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Literary Review
A Hindi icon
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In `Madhavi' Sahni gives an ideological spin to a story drawn from the Mahabharata while an empathy with the downtrodden is evident in his Middle India, says KEKI N. DARUWALLA.
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IT is only appropriate that two publishing houses, Seagull and Penguin India, have thought it fit to come out with translations of Bhisham Sahni's work. His play, "Madhavi", translated excellently by Alok Bhalla, and his fiction entitled Middle India: Selected Short Stories, translated by Gillian Wright, have appeared within months of each other. Both because of his plays and fiction Bhisham Sahni has attained the status of an icon in Hindi literature. Translations into English are essential these days not only for the international market but also for our own anglicised, semi-cultured bhadralok who probably know Sahni only from his TV hit, "Tamas". Who would remember his Hanush or Kabira Khada Bazaar Mein?
In his play, "Madhavi", Sahni draws upon a story from Mahabharata, but gives it a fine ideological spin. Munikumar Galav, arrogant disciple of sage Vishwamitra, insists on giving him gurudakshina, even though the sage wants nothing. In exasperation Vishwamitra asks for 800 white ashwamedhi horses with black ears to boot. Only 600 such horses exist in Aryavarta, three kings owning 200 each. People advise Galav to go to King Yayati, who now lives in an ashram, but has a prodigious reputation for generosity. Yayati gives him his daughter Madhavi who is blessed with two boons: she can renew her virginity and youth whenever she wants and each son she bears will be a chakravarti. So Galav gives her away to one horse-owning king after another for just one year in return for the 200 ashwamedhi horses they possess. She in turn gives them each a son. Still they are 200 short. So Madhavi goes and offers herself to Vishwamitra for a year and he dispenses with the last 200 horses.
The males, full of themselves, preserve their "reputations" — Yayati for generosity, Galav for his gurudakshina pledge. He will end up as a Rishi, no doubt about that. He is insensitive to her moving from harem to harem, leaving a son behind each time. In the end Yayati holds a massive swayamvar in which the three kings attend with their sons by Madhavi, hoping to attract her favour. But Galav again becomes a bit uptight (she has lived with his guru, so how can he take her now?) and Madhavi walks out on the swayamvar in the end.
Architecturally and ideologically the play is well honed and deserves its considerable renown. Yayati gives away his daughter as if she is an inanimate object. Queens who bear daughters are sidelined. By the very nature of the myth, the characters turn wooden. The three kings are just anonymous characters pining for male heirs. Galav, Vishwamitra and Yayati are wooden. But unlike as in the myth, Madhavi is not just a male-bearing womb. She is well portrayed and humanised. The dialogues never scintillate. A fire-spitting Madhavi would have been more interesting. Someone needed to shout at Vishwamitra and Yayati, but they end up unscathed. Rather sad.
In his short stories the milieu is lower middle class, Shyamnath asking the boss for dinner and hiding his illiterate mother; the scooter thief riding in a car while the owner of the scooter gets fed up of appearing in court repeatedly; two women fighting over a baby, a daughter-in-law mistaken for a witch. Sahni smuggles himself so effectively into this milieu that he identifies with the thought processes of his characters.
Satire is Bhisham Sahni's strong suit. A smarmy radio station Director considers himself positively brilliant by getting rid of a troublesome author through insincere flattery. (Sahni has worked at the All India Radio and should know!) A management consultant organises a seminar and peppers the walls with advertisements. Beneath the banner "Make the People's Dream a reality" you have another reading, "Eat Kamdhenu Digestive Powder". Under "Consumer Culture is Choking Art," we have "Cure for all Throat Problems — Drink Mehtaji's Joshina".
Empathy with the downtrodden is evident in story after story, whether it is Radha or the Chinese scholar, Wang Chu, who when he returns to China after immersing himself in Buddhist studies in Sarnath, is grilled by interrogation teams in regard to political conditions in India. They laugh at his innocent answers, and declare him a political zero. When he returns to India, the Indian police get after him.
"The Witch" is a minor classic. A woman mistakes her daughter-in-law for a witch, runs to an Ojha for counter spells, but doesn't unleash them on her, thinking "I must have tormented her in previous births for her to come to take revenge." When the son and daughter-in law move to another house she blesses her, "May you bathe in milk, bear many sons! Sati suhaagin."
Partition stories usually end up as clichés, because authors want to hold the scales evenly. Sahni's "Paali" is no different. In the scramble to cross the border Manoharlal and his wife lose their four-year old son, Paali. Their pathetic journey to Delhi is minutely etched. When the scene changes and Paali falls into the hands of Zainab and Shakur, one instantly guesses that Zainab would be childless and would shower affection on the boy. That's exactly what happens. Even language rings false sometimes. Shakur stares at the sky: "The countless stars that studded it reminded him of Zainab's blue chunari."
The translations are odd. Gillian Wright has perhaps tried to keep the flavour of the original Hindi. For instance in the story about the scooter theft and the court hearings, we get, "Eleven June came. I arrived in court. Then 15 October came. I was present in court with the scooter. Then 3 February..." So far so good. But there are positively awkward passages littered all over the book. "But why did he used to be so subservient?" (p.176) "Bhatia retreated to remove himself from his sight". "Jeetendra found a new experience in ahimsa, while Bhatia called it the obsession of an old man and impotence". "It was very unbecoming for there to be a row in the station director's office."
Madhavi, Bhisham Sahni, translated by Alok Bhalla, Seagull Books, 2002, p.68, Rs. 150.
Middle India: Selected Short Stories, Bhisham Sahni, translated by Gillian Wright, Penguin India, p.244, Rs. 295.
The writer, recipient of the Sahitya Akademi Award, is one of India's leading poets writing in English.
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