Swapan Chakravorty (left) and Supriya Chaudhuri in conversation with Sukhendu Ray, who has translated Rabindranath Tagore’s Nashtanir, Dui Bon and Malancha into English, at a city bookstore. Picture by Anindya Shankar Ray

It was a select gathering of the city’s intelligentsia at the split level of Oxford Bookstore on Saturday evening. The occasion was the launch of the Tagore translation Three Novellas: Nashtanir, Dui Bon, Malancha by Sukhendu Ray, published by Oxford University Press (OUP) to commemorate the poet’s 150th birth anniversary next year.

The book was unveiled by governor M.K. Narayanan, who humbly said he “wouldn’t have made it here had I not been the governor”.

The evening saw Swapan Chakravorty, former professor of English at Jadavpur University and current director of National Library, and his erstwhile colleague professor Supriya Chaudhuri, with the translator, who happens to be the spouse of historian and author Bharati Ray, on the panel.

Bharati Ray, who has written an introduction to the book, “situates Tagore in the political, social and cultural milieu of Bengal of those times”. While Narayanan might not have read Tagore in the original, he had “very carefully read Bharati’s introduction, partly because I wanted to find out what she had to say about her husband”. Swapan Chakravorty, too, quipped while he hadn’t been able to read the translation, he had read the introduction “very carefully for I was scared of Bharati”.

Talking about the conception of Three Novellas, Sukhendu Ray said: “I had already translated Dui Bon when OUP expressed an interest in publishing it along with other stories. So we chose Nashtanir and Malancha, the common thread being love within kinship.” He has retained several Bengali words, particularly pertaining to relationships, such as bouthan, and provided an extended glossary.

Commenting on the book, the governor said: “Three Novellas spans a considerable period of time from 1901 when Nashtanir was written to 1933-34 when Dui Bon and Malancha were published. This was a time when India was awakening from a deep slumber and Tagore was also going through a turbulent time in his life that is reflected in the stories.”

Supriya Chaudhuri, too, felt Tagore had matured as a writer between 1901 and 1934. In Dui Bon and Malancha, Tagore engaged with the modernism that was sweeping through Bengal. However, Nashtanir, written much earlier, was extraordinary both as a piece of literature and for its radical thinking. Later it was turned into a classic film by Satyajit Ray.

While it is largely believed that Nashtanir was based on Tagore’s personal life, Swapan Chakravorty said: “There is a school of thought that attributes everything in Tagore’s life to his relationship with his sister-in-law, I’m frankly bored with this.”

He would rather comment on how Rabindranath, who had been largely silent on Ramakrishna Paramhans, put a picture of the monk in the bedroom of Niraja, the unhappy wife in Malancha. He also pointed out: “Esha, a book of poems by Akshay Boral written in dedication to his dying wife, is found in Niraja’s room, which is highly symbolic.”

Talking about the novella as a form of literary writing, Chakravorty said that “in the late 1920s and early ’30s, a parallel publication of Bengali serials was happening. Nashtanir came out in 10 instalments in magazines and papers published by Tagore and that is how the practice of writing novellas started.”