The Puppet's Tale

 

“We are but puppets; an Invisible One is pulling the strings''. Most of us dance along to the whims of this invisible puppeteer, but some desire freedom, protest constantly for greater control, they either rebel till their strings break or are forced to a meek surrender. The Puppet’s Tale (Puthulnacher Ithikatha in Bengali) by Manik Bandyopadhyay, deftly translated by Ratan Kumar Chattopadhyay, in bare bones is about how ‘all the world’s a stage’ and the show’s always on.

Shashi, the protagonist, a Calcutta-trained doctor returns to his ancestral village Gaodiya. Torn between ethics, selfless service and his personal desires, he tends to villagers with great care and commitment, a far cry from his father, Gopal Das who’s the village usurer. Shashi’s world is largely shaped by his friend Kumud, a free-willed & headstrong man, Kusum, a capricious & enigmatic young woman from Gaodiya for whom his love blossoms only to die of neglect over time, Bindu, his sister whose life’s irrevocably changed by her affluent husband and Jadab Pandit, a holy man who embraces death at his will at a self-ordained time.

Just like contrast sharpens a picture, the author by portraying opposite forces at play within us humans and in society adds depth to the story. The tussle between village and city life, tradition and modernity, Ayurveda and English medicine, rational/scientific logic and superstition, believer and atheist, the many contradictions that confound the human mind makes the novel’s lifeforce.

The father-son relationship here, fraught with tension, is a luminous example of the above, we notice that Gopal feels insecure as his son Shashi’s popularity and reverence grows. He is definitely concerned about Shashi’s health and lifestyle but would like to have him under his thumb all the time. This is evident as Gopal mulls -

“When the son is grown up, what a difficult task it turns out to be to interact with him. Not a friend, not a debtor, not a boss, god knows in what relationship a man stands with his adult son.”

It is notable that the author chooses to start the novel with death of a certain villager, Haru Ghosh, who is scorched to death by lightning during a thunderstorm at the village’s banyan grove but places immense importance on Haru’s family members- his daughter, son and daughter-in-law, they are characters who have a huge hand in propelling the narrative forward.

The first half, markedly slow, demands reader’s attention & patience for we have to understand a motley bunch of characters, each one multi-dimensional and mysterious. By detailing how they talk and act, the author teases us into analyzing how their minds work; the second half flies by effortlessly.

Manik Bandyopadhyay took to writing after his debut short story ‘Atasi Mami’, written to fulfil a challenge thrown in the college canteen to get himself published in a reputed magazine in three months’ time, earned him laurels and fame. Over a literary career of nearly 25 years, plagued by abject poverty, alcoholism and illness like epilepsy, his works bore the clear intent to expose unabashedly the bleak reality of life, the meanness hidden in civil society. Mostly set against the rural backdrop, his works dwelled on unravelling the complicated schemes of the human mind. 

 

And in matters relating to human mind, his acumen is rare and astonishing. 

This is evident as he writes –

 

“In every human being, there dwells a child who loves to play at any hour with poetic perceptions of the mind, with its imagination, its bizarre unreality, and its craziness.”

 

“The world is a web of truth and falsehood. Falsehood has significance too. A lie can even reign perpetually as truth”.

 

“A single spark had set a dry thatch on fire; no one had the power to extinguish it. He realized for the first time today that the collective opinion of people with whom we have no relation whatsoever in our daily lives could grow into an ineluctable, blind and ruthless force.”

 

 

I read 3 Stories by Manik Bandyopadhyay, published by Bee Books, translated by Arunava Sinha two years back and it served as a good primer to understanding the author’s writing style. The Puppet’s Tale, ably translated by Ratan Kumar Chattopadhyay, only widened my understanding of the author’s ideas, beliefs and written word. The foreword by Samantak Das on the author’s debut short story and his foray into writing is not to be missed. The Boatman of the Padma translated by Ratan Kumar Chattopadhyay and published by Orient Blackswan is another book I wish to read by the author - a literary giant of the modern classic Bengali literature, one of the Bandyopadhyay triumvirate. 

A classic by a master storyteller, The Puppet’s Tale is a ‘realistic’ chronicle of life and human frailty.