The Keeper of Desolation : Stories

 

The Keeper of Desolation by Chandan Pandey, translated from Hindi by Sayari Debnath is a collection of 9 stories, stories that reveal a yawning gap between the rich and poor, those who wield power/authority and the common man, between dreams and reality, what's spoken and unspoken. And, it does this leaving a slim gap between fact and fiction, the surreal feels almost real.

For instance, in ‘Wound’, we are reminded of many instances where shoes have been hurled at politicians/eminent persons by frustrated commoners. In this story, an illustrator working for a magazine has his intentions and actions questioned by the top management for drawing pictures of shoes. ‘The Junction’ germinates from a mob lynching and a death in train when a man refuses to make space for another. For the intense farmer strikes that rocked the nation, farmers’ woes find a place in 'The Mathematics of Necessity’ where a farmer writes a letter to the PM of India requesting him to provide a more humane formula for calculating interest over loans. While this story feels light with wit and mild sarcasm, the staggeringly high interest rates that leave people in debt hanging from a precipice is dealt with in a deeply affecting fashion in ‘The Alphabet of Grass’. The starkly disproportionate power play (not the powerplay of cricket) unfolds in the titular story and this feels like a farce. Interrogation of some sort features in a couple of stories here - but a very menacing one in the story ‘The Land was Ours’ leaves a deep impact.

It is said that short stories are small windows to the outside world. What when these windows are shape-shifters, what when we readers have been pushing these windows for a view of the world only to realize that they should be pulled in to open. Chandan Pandey's stories present a knotty affair at many places that we readers learn to disentangle. The writing here is clever, convoluted. The translation by Sayari Debnath, so fine and erudite, makes the reading wholesome. In fact, there are many places where we wonder how the original lines in Hindi would have been. For instance, an entire paragraph in the story 'The Keeper of Desolation' that begins like this - "This town survived on a mountain of information. For example, B knew A well, and although B's relationship with C was tenuous, C was convinced for this reason ... E took D to F. F and D were on their way .."

In these stories, the socio-political issues are juxtaposed with personal strife, tender with brutal and stark with subtle. The corrupt who turn a lie into truth by repeating it a thousand times straight-faced and vice versa propel many stories here. The ideas of freedom and democracy are only a joke under despotic rulers, only silently buckling under the weight of very real 'oppressor -oppressed' existence. 

That the author portrays women as ethereally beautiful objects meant for man’s desire and lust irked me at times, but this isn’t unrealistic. A woman's waist chain pattern comes under close scrutiny in one story and in another, a man feels like kissing the pomegranate shaped, red mouth of a lady DM officer who's questioning him. 

The Harper Perennial editions usually have an 'insights' section at the book's end, I am a little disappointed that it’s absent here. These minor niggles aside, The Keeper of Desolation unravels truths we have lived with for years, some that we have even turned a blind eye to, thanks to our privilege.

A wonderful collection of very immersive and essential, thought-provoking stories!

Sharing some favorite lines from the stories below-

“The powerful want just this to happen, for shoes to be rained on them. And that is why we should not hit them with real shoes. The day the police and criminals bigger than them come over to your side, you may but anyone you want with shoes without any fear.”

“After all, one way of fighting life was to arrest the present in the neat cages of calendar dates"

(From the story Wound)

“What were the heights to which we could soar or the depths to which we could sink in our wonderful lives? We were not targeting the bullseye. We were so caught up in the pettiness of everyday existence that the real wonders of life were passing us by - and we were acutely aware of this loss.” (From the story The Junction)

"When I visited him (him referring to the editor of a newspaper), I found him writing two articles, one with each hand. With his left hand he was writing about the necessity of land grabbing, and with the other one, a condemnation of the act. Wah, I thought, what an intellectual!" (from the story - The Mathematics of Necessity)

Books Read in April 2024

 

Books I read in April 2024 - 

1. Where God Began by Appadurai Muttulingam, translated from Tamil by Kavitha Muralidharan 

2. An Island by Karen Jennings 

3. Water by John Boyne 

4. Life Was Here Somewhere ; Stories by Ajeet Cour, translated from Punjabi by the author & Minoo Manocha 

5. Fool Bahadur by Jayanath Pati, translated from Magahi by Abhay K

(Also, a Short Story single - Tiger King by Kalki, tr from Tamil by Gowri Ramnarayan)

Fool Bahadur

Fool Bahadur, a classic, a novella by Jayanath Pati, translated from Magahi by Abhay K was my last read for the month of April. Yes, this is the first book translated from the Magahi language. Spoken in about 9 districts of Bihar that lie to the south of Ganges & east of river Son, in Jharkhand and West Bengal too, Magahi revered as the sacred language of Buddhism, the official language of Maurya and Gupta empires, quietly slipped into an oblivion over time despite its 20 million speakers.

Fool Bahadur is a satirical take on the rampant corruption in every tier of bureaucracy/judiciary, on people in positions of power demanding favours of all kinds, people mollycoddling their superiors so that they can climb up the hierarchy or receive awards. Set during the British Raj in India, the book begins in 1911 at a railway station where Babu Samlal, a mukhtar (a legal practitioner in a lower court in India during the British Raj), is waiting to receive Maulavi Mojjafer Nawab, the new SDO of Bihar Sharif, the capital of Bihar then. Samlal yearns to get the title of ‘Rai Bahadur’. He knows he doesn't merit it, thus has a plan to coax the SDO into bestowing the honour upon him. The local courtesan Naseeban is a major instrument in his plans. But the circle officer, Haldar Singh who treats Naseeban as his mistress is an impediment. Does Samlal manage to get the coveted title of Rai Bahadur or does his plan go kaput?

In an unscrupulous world, one where corruption and exploitation is rife in corridors of power, Fool Bahadur is a timeless classic. But, in detailing the bureaucratic structure, sections of law, the officers/their roles during the British Raj, it feels restricted, like a period-piece.

The very insightful introductory note (40 pages long) on Magahi language and its literature, on Magadha region in Bihar and its rich history and cultural heritage, penned by the translator Abhay K amply reveals his zeal for his mother tongue. He reminded me of ‘The Man who Talked to Walls’ to preserve his mother tongue from dying in a story by Appadurai Muttulingam. 

Notes:

The first edition of the book Fool Bahadur, the second novel of the author Jayanath Pati, was published on April 1, 1928 , the April Fool's day. This day has significance in the story too. The cover of the first edition had an image of the joker dressed in a western suit with a bell in his right hand and a paper cut out in his left hand. The cut out had the book title in large font on it and below it was written - not meant for women and children, which only meant that women and children were not permitted to read novels at that time. Coincidentally, the calendar image for April at my home had an image of a joker on it and I found it fit to click a pic with the book. The cover of this book is designed by Ahlawat Gunjan.

(A copy of the book was obtained from the publisher in exchange for a review)