Madhura Bhattacharya reviews Giyas Ali’s Love and His Time Alone, highlighting Sadique Hossain’s magical realism, rural Muslim life in Bengal, rich symbolism, humour, and Nandini Gupta’s admirable English translation.
Giyas Ali’s Love & His Time Alone
This collection of short stories Giyas Ali’s Love and his Time Alone, a translation into English from Sadique Hossain’s original Bengali by Nandini Gupta, will transport readers into a mesmerising world of magical realism, of vibrant colours and distinct sounds seen and heard, ‘tasted’ and felt in the commonest of places; where ordinary villagers living ordinary lives are capable of vivid imagination, sensations and sensitivities; where lyrical and deeply philosophical expressions emerge from the most commonplace events, where apparently unrelated events weave themselves into a fantastic web conveying a meaningful message.
Set in the southern parts of rural West Bengal, in areas inhabited by a Muslim population that mostly comprises dorjis, mistris and ostagars, the stories speak of the struggles faced by these people, owing to lack of education, poverty, social and religious restrictions and rigidities. Trust is misplaced in educated urban people like Julubabu, in the story ‘Liaquat Ali’s Sleep’; there are fears and wonders regarding the world outside their closed community: men appearing on stilts, a circus elephant straying into the village… In the entire village, there is only one ‘mashtar’, whose decision is final, and for that decision to be announced, one has to stay awake the whole night, bitten by mosquitoes. There is also the predicament of the women: one who has to do all household chores even when she is pregnant; a young woman, in ‘Abhisarika’, who is house-bound, with only a cat and her aged Dadi for company, though her heart yearns for freedom, especially in the evenings when the crickets’ clamour sounds like the call of assassins. In ‘Abu Bakar’s Surroundings’, the protagonist, who earns a living by prescribing charms and amulets, is afraid of the logic that his grandson would like to believe in. He makes him read the Namaz instead.
The wondrous experience that these stories offer is a merging of the different senses, through which the human feelings of love, desire, fear, anger and guilt find expression. Giyas Ali tastes the sound of horses’ hooves, a beef heart with holes tastes unpleasantly of sand when there is sorrow trapped in them, a parrot sits on a stool, pedalling at a sewing machine, a pond flies away like a white egret, a grown man is gobbled up by a Katla fish, and many such images kindle the reader’s imagination.
Symbols and metaphors are scattered everywhere, and an underlying sense of humour reduces the seriousness of the content, the occasional philosophical reflections and pondering of deep questions and political statements, and makes the stories a pleasure to read. Giyas Ali initially appears as a lusty old fellow, till one encounters his child-like simplicity, his love for metaphors and his philosophical mind. In his ‘alone time’, he sometimes loses his way, talks to a cow, gets angry on a pond or sets off for an unknown destination! When Altaf Morol is furious at Khalek Miyan’s father, he fumes at the nostrils, and his heated breath makes Khalek Miyan’s father sweat so hard that he nearly dies!
Translating Sadique Hossain’s works into English must have been a challenge, yet Nandini Gupta’s achievement is admirable indeed. Antonym Collections must also be lauded for publishing this collection, which makes Sadique Hossain’s stories reach out to readers beyond Bengal.
Giyas Ali’s Love and His Time Alone: Stories by Sadique Hossain
Translated from Bengali by Dr Nandini Gupta
ISBN: 978-9349203457
Pages: 142
Publisher: The Antonym Collections
Available on Amazon
Madhura Bhattacharya is a teacher, administrator, writer and translator. She has translated short stories by women writers Daphne Du Maurier and Kate Chopin into Bengali, for Ritobak Publishers, a novella and three short stories by Abhijit Sen from Bengali to English, for Antonym Publishers and 100 African poems into Bengali, published by Arani.
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