Gateway to Tagore for generations to come

Reading translated works may be tricky. If you are fortunate enough to have an adept translator, skilled in the art, it can be a rewarding experience. And when it's fiction, you not only get to enjoy a good tale, but also you are initiated into a new culture, new people, new psyche, new customs and traditions, and a whole new world. But if you have the misfortune of reading a second-rate translation, either you are deprived of the richness of the original form and content, or you are left with a misconceived impression of the writer and his works. And second-rate translations are many out there, unfortunately.

Shawkat Hussain, bless him, undertakes translation with his eyes wide open -- all senses alert -- and so he neither detracts from the original, nor leaves the reader wondering what's gone missing. And when undertaking the daunting task of translating Tagore, almost a deity to the Bengali literature lovers, there is always the risk of being told that he was 'just not getting it right', the stricter adherents of Rabindranath Tagore even considering any lapse to be a nothing less than sacrilegious. But he is no novice. A professor in English literature, fluent in both Bangla and English, there is a confidence in his pen as he takes Tagore to the readers in English.

'Kabuliwala and other Stories' arrests the reader's attention. Of course, Tagore is Tagore and he can't go wrong. But a translator can. Shawkat Hussain, however, doesn't.

The translator attempts to be faithful to the original. It is refreshing. Too often translators take it upon themselves to make the original more relatable to the target audience, but in doing so, they do a disservice to both the writer and the reader. The nuances are lost in translation, so as to say, and the writer underestimates the perception of the reader.

And that is why Hussain deserves kudos for staying on track, handing the reader Tagore's oeuvre in all its subtle shades and hues.

The first in the collection is the enchanting story of a most unlikely friendship between the diminutive little girl, Mini, and the big, brash Kabuliwala. Mini is a disarming little chatterbox whose insatiable inquisitiveness can only be compared to the curiosity of Alice in Lewis Carroll's 'Alice in Wonderland'.

Then there is the Kabuliwala. Back in the day, the Kabuliwalas were traditionally known to be moneylenders coming to green land of Bengal from the faraway rugged Afghan climes. If they lacked the shrewdness of Shylock, they more than made up for that with their stoic persistence. But that's another story.

Here he would turn up with his big bag slung over his shoulder, jovially chatting with Mini's father. His bag was full of nuts, raisins and other dried fruit he brought from his homeland. He was a trader, not just a moneylender. It is clear that he has an innate sense of integrity, is kind and honest.

He catches a glimpse of Mini darting around and wants to meet her. After all, we later learn, he has a daughter of the same age back home whom he sorely misses. At first Mini refuses to come in front of him. She is terrified and her fertile imagination quite convinced he is a kidnapper who carries away little children in his big bag. But once Mini's father convinces her that he is not a kidnapper, she approaches the Kabuliwala tentatively and they strike up a strong bond of friendship.

The narrator of the story in first person is Mini's father, and an excerpt can throw light on the camaraderie between 'the odd couple':

I saw my daughter sitting on a bench outside the door and talking endlessly, while the Kabuliwala was sitting at her feet and listening to her with a smiling face, and sometimes responding to her in his own broken Bangla. In her five years of life Mini had never had such a patient listener, except for her own father.

Mini's mother was not so easy-going and bombarded her husband with questions like, "Aren't there questions of children being kidnapped? Don't the people of Afghanistan practice slavery? Is it impossible for such a big Kabuliwala to abduct a child?"

If we find Mini's mother to be a bit of a xenophobe here, we may excuse her because all mothers can be overly protective and anxious. But the racism or discrimination hits hard later on in the story when the Kabuliwala goes to collect money from a debtor. The debtor falsely claims that he owes him no money, a fight ensues and in the heat of the moment, the Kabuliwala stabs the man.

Mini comes running out, crying, 'Kabuliwala, O Kabuliwala', as the misjudged man is taken off to jail.

He returns many years later upon his release and wants to meet his little friend. He had got some grapes and raisins from a friend and brought them for her, perhaps forgetting that the years have rolled on and she was not longer that little Mini anymore. It is Mini's wedding day and no one wants an inauspicious guest to enter the home. He is hurt, but leaves the fruit for Mini.

When he takes a dirty piece of paper from his pocket and shows how he has carried the little hand imprint of his own daughter close to his heart as he goes around Kolkata selling fruit, Mini's father chokes up:

I forget that he was a Kabuli trader, and that I was a respectable, well-off Bengali... we were both fathers.

In translating this story, Hussain opens a door for the foreign reader, a door to class, culture, conventions, trade, travel and the core of the human heart. He doesn't have to 'dumb' things down for the reader, everything just falls into place.

The other stories are equally evocative and he has selected the tales well.

There is 'The Professor'. We are introduced to the know-it-all student and Hussain echoes Tagore's tongue-in-cheek humour well:

Back in college, I was considered by my peers as something of an authority on all subjects. This was mostly down to one thing: I had an opinion about everything. I could be right or wrong, but unlike most people who struggle to express an opinion, I could say yes or no with great force. I wrote critiques, composed poetry, and was as a result an object of envy and respect among my classmates.

And then comes along the smart young professor who promptly bursts that bubble. A debate champion, the narrator proudly presents an essay on Carlyle, dazzling his friends and followers with his brilliance. The professor? Not impressed:

Bamacharan Babu stood up and calmly stated that the part I had plagirised from the well-known American critic Professor Lowell was excellent, and the part that I wrote on my own should be left out completely.

Similar disillusionment and debacles follow, and his admirers drop away one by one. But it takes much more for the narrator to shake off preconceived visions of grandeur.

Then he falls head over heels in love. He surprises himself by not falling in love with his ideal of feminine beauty, in jewellery and fancy clothes, but a girl in "ordinary dress, shoes, book in hand," an elusive vision that leaves him completely speechless. This was Kiron.

But old habits die hard and he imagines that Kiron must be quite impressed with his intellectual interactions with her father: "in her mind when she tried to measure the immensity of my knowledge, she must have had to look very high." He finds her household chores and domesticity to be quaint, but plans to elevate her with his intellect and knowledge, teach her, improve her.

But his balloon bursts again, when results of his exams come in and his name is found nowhere. That too he takes in his stride, egoistic enough to imagine exams, results, mundane jobs, mean nothing to the great ones of his ilk. But then it is his modest muse Kiron who has topped the list in the exams. And her beau turns out to be none other than the professor Bamacharan Babu.

There was only one thing to do:

I burned my manuscript, went back home to Kolkata, and got married.

If Tagore is brilliant in his wit and critique of human pride, Hussain is quick at conveying this to the reader, without tripping up on subtle innuendos and underlying cultural ethos.

There are a dozen stories in this collection and Hussain travels comfortably with Tagore as he takes the reader along through 'The Last Night', 'Dowry', 'The Wife's Letter' and more.

This book is actually a huge contribution to the literary genre of Tagore (yes, Tagore literature is a genre in itself). Hussain himself puts it succinctly in his note at the beginning of the book:

"My real hope is that my granddaughters, Kira and Phoebe, and other young children like them, growing up outside Bangladesh, with little or no knowledge of Bangla, might chance upon this translation, and other translations like this. Hopefully this will be their gateway to Tagore."