Mahua Sen’s translation of Machhali Mari Hui has to be commended for retaining the flavour and intent of the Hindi original which treats the city as a palimpsest, rich in history, of settlers and of those who quintessentially epitomize the rags-to-riches story. The lucid translation keeps pace with the expansive setting of the story across continents and a surgeon’s eye in dissecting the social and moral fabric of 1960s Calcutta, and the first wave of the immigrant movement in America.
The figure around which the narrative is constructed is Kalyani Mansion, and its human embodiment Nirmal Padmavat, the owner who resides on the topmost floor, having an unrestricted view of the city, like a falcon or Zeus, depending upon how one looks at this enigmatic character. Very early, he is branded as one who ‘practices occult’, possessing ‘knowledge of witchcraft’ and the more damning, ‘Nirmal Babu is a criminal’ (p. 4). As the narrative progresses, we see that he is just a man suffering from heartbreak, a kind of Byronic hero in the mould of Heathcliff. He is not the only one who has this sense of mystique around him. Kalyani, who plays a major role in Nirmal becoming what he is, ‘had a knack for spinning captivating stories about death, love and gods and goddesses’.
Mahua Sen’s translation captures well the breakneck speed at which the narrative progresses. Sen brings alive the characters and draws a portrait of the timeless nature of the city of Calcutta. The sweep too, of the temporal and the spatial, poses a different and significant challenge to the translator. It is a detailed and nuanced exploration of a nation coming into consciousness, where the already privileged are trying to milk greater economic and cultural capital for themselves and some trying to buy into and surrogate the American Dream.
The novel highlights female exploitation and gender roles which are perhaps more pertinent now than ever. Kalyani, who is omnipresent in the text and in the lives of the central characters, in life and even after her death, is vulnerable and gypsy-like, and forced to fall back on her sexuality to survive in a foreign land. Later, after her death, she seems to carry the legacy of sexual promiscuity and is a prime example of how a woman’s reputation is shaped, created and navigated in a man’s world. Her daughter, Priya, comes to terms with her own sexuality and sexual identity much later, but strangely when sexually assaulted, the act of violence is deemed to be a necessity to ‘make her a normal straight woman again’ (p. 156). One must read this in the context of the social fabric of the 1960s but also realize that such prejudice and ignorance about gender roles and sexuality are prevalent to this day. In a society where marital rape is not criminalized because of the fear that the institution of marriage will crumble, it is only natural that a novel written fifty years ago mirroring the same concerns should be read, discussed and disseminated, even if only to show that the more things change, the more they remain the same.
Mahua Sen’s credit is in the deft handling of the temporal and spatial shifts in the narrative, the linguistic pyrotechnics that Choudhary’s original Hindi text employs and almost a postmodern chuckle and play with the readerly expectation and sensibility. Sen doesn’t try to match up to the stylistics of the Hindi original, and at the same time resists being overshadowed and overwhelmed by the canopy of literary brilliance.
Sayan Aich Bhowmik is Assistant Professor, Department of English, Shirakole Mahavidyalaya, Baneshwarpur, West Bengal.