short’ indicate its length or size, or does the
appellative signify some other quality? Obviously a physical measure of any
literary work cannot be defined in terms of any particular length or size .
When we write a short story we know that it doesn’t have its boundary lines
drawn like a straitjacket Petrarchan sonnet. A short story can be of only two
pages or even twenty pages. ‘Short’ therefore is not a modifier here in its
usual sense of size or length. At best, it is a neutral modifier of the
traditional and free form of a ‘story’ loosely meant to distinguish it from its
arch rival novel which again is totally free from any such limitation of length.
And because the central element of the ‘story’ is integrally common to both,
the modifier ‘short’ is surely a distinctive definer. It only means that ‘short’ is a general distinguishing
term which only
signifies that both the novel and the short story are modern derivatives of the
genus ‘story’, except for their undefined length. For instance, when we speak
of a ‘long short story’ ( as we often do in case of longer stories like
Melville’s ‘Billy Budd’, or Henry James’s ‘The Turn of the Screw’ – also,
sometimes termed as novelettes) or a ‘short short story’ we certainly consider
‘short story’ not as a ‘measured unit’ but as a specific literary genre –
like an essay, or a lyric or a play where the length of the work is quite
flexible and proportional to the nature of its content and theme.
The ‘novel’ itself
as a distinct literary genre emerged first in an age of industrial
revolution in the 18th century in England where the term ‘novel’ emphasized
only the novelty of the form – with distinctive suggestions of its being in
prose and its closeness to the temporal world - to distinguish it from the
other traditional literary genres like epic or lyric poetry or drama.
And as the modern age of democracy and science evolved with the importance of
the individual, particularly after the Romantic revival, by the dawn of the
next century, with the increasing reduction of leisure in life, a shorter form
of fiction was necessitated which had to be distinguished from the larger form
of the ‘novel’ because both had in them the ‘story’ as the highest common
factor – with all its ingredients of characterization, dialogue, progression of
events from a beginning, through a middle, to an end. Thus was born the modern genre
of the ‘shot story’.
The ‘short story’
vis-à-vis the ‘novel’ then is what a ‘short cameo’ is to a full-length film!
Their genus is the same, with the story at the core – as the spine in its
anatomy. The traditional story-telling attribute is essential to both. In both,
we have the same story-teller and the listener, in a one-to-one relationship,
as they have been for centuries. But a time came when the ‘story’ had to be
curtailed into a ‘short story’, not by any defined limitation of length or size
- even though length had become a distinctive feature with the reduction of
leisure and other similar constraints - but by a distinctive quality of
‘intensity’ or condensation, which Edgar Allan Poe (famous as the American ‘progenitor
of the modern short story’) designated as ‘unity of effect or impression’. Also,
this formula of ‘unity of impression’ was something vitally related to time constraints
of modern living and to the developments in modern psychology: the concepts of attention
span, emotional sensitivity, psychic complexity, ‘stream of consciousness’, and
so forth.
Poe was not only
among the finest short story writers of his time, he was also the first
critical theorist of the new genre with stipulations of the ‘unique or
single effect’, ‘economy of management’, ‘each word and detail contributing to
the total effect’, and so on. In his short stories (which he alternatively
designated as ‘tales’) he strove towards a ‘single effect’ created by incidents
chosen with economy and a rigorous sense of necessity in the design. In course
of its development in the 20th century the ‘short story’ acquired
more modernist traits like limited characters with no sustained development of
character, no prior exposition, or no details of setting, beginning close to or
on the verge of the climax, sparseness in the narrative giving higher
visibility to the artistry, and so forth. It was to be a world in brief
compass, with its ‘unity of impression’ imparting a feeling of totality by
concentrating on a single character, event or emotion and by compression and
the avoidance of digression or repetition. These stipulations themselves gave
the ‘short story’ a dramatic pattern and significance in experience that were new and distinctive.
