Selected
Modern 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 lay due stress on the
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.
List of
Short Stories
Raja
Radhika Raman: 1.I
am a woman first 2.The Bangle Sellers 3.Dream
at dawn Shivapoojan
Sahay: 4.The
Fugitive 5.The Key 6.Plot for a Story Ramvriksh
Benipuri: 7.Budhia 8.Razia Janardan Prasad Jha ‘Dwij’: 9.The Forsaken Woman Nalin Vilochan Sharma: 10.The Need 11. Radha of Barsane
Diwakar
Prasad Vidyarthy: 12.The
Flying Fish Radhakrishna:
13.Dulo 14.The Unsold Song Usha
Kiran Khan: 15.
Odehul 16.Rice and Grass Leaves Jayprakash
Narayan: 17.The
Second Moon 18.Tommy Peer S.H. Vatsyayan ‘Agyeya’: 19.The Refuge Himanshu
Joshi: 20.The
Killers
© Dr
BSM Murty
bsmmurty@gmail.com
Book
available from Amazon/Flipkart or Value Publications:Mob. +91-9868035385 /
valuepublications2018@gmail.com
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