Three Stories: Jibanananda Das. Translated by Chandak Chattarji. India: Paperwall, 2016. Pp. 85. MRP 200.

 Book Review; Tapas Sarkar, PhD English;

Three Stories: Jibanananda Das is a collection of three translated short stories from Bengali poet, novelist, essayist, and author Jibanananda Das, by Chandak Chattarji. These three translated short stories are “Shadow play” which is translated from Das’s “Chhaya Nat”, “Tale of City and Village” from “Gram o Shohorer Golpo”, and “Bilash” from the same Bengali title “Bilash”.

Jibanananda Das is mostly acquainted as a modern Bengali poet just after the name Tagore. Das’s remarkable poetry collections are Jhara Palak (1928), Dhushor Pandulipi (1936), Shreshtha Kobita (1954), and others. It was Clinton B. Seely who translated most of Das’s poems and wrote his biographical text “A Poet Apart: A Literary Biography of the Bengali Poet Jibanananda Das (1899-1954)”. With Seely’s contribution, Das is recognized as a poet worldwide. Now, many of Das’s poems are translated into English. But, as a prose writer Das’s identity is still concealed, especially in the area of prose fiction translation. Though some scholars have translated some of his short stories and novels, such as Gautam Chakravarty’s Jibanananda Das: Short Fiction, 1931- 33, Amita Ray’s Treats in Translation, and Rebecca Whittington’s Malloban (novel). Chattarji’s book is an important contribution to Das’s prose fiction world. Of course, all these translations are very little in comparison to the entire Bengali prose fictional world of Das, yet each translated book has a great role to expand novelist Das as an identity to the outer world.

Chandak Chattarji is a Bengali poet, writer, educationalist, translator, and author of English textbooks. He received his education from Santiniketan, Viswa Bharati University, and Calcutta University. He has taught English in various schools and colleges in Bengal and other states in India. He was also selected as an Associate of the College Preceptors in London. Chattarji is now best known as a prominent translator.

The current book of Chattarji contains a foreword by Ranjit Hoskote, a well-known academician. The book begins with the translator’s note where Chattarji explains his difficulties and synthetic development of the translation procedure. Then, there are three translated stories and three critical essays on the same stories by various contemporary Bengali critics, Premendra Mitra, Sunil Kumar Nandi, and Amalendu Bose. Chattarji also gives a glossary which is helpful for non-Bengali readers. Finally, with an acknowledgment, the book ends with 85 pages.

Chattarji’s translation re-adventures and re-examines the prose fictional world of Das. Three stories lead the reader to the middle-class crisis and existential struggle of Das’s fictional world. As in the first story “Shadow Play”, we are acknowledged a young middle-class man who suffers from extreme ill health and mental trauma. There is an unrepairable problematic married life where the protagonist is plunged into an existential crisis throughout the story. In the second story “Tale of City and Village” where the protagonist is a failure in love and fails to attain a secure position in a systematic society. The meeting with his friend brings him nostalgia and the pain of failure; at the same time he wants to return to nature with his past memory, but everything is changed then, he knows that. Still, he wants to return back to the past; contradictorily, he also cannot get rid of his present crisis. The protagonist lives here in complex paradoxical turmoil which has no end. The third story “Bilash” is a complete psychological crisis-based novel. The protagonist Bilash at the age of forty is alone; he brings his past to the present. His continuous struggle with the stream of consciousness finally brings a devastating conflict between his present and past and the story ends with the protagonist’s mystic death.

All these three stories of Das are reinterpreted in the comprehensive and quintessential language of Chattarji. Because Chattarji’s use of language to represent Das and the Bengali culture as a whole is appropriately authentic. Most importantly, Chattarji has provided a prolific glossary at the end of the book which extensively helps the readers to understand non-translated words and phrases of Bengali society. Regarding the representation of the original text, K. Satchidanandan says that Chattarji’s translation, straightly, helps the reader to enter into the middle-class world of Das as well as the contemporary society of Bengal.

However, Chattarji’s simple and quintessential translation of Das’s three stories may be a partial literary contribution to Das. But, this contribution opens up a discourse to study Das in particular and Bengali literature as a whole. As Ranjit Hoskpte writes “It has been a privilege to discover Das the writer of fiction through CHandak Chattarji’s elegant and sensitive translation of three of the master’s short stories, “Shadow play” which is translated from Das’s “Chhaya Nat”, “Tale of City and Village” from “Gram o Shohorer Golpo”, and “Bilash” (which retains the original title).”