These changes, in
the historical march of modern civilization, demanded a fresh look on the story element traditionally used as an
essential ingredient in the novel, or even in drama and poetry – and most of
all, in a more dynamic form of modern creativity – in the ‘short story’. It was
the latest invention in the repertoire of imaginative literature, contemporary
with changes in human life in modern times. Thus it was ‘short’ because it was
ultra-modern, with its own attributes of modernity, not merely because of its
reduced indeterminate length. ‘Short’ then was not used in the usual sense of
size, but as a distinctive mark of its modernity as a genre. As a new
modernist art form, the ‘short story’ was to be less diffuse than the novel in
its structure.
As a modern genre,
the ‘short story’ signified distinctive attributes of modernity, chief of which
were ‘tighter organization’ and ‘more artful construction’ of a relatively
miniaturistic nature with a clear focus on ‘a climactic moment in the
protagonist’s life’. In its form it also had a ‘mercurial diversity’ with varying modes
of ‘ realism, naturalism, lyricism, symbolism or fantasy’ in sync with the fast
emerging modernist trends in parallel art forms – painting, music, sculpture,
etc. Verisimilitude became less important than suggestive symbolism, musical
patterns and psychological exploration of reality. Greater psychological depths
were explored by unfurling a ‘central controlling image’ holding close to the
‘essential unity
(like in Kafka’s Metamorphosis)
which transcends as it complements the unity’.
It is also
significant that the ‘short story’ was invented in America in the early 19th
century, which stood as the icon of modernity with an entirely new definition
of individual freedom and human potential. America proved to be a crucible, a
‘melting pot’ of a new world, of a new civilization. It was a new world with
new horizons which needed a new literary form of creativity because the
relatively older form of the novel was already looking enervated and effete.
Also, the ‘short story’ came to have amazing
popularity for obvious reasons – its newness of form, its immediacy to everyday
life, its welcome portability and suitability to the cycle of a busy
life-style, and above all, its value as instant aesthetic nourishment. Another
practical favourable factor was its easy staple consumption in the
fast-developing periodical journalism. The way had already been shown by the
publication in instalments of long and unwieldy novels in weekly periodicals in
England of novels of Dickens and Thackeray. It was like a clarion call for the
invention of a shorter form of fiction. Novel had had a long innings spanning
over almost a century, and also had changed its content and form considerably
with the emergence of novelists like James Joyce and Marcel Proust taking the
form almost to its highest level of experimentation, while also slowing it down
into some kind of ennui. Besides, poetry and drama had their own
circumscriptions of audience and theatres. But the ‘short story’ was the most
lively, most dynamic, and most conveniently available form of literature to all
and sundry, in both print and audio formats, and soon in hour-and-a-half feature film
formats. Because of this element of celerity and convenience it soon overtook
the other literary forms in popularity with an amazing rapidity and soon gained
a world-wide spread as popular entertainment and as an agent of social
transformation for a fast growing literate world
In India the first
wave of fiction - both novel and short story - arrived as a novelty to Bengal
and other coastal regions by the middle of the 19th century, rapidly spreading in the mainland
provinces, the largest being those in northern India where Urdu language was
preponderant for a while, and Hindi meanwhile was growing by leaps and bounds.
The first Hindi short story that could be compared with some of the best
written in English by then was Guleri’s ‘Usne Kaha Tha’ (1916). Premchand’s
short stories written around that time (‘Panch Parameshwar’, ‘Namak ka Daroga’,
etc), laying the foundation of the modern Hindi short story (like Guleri’s),
evinced a clear influence of the Western elements of short story writing.
In the stories
selected in this collection, mainly from writers from Bihar, two extracts from
critical prefaces on short story writing by Nalin Vilochan Sharma and D.P.
Vidyarthy (given in the Notes) lay due stress on this aspect of influence of
the West on the Hindi short story writing. Undeniably, the technical aspects of
short story writing were sufficiently developed in English by the early decades
of the 20th century in writers like Hardy,Wells, Kipling, Conrad, et
al, and most writers of the Hindi short story had access to them, either directly
or through translations. Thus, the format of the modern short story in almost
all Indian languages including Hindi, to a varying extent, was definitely an
imported framework of a new kind of story writing.
