विभूतिमूर्ति

Introduction to ‘Not flowers of Henna’

When I was asked to write an introduction to a selection of Kamaleshwar’s short stories translated into English by the well-known translator Jai Ratan, I was caught between the horns of a dilemma – how to do or not to do. Both the names are celebrated in the Indian literary world and even abroad. Would it not be presumptuous on my part to write an introduction to their work ? My relative  anonymity – would it be for better or for worse ? I knew Kamaleshwarji – five years my elder – since the sixties when I had started my career as a lecturer in English. He was in Patna as the guest editor of a special short story number of ‘Nai Dhara’, then being edited by Rambriksha Benipuri. I was also an avid reader of  ‘Kahani’, ‘Nai Kahaniyan’  and ‘Sarika’ which he edited during the 50s to the 70s. I was familiar with his oeuvre. He was also a recipient of the award instituted in my father’s name by Bihar Rashtrabhasha Parishad. Nonetheless, I decided to take a plunge into the fray, even as an outsider. I hoped to get away with it, because what Kamleshwar wrote in one of his own prefaces to a collection of his stories, would hardly pin me down - as an outsider to Hindi literature. He said –

“Writing prefaces to stories is more difficult than writing stories. Stories are living things, by themselves born; but prefaces only chart their horoscopes, enabling the inept critic-astrologer to make half-baked prophecies.”

In this statement, he was bitterly disparaging of the prevailing scenario of Hindi fictional criticism which had squandered its obligations and gone on a wild goose chase, instead of giving the short story a close scrutiny, it so acutely deserves, as an organic whole, created and existing in its own right. His stories (he says) are, perhaps, like an expectant mother, waiting for the story to be born, waiting in hope for change. Unlike others, they do not dish out perennial and absolute truths; rather, they sketch out only the time-relative reality, multi-dimensional and complex as it is. He is acutely aware of his own perplexity and his limitations, and considers each of his stories as still unfinished; restive as himself, and still waiting, perhaps, for a finish.

In one of his recently published interviews he speaks about his native place Mainpuri in U.P. as a small township, a typical ‘kasba’, which was like an inn on a road from the village to the town, looking both ways, like his stories, taking their essential sustenance from the life at the grassroots, and moving with hope and perseverance to the formality and complexity of city life. Life, he maintains, is not made up of  a sequence of big catastrophes, but is woven of the warp and woof of  bits of experience in our everyday life. It is these bits of experience that fledge human relationships as they soar. In a novel or a story, he says, it is the theme which is the kernel, the seed, which sprouts out into its natural form.

“A story is not only something that is told or listened to; one has to live the story even as s/he tells it again and again. Often one would tell a story to get over the pain and gloom of life…. Stories of today do not soar on the wings of imagination, but are rooted in the hard realities of life.”

Kamaleshwar’s life, at several of its turns, bears striking similarities with the life of Gorky. Like Gorky, Kamaleshwar, too, spent a childhood in indigence and want. Though not an orphan like Gorky, he, too, had lost his father when he was only three. His early jobs were those of a  signboard painter and a godown watchman, before getting his first decent job as script writer in All India Radio. (Gorky had started as a shoemaker’s apprentice, a draughtsman’s clerk, and a cook’s boy on a steamer.) Once like Gorky ( who had started a publishing house and failed) Kamaleshwar, too, had established a publication house “Shramjeevi” at Allahabad which met a similar fate. And these similarities in the circumstances of their lives are also closely paralleled in their creative work; their novels and short stories embody similar experiences and social predicaments.

Kamaleshwar was born on 6 January, 1932, in a middle class family, fallen on bad days, after the death of his father. After an early education in Mainpuri, marred by penury, he went to Allahabad where  he took up sundry jobs, as they came his way, as a signboard painter and a  godown watchman, besides writing for local journals, and teaching Hindi in a Christian Seminary. It was here that he started attending meetings of the Revolutionary Socialist Party and the Progressive Writers Association. Then he moved to Delhi where he worked as editor in the Rajkamal Prakashan for some time and as a  script-writer in All India Radio. The next phase of his life began when he moved to Bombay to write for films, and joined the Times of India as editor of ‘Sarika’ which soon became the finest literary magazine of its time. But after editing it for 13 years his relations with the management soured and he resigned his job. For some time more he lived in Bombay as a freelance writer before returning finally to Delhi. Now he was A.D.G. in Doordarshan and a famous literary figure, with a number of novels and far larger number of short stories to his credit. He was also by now the most celebrated film and TV writer, editor and critic. Indeed, he was at the zenith of his literary career with the most prestigious literary awards, besides the state award of ‘Padmabhushan’, being showered on him.

Kamleshwar’s first short story ‘The Fugitive’ was published in 1946. But that was only the beginning. He has written around 200 short stories since then besides about 10 novels and  a large corpus of editorial writing, including some significant literary criticism. The total span of his  fictional writing career is generally divided into the three periods of his life; the first from the beginning to his coming to Allahabad; the second, up to his coming to Delhi; and the third during his stay at Bombay and thereafter. He himself speaks about these three phases :

“ The sequence of my story-writing extends from the initial authentic recognition and aggregation of experiences, the realization of their multiplicity of contexts, and, finally, the progressive penetration into their full significance. My stories were always born out of  the pain and suffering which have been the boon companions of my creative life”.

