I remember schooldays when helping out backstage on Rabindra Jayanti was a fun break from classes. The Bengali bard’s The Kabuliwallah was mentioned every year, without fail. I knew it was a Bengali story and I wanted to know what it was about. But the Bengali script has always seemed a tad overwhelming to me. 

Last month, I came across The Greatest Bengali Stories Ever Told (Aleph Book Company, Rs 499), a book with a very Bengali red-and-yellow jacket, where Arunava Sinha takes 21 stories and translates them for us non-Bengalis (And also for all those Bengalis who are more comfortable with the Roman script).

The book includes stories by Rabindranath Tagore, Bibhutibhushan Bandyopadhyay, Satyajit Ray, Ritwik Ghatak, Ashapurna Debi, Mahasweta Devi and many others. It’s hard to pick from the whole bouquet of stories laid out before me, but if I had to pick three…

♦ The Kabuliwallah by Rabindranath Tagore: One of Tagore’s most popular stories — thanks to the Tapan Sinha film — The Kabuliwallah, for me, was about love manifested. Between two fathers and their daughters. One visibly affectionate, another that required no physical proximity. 

♦ The Discovery of Telenapota (Telenapota Abishkar) by Premendra Mitra: That stories are meant to weave a fine net of words and ensnare is no surprise. That stories can get one high is a feeling that I was not privy to. Discovering “Telenapota” from the ruins was a visual delight springing out of black ink printed on ivory paper. It was a discovery of the broken down and forgotten, the hard-to-find and the easy-to-forget. Just like the mother and daughter and the loneliness of life in ruins, both literally and metaphorically.

♦ Ras by Narendranath Mitra: The story of a man who taps the nectar from date trees to make jaggery is about physical labour. Look deeper and it taps into human sentiments. And how, my mom’s oft-repeated statement, ‘love goes out of the window when there’s no money’ rings true to being human. 

Read this anthology as monsoon hits the city, the shonda fragrance of petrichor filling the air, with a cup of cha and a plate of telebhaja by your side. 


Which is your favourite book in translation? Tell t2@abp.in