In this volume of
Hindi stories, 20 modern Hindi short stories have been selected for translation,
of which 18 are by eminent Hindi writers from Bihar. Some of the stories
presented in this selection, specially those by Shivapoojan Sahay, belong to
that early period of the 1920s, and manifest such modernist elements in the
handling of the plot and the characterization, though with their content fully
ethnic and indigenous. Their language and style also are fully developed with
the rapid development of modern Hindi prose during the age of Mahavir Prasad
Dwivedi and Premchand.
A new feature in
the short story – a dramatic ‘twist in the tale’ had been introduced in the short story by
the Russian and American fictionists like Chekhov and O. Henry, just around
this time. This magical touch at the very end of a short story was the most
striking feature which we find surprisingly in some of these translated short
stories, mainly in two of Shivapoojan Sahay’s stories - –‘The Key’ (1923) and
‘Plot for a Story’ (1928), belonging to
this early phase of the Hindi short story writing. Sahayji may or may not have
been familiar with this typically modern magical formula of a striking end to the
short story, but at least these two of his stories in this selection, evince
this ‘twist in the tail’ trait to a brilliant effect.
The short story is
as distinctive and artistic a form in the modern age as the sonnet was in
Renaissance Europe. It is, like the sonnet (minus its complicated structural
paraphernalia), a literay genre, with its own innate characteristics,
that has the attraction for maximum public consumption. In fact, the short
story has emerged in the present times as the most popular form of people’s
aesthetic and literary sustenance. Like in other literatures, the short story
collections in Hindi would easily seem to outnumber books in other genres –even
novels. To take just one obvious example: Premchand published about six dozen
short story collections (of around 300 short stories) as against only a dozen novels.
It is also believed that the first Hindi short story ‘Dulai Wali’ was published
in the first literary monthly of eminent recognition, Saraswati
(1900-’23), when the era of Hindi mass literary journalism was just heralded.
The 20 short
stories in the present collection are given in the chronological order of their
writers’ lives, though the earliest published of the short stories is
Shivapoojan Sahay’s ‘The Key’. Of the 20, the largest number of them (18) are
written by eminent writers of Bihar, with the most eminent two among them being
Raja Radhika Raman and Shivapoojan Sahay, close contemporaries of Premchand. All
of them, including Agyeya and Himanshu (the
two from outside Bihar) are duly introduced in ‘Notes on Authors’ given at the
end. Extracts from their notes on their own short story writing are also given
at the head of these introductory notes which are then followed by ‘Word Notes’
explaining italicized Hindi words
which are ethnic and closely connected with cultural ‘local colour’(even though
the context makes their sense sufficiently explicit).
The period covered
in this group of short stories is from pre-independence days of 1920 till the
1990s – the most turbulent and historically momentous period in India’s march
towards freedom and modernity – both in its socio-political and literary
fields. The stories cover the entire gamut of the socio-political issues and
concerns during this
century long period, ranging over all social classes from the lowest to the
highest, including a distinct class of the tribal society in Bihar. The social
life reflected in some of them presents an intimate and sensitive picture of
the rural and ethnic sections of society which may be of special interest even
to social anthropologists - in stories like ‘Plot for a Story’ or ‘Odehul’. The
prime focus in the selection for translation has been on short stories or
writers generally forgotten or little known to the present generation of
readers (hence, for example, the omission of well-known Bihari writers like
Renu or Nagarjun).
Another important
factor in this selection is that, by and large, in most of these stories –
except in stories like ‘The Key’ or ‘The Killers’ - the central focus is on the
Indian woman, which is reflected in the title of the collection itself. The
character of ‘Bhagjogani’ in ‘Plot for a Story’, the fifth story, may be taken
as a representative figure of a socially oppressed woman symbolizing the nadir
of degradation in the Hindu society. Most other stories in this selection
reveal the various aspects of women’s degradation, oppression, or their sordid
suffering in the context of the modern feminist discourse which has been -
almost across the whole span of the last century and more – as an underlying
theme in the major part of Hindi fiction.