In a nutshell, his literary career has itself been a six decade long story made up of countless smaller stories, adumbrating, as it were, the  journey of his creative life, in which he lived through the very story he was trying to tell over and over again. To that extent all stories acquire a form that is essentially, by definition, incomplete and forward-looking. Kamaleshwar’s stories bear testimony to this basic truth. They are all attempts to attain completion which always remains an elusive ideal, and, perhaps, rightly so.

This selection from his stories contains 15 of his finest and most representative short stories chosen and translated by Jai Ratan, an accomplished and brilliant translator. Of these only about five are rather long, including the famous “How many more Pakistans?”, a purported precursor of his finest novel “Kitne Pakistan” ( in English translation: “Partitions”,Penguin,2006). However, one of the notable omissions in this selection is Kamaleshwar’s “Raja Nirbansia” which had catapulted him to literary fame in the early 1950s, and is a class in itself with its overt allegorical experimentation in the modern Hindi short story form.

Literary translation is a daunting challenge; but Jai Ratan is an old veteran in the field. I have a hunch that the language of modern Hindi fiction with dynamic infusion of Urdu lends itself more easily to translation into English; perhaps, because linguistically both forms today are much closer to each other. For instance, the story “Intezar” (“The Wait”) in its Hindi original form itself reads almost like a translation from English. Such linguistic affinity between the source and the target languages is a positive advantage, though, on the other hand, it may also trammel the translator’s freedom of creativity to an extent. Jai Ratan’s equal command over these three languages is his great strength, and both Hindi and Urdu literatures – and, indeed, English literature, too - owe him a profound debt for his momentous contribution to them.

It is singularly appropriate for Katha to publish this selection of Kamaleshwar’s short stories, finely rendered into English by a practiced master of the art, particularly because Kamaleshwar’s art of story-telling is umbilically linked to the hallowed ‘katha’ tradition of this ancient art form.The modern Hindi short story only presents kaleidoscopic variants, one of the most fascinating of which are the short stories of Kamaleshwar.

                                                                                 - Mangal Murty

Other Important blogs you may like to see here:

2010 : Sahitya Samagra : 5 Oct / 2011 : On Premchand: (26 May) / Has Hindi been defeated by English? : Shivpujan Sahay : (7 Dec) / 2012 : Memoirs on Prasad and Nirala : (25-26 Oct)/ 2013 : Sheaf of Old Letters (10 Oct) / 2014 :  Shivpujan Sahay Smriti Samaroh:( 27 Jan) / On Amrit Lal Nagar: (18 Aug)/ On Bachchan : (27 Nov) / 2015 : On Renu: (3 Mar) / On Trilochan: (1 Apr) /Odes of Keats + Shantiniketan: (25 May) / Premchand Patron Men: (3 Aug)/  Suhagraat: Dwivediji's poem: (13 Nov)/ 2016 : Three stories of JP:(6 Jul) / On Neelabh Ashk: (24 Jul)/ / Dehati Duniya: (8 Aug)/  Anupam Mishra: Paani ki Kahaani :(Dec 25) /   2017 :  Doctornama: memoirs of Shivpujan Sahay (July 10):  On Prithwiraj Kapoor (Nov 6) / Rajendra Jayanti Address @ Bihar Vidyapeeth, Patna (Dec 14)/ 2018:हिंदी नव जागरण, शिवपूजन सहाय  और काशी           (1 Mar)/Tribute to Kedar Nath Singh (25 May) /  राहुलजी और हिंदी-उर्दू-हिन्दुस्तानी का सवाल (12 Jun)/ Neelabh Mishra (16 Jun)/ Death of Shivpoojan Sahay(17 Jun) / बाबा नागार्जुन (1 Jul)

Extracts from my forthcoming biography of Dr Rajendra Prasad

Some extracts from my forthcoming biography of Dr Rajendra Prasad are also available on this Blog (Scroll by year and date), plus some other articles on him.

2011:  The Indigo Story (28 May) / A Planter’s Murder (17 Jul) / The Butcher of Amritsar (July 18) / 2014:  The Seven Martyrs, The Last Act, The Pity of Partition, Lok ewak Sangh (14 Sep) /  Early childhood in Jeeradei ( 3 Dec) /   2015:  Congress in disarray, Swearing of First President (30 Jun) / 27: Clash of Convictions: Somnath (27 Aug) / Presidential Itineraries ( 8 Oct) / Congress at crossroads             ( 20 Dec)  2016: Election for Second Term (15 Mar) /  Visit to Soviet Union (13 May) / Limits of Presidency, Code Bill (24 Aug) /  The Last Phase (28 Aug)   2017:   Dr Rajendra Prasad: On Kashmir Problem ( 12 Jul) / The Swearing in of Dr Rajendra Prasad (24 July) / Remembering Dr Rajendra Prasad (Patna Univ Centenary) (15 Oct) / Dr Rajendra Prasad & Bihar Vidyapeeth (14 Dec) 

 You may also visit my Hindi blog –

vagishwari.blogspot.com  mainly for articles on Shivpoojan Sahay, and my translation of Shrimad Bhagawad Geeta and Ramcharit Manas( retold)

My new address : Dr BSM Murty, H-302, Celebrity Gardens, Sushant Golf City, Ansal API, Lucknow:226030. Mob. 7752922938 & 7985017549 Email:bsmmurty@gmail.com              

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