In their published
original Hindi version, not so much in their content or form, as also in their
language and style, there is inevitably a sense of development from the early
and old to the modern and contemporary – a linguistic ascendancy which has
been, to an extent, leveled by translation on a uniform linguistic scale. This
should prove of slight advantage to the reader who is likely to be, in most
cases, a non-Hindi knowing reader. On a linguistic level this could give an
equable flavor to the stories as a whole, especially for the modern reader. At
the same time, it gives them a permanent form as classic examples of modern
Hindi short story rubbing off their temporal period flavor. These stories in
their translated and edited form are now precious samples of ever-resplendent
gems that can compare favourably with the best short stories written in world
literature in their time. In fact, the book can be read as a unique and
valuable all-time addition to the realm of comparative literature.
Finally, a few
words about the various challenges faced in the translation of these stories,
and the different strategies and liberties resorted to in such trans-cultural
translation of literary works chosen from a period nearly a century or a half old,
and from a language which developed from an inchoate stage to a world-class standard
across those decades .
First, the titles
of the stories. In most cases, the translator had to take some liberty in
providing new titles to some of these stories. Throughout his endeavour in
rendering the original story (OS) into a translated story (TS), the translator has
used one uniform standard language of translation (LT) in all its variety and literary
expressiveness. He has a target audience, and a well-devised strategy of
handling the material (OS). He also has to have a strategy that is capable of achieving
a level of craftsmanship that can adequately adumbrate the craft of the OS. The
biggest challenge before him has been to handle the cultural and local colour
in the OS. This is the most troublesome part of the handling of the LT.
Titles generally
are a kind of summation of the content and the message of the work to be
translated which would necessarily differ in the case of a short story as
against a novel. David Rubin who translated Shrilal Shukla’s Pahla Padav
as Opening Moves has made a pertinent observation in this regard, as
also about translating passages abounding in ‘local colour’, and slight editing
of the text where necessary. As he says:
The author [Shrilal Shukla] preferred a completely new
title for the English edition ‘Opening Moves’ rather than a translated version
of the Hindi (‘Pahla Padav’) which may be roughly translated as ‘The First
Stage of (or stop on) the Journey’…For many Hindi words – title and nick names,
particularly, and certain foods –there are no exact equivalents in English.
Both in order to keep the Indian flavor and to avoid any falsification I have
in several cases retained the Hindi word. The context will usually be
sufficient for understanding. A large number of Hindi words are now commonly
included in standard English dictionaries, such as…pan, tilak,
dhoti, etc….Readers who compare the Hindi with the translation will in a few
instances find an addition to or deletion from the original text.
It would be
appropriate here to quote similar observations by Rupert Snell, the famous
translator of Harivansh Rai Bachchan’s 4-volume autobiography Kya Bhooloon
Kya Yad Karoon, who also condensed and edited it (with the author’s
permission) into a single volume as In The Afternoon of Time.Snell says:
One
aspect of the translation concerned the title of the autobiography. None of the
titles from the four Hindi volumes was appropriate for the consolidated
version, so a new one had to be sought elsewhere. The half-line ‘In the
afternoon of time’[is] in an autobiographical poem by R.L. Stevenson…. Hearing the suggestion, Dr Bachchan
thought for a moment, smiled, and said, ‘Bahut acchå hai – I like it!’….[Another]
criterion for abridging the text was a more subjective assessment of its
contents and of its likely English-language readership….The first difficulty in
the actual process of translation was to find an appropriate English style to
suggest the qualities of [the author’s]Hindi. What was needed was to create an
idiomatic English voice, while not straying into stylistic territory which
Bachchan himself would find unfamiliar; thus one had to forge a reproduction
which would remain faithful to the flavour and spirit of the Hindi, while also
being sufficiently readable to sustain the interest of an English readership…. What was needed was to create an idiomatic
English voice,… thus one had to forge a reproduction which would remain
faithful to the flavour and spirit of the Hindi, while also being sufficiently
readable to sustain the interest of an English readership….The difficulty is to break out of
the straitjacket of the source language and to produce a version which makes
sense in the idiom and style of the target language.
Both Snell and Rubin are excellent translators*. Their observations contain all the essential problems of translation. But I had some indigenous problems in addition. All my selected writers, (except Ushakiran Khan) were no longer there for any consultation or guidance, but they were all known to me on a personal level. Secondly, all or most of them were known stylists of the Hindi language; though, inevitably, they differed greatly in their variety of style and idiom. Thirdly, the original texts of the short stories were available in badly edited form (which is of utmost importance in the case of a short story); paragraphing was sloppy as was punctuation (again of great importance in an extremely syntax-sensitive form). Some of the stories were rather lax and prolix in their contemporary style of writing (for instance the stories by Radhika Raman and Dwij) which needed some compression and tightening of form to fall in line with the other stories with the requisite compression of form (like the stories by Sahay and Vidyarthy). And my consistent endeavour in translating these short stories was to edit, translate and transcreate them into a uniform variety of language (to quote Snell’s words) that is able “to forge a reproduction which would remain faithful to the flavour and spirit of the Hindi, while also being sufficiently readable to sustain the interest of an English readership.” I must add, however, that this selection is, perhaps, meant more for a non-Hindi knowing target audience in India than for a world-wide English speaking readership, with the presumption that the former would naturally find the content and the translated version closer to their sensibility than the latter for obvious reasons.
The Flying Fish
Ramdhani stopped his bullock-cart
beneath the bunyan tree opposite the railway station. He freed his bullocks
from the cart and put some straw before them and
only then awakened his master who was in sound sleep. All along, with
cradle-like swings in the cart and the soothing murmuring music of the rolling
wheels, his master had fallen into deep sleep. On waking up, he went
lethargically to the booking window with Ramdhani trailing behind him with his
suitcase. After boarding his master safely in the train, Ramdhani came out of
the station. He saw that it was only afternoon yet, and to reach his village it
would take him hardly about an hour. He still had enough time on his hands.
Ramdhani pulled out his flute from underneath
the straw spread on his cart, and took the empty cigarette tin from his canvas
bag hung by the yoke which contained wheat-flour for making bait-balls. He,
then, patted the bullocks and asked them affectionately not to break away from
the cart in his absence, and walked towards the nearby river. The dust on the
road shone in the golden light of the November sun. As Ramdhani walked ahead he
was already in a dream - seeing his Sukhia lovingly frying the fishes, and
himself sitting facing her with his potful of toddy. Thus treading into the
imaginary heaven of his dream, he soon reached near the river bank.
There in the
fields
, some young girls were cutting grass, but as soon as they saw a stranger
approaching, all of them rose and fled from there out of shame, though Ramdhani
had not even noticed them. It was the face of his son, Budhua, that danced
before his eyes. He was only dreaming of
Budhua who was struggling to swallow the hot fried fish pieces taken right from
the frying pan. Hardly a week gone, lots of fish had come in the Badi Haveli. Heaps of
fishes piled up – but more of rehu and bachawa, also some mangur and kawai! At night, Ramdhani had sat by the
master’s pond, with his fishing line sunk in water, his face covered in his
thick cloak; but the fish would just not take the bait.
Sukhia, his wife,
with her feet heavy, was now pregnant. She had grown a tasty tongue – often
asking for mustard leaves for a tangy curry, or for seasonal flattened rice.
Today when she was crushing wheat flour on the grind-stone, the whiff of frying
fish filled her nostrils and saliva filled her mouth. She couldn’t muster
enough courage to go into the kitchen, but when she came home in the evening
she told Ramdhani about her strong wish for fish. Ramdhani was hell-bound to
catch fish the same night. But in catching fish stealthily in the pond that
night, Ramdhani himself got caught. God knows from where, Sumer Singh, the
goddamned gumashta
suddenly appeared carrying a lota at this late hour in the night. It must be because of a
stomach upset due to overeating those fishes in the haveli! Ramdhani was
severely abused and beaten that night for that stealthy fishing in the master’s
pond. He felt so bad, he didn’t even tell Sukhiua about it.
Today, a week,
later how can Ramdhani let this rare chance near the railway station slip out
of hand? Within an hour he was able to catch three good-sized fish – all three katla!
Two of them at least a ser each, and the third also only a little less,
may be. Ramdhani’s eyes shone with glee. He put back the bait materials –
flour, etc in the tin box, carefully coiled back the fishing line, tied the
three fishes by stringing them together and flung them on his back. Then he
walked back towards the station humming some forgotten tune.
A railway station!
Ramdhani would rarely get a chance to come to the town bazaar and an
interesting place like the railway station. How nice it’d have been for
Ramdhani to be a railway employee - a pat man. Instead of tending his bullocks,
he would wear a proper uniform, twirl his moustache, and pull the signal down!
He would spend all his days hearing the ‘tik-tik-tuk-tuk’ of the telegraph
printer in the station master’s office. He does understand the bellowing of his
bullocks, but what could he make out of the stationmaster’s patterings of the
machine!
Ramdhani
walked slowly towards the railway station on the grassy path parallel to the
railway track. He heard the pat man ringing his bell and shouting loudly – “O Jamadar, let the
train in!” Ramdhani would watch this fascinating spectacle of the steaming
train and then drive back his bullock cart to his village.
The
Station Master’s Assistant was also standing in the office with his boss,
Bannerji Babu, who hailed from east Bengal, where most villages had ponds
flanked by sedge and laburnum trees; but not so here in Bihar. Bannerji Babu
had got the signal down to let in 9 UP, and was waiting for its entry. Just
then he saw Ramdhani with the fish hung on his back. O, that was truly
tempting!
“Hey, where are you coming from?” – he
shouted at Ramdhani. His Hindi still had the Bengali accent. Ramdhani froze
like a stone.
“I’m a villager, Sarkar”, Ramdhani pleaded in terror. “
I came just to see the scene of the coming train, Sarkar. I had come here only
to put my master in the morning train.”
Bannerji Babu remained unrelenting. “No,
you are a passenger from 14 Down! Show me your ticket!”
Amidst the threatening and pleadings,
ultimately it boiled down to the only possible compromise: that Ramdhani would
either pay a fine of 4 rupees 12 annas at once, or hand over the three fish to
Bannerji Babu in lieu of the fine. Otherwise his Assistant would ‘challan’ him and send
him to jail by this very train that was coming. Ramdhani knew he had to face
the inevitable, though for a while he bargained for two of the fishes, leaving
only the smaller one for him. For a moment, seeing the poor fellow pleading so
earnestly, Bannerji Babu seemed somewhat compliant. But when he remembered his
seven sons and five daughters at home – not even a piece then for each of them
– he recovered his wit. The smoke-bellowing train was almost in sight. He
shouted for the Pointsman to come and seize Ramdhani, who now realized he must
capitulate sooner. The three fishes were promptly kept in Bannerji Babu’s
office. Ramdhani stood like a stone statue near the gate. He had lost all
enthusiasm for watching all the show of the coming train.
As
the train arrived, the Pointsman brought the news that the last bogie in the
train was the saloon of the T.I. Saheb who was soon coming there. Bannerji Babu
rushed into the office to put on his trousers over his dhoti and came out
buttoning his coat. He lost no time and started collecting tickets at the exit
gate from the detrained passengers. As the T.I. Saheb came the Assistant bowed
to him in salute. By then all the four or five detrained passengers had left.
Bannerji Babu received the T.I. Saheb and brought him into his office. A grumpy
Ramdhani kept watching all this from the window. The Anglo-Indian T.I quickly
examined some of the registers and signed some papers before coming out of the
office to return to his saloon. Just then his eyes fell on the three fish kept
near the door.
“O, what lovely fish!” he exclaimed
as his eyes riveted on them.
“Of course, Sir! O, Rambaran Singh,
Take these fishes with Saheb to his saloon”- he promptly ordered his peon. He
assured the Saheb that here one could easily get fish aplenty but in the town
it must be difficult to get fresh fish. The Saheb thanked him profusely for the
gift. The fish was carried to his saloon and the train let off a shrill whistle
and chugged off..
Muttering to himself, the station
master returned to his office and found Ramdhani still standing near the gate.
In great annoyance, he shouted at him and asked him to get lost! Ramdhani
quietly slunk from there.
When that night Ramdhani tied his
bullocks in the compound of the haveli and left for his home, just at
that hour, about 60 miles away, the T.I.’s wife Mrs Johnstone was enjoying and
appreciating the flavour of the delicious fish on their dinner table.
Ramdhani then was sitting near the alaaw. He spoke to
Sukhia – “Do you remember, three years back when the eldest son of our malik
had returned from England, he said he had seen large flying fish in the
seas. Budhua’s mother, in our village river also similar flying fish are found!
I saw not one – but three such flying fishes today!”
“Are you drunk again?” Sukhia
wondered. “Have some shame, man! There’s not even a single grain for us to eat,
and you have gone and boozed again right in the evening? – talking all bullshit
now!
Ramdhani fell silent. He only started blowing into the alaaw to reignite the flames to sit there idly enjoying the warmth of the fire.
Diwakar Prasad Vidyarthy (1913-1962)
In a short story ‘unity of
impression’ is of utmost importance. When all the ingredients of a short story,
singly as well as in unison, help in the attainment of ‘unity of impression’,
then we consider that short story successful from such a point of view. The
various ingredients – characterization, dialogue, situational details, etc –
should produce this ‘unity of impression’ in their totality. The complete
success of style and technique in a short story lies squarely in the attainment
of this ‘unity of impression’. For a short story aiming at a high degree of
sensitivity, a style that is analytical would prove to be unsuitable. Again, a
short story on a naturalistic pattern which moves in a wayward fashion with
multiple suggestions, instead of a straightforward –beginning, middle and end –
design, would also be infelicitous for such a high intensity- seeking short
story which would rather have a appropriately contrived technique. In this
other kind of a short story the writer would deliberately mould the characters and the event rather freely to
proceed in the desired direction. A short story not aiming at high sensitivity,
but intellectual sublimity, should better have a naturalistic or symbolic
technique. In any analytical appraisal of a short story there must be a
thorough evaluation of its use of technique. But style is not technique. Style
has words and prose as its components. Technique is concerned with the plot and
its ability to reach the climax. In some of the writers the style may be
effective, though the use of technique may be infirm. Both style and technique
are creatively intertwined, and yet have their separate significance. When
attempting an evaluation of a short story, critical attention must be focussed
on both.
Diwakar Prasad
Vidyarthy was
born in a humble rural family of the Champaran district in North Bihar - the
eldest son of a sub-inspector of police in British India - Dr. Vidyarthy,
attained the highest education available in India at the time - Master of Arts
in English. He also went on to obtain one of the highest academic honours from
a British University - Ph.D. in English from the London University. Also, in his very short life (49
years) he distinguished himself as a teacher and scholar of English, an able
administrator, and a shining star in the newly emerging firmament of Hindi
literature. He wrote in its various literary forms: short stories, poems,
essays, travelogues, etc. At the invitation of the Government of India, he also
translated into Hindi, various works of William Shakespeare. More can be read
about him on the website : drvidyarthy.hypermart.net
This
story is taken from Rajani or Tarey (1960), the only collection of short stories by Dr Vithyarthy with an
illuminating Preface in that book on modern short story writing.
Word Notes:
[12]Badi Haveli: the main residential house of a zamindar.Rehu,
Bachawa,Mangur, Kawai: local names of varieties of fishes. Gumashta:
agent of a business man for business deals. Lota: a small portable metal
water pot. Jamadar: a minor official in charge of a group of workers. Sarkar:
government; also a way of address to a government official.
(C) Dr BSM Murty
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