Some of the delegates at Book Mark, the smaller, quieter offshoot of the Jaipur Literature Festival, were publishers, agents and writers meet to exchange notes on the book market and scout for titles, were greeted with a catalogue. It contained a short list of eight works of Indian fiction, curated for the possibility of being published in other countries.
A Blessed Life: Bismillah Khan in dialogue with Yatindra Mishra, Yatindra Mishra, translated from the Hindi by Ira Pande
In a lilting narrative, poet, editor and music aficionado Yatindra Mishra draws out the Bismillah Khan on his life and work. While the shehnai had long held importance as a folk instrument played primarily during traditional ceremonies, Khan is credited with elevating its status and bringing it to the concert stage.
Original title: Sur Ki Baradari.
“YatindraMisra: Can you tell us how music can create the appropriate mood to suit a particular occasion?
Bismillah Khan: There are many ragas in music, and countless raginis that arise from them. Music has many sons, and these sons have many wives, and together they have produced many children, grandsons and granddaughters. So, thousands of ragas and raginis have been created from ragas. In my ustad’s words, it is not so important to remember the raga as it is to see how much later the rishabh should follow the shadaj (sings).
If you sing shadaj ten times, then when you sing it for the eleventh time rishabh will speak so eloquently to you that the listener will be prepared to hear it. You have to pursue this for months before the raga acquires the connotations of a celebration. And yet, it is not as if each raga is innately beautiful, or that you can make it sound the way you want it to. Our ustad taught us that whatever the raga we played or sang, whether mellow or virile, we can mould it to suit the occasion by imbuing it with emotion, in the same way that we can coax out ragas and raginis by blowing into the shehnai. The essence of music is whether or not we are capable of endowing a certain taseer to our notes. This is the quality for which we seek Allah’s grace.
My work is still unfinished, I am in search of the true note, and I seek god’s grace to find it."
Autobiography of an Unknown, Krishnamurthy Hanuru, translated from the Kannada by LS Shankara Swamy.
The story of one of Tipu Sultan’s soldiers, this novel effortlessly mashes up forms like history, mythology, folktale and poetry. Says Girish Karnad: “Relegating the boundaries of space and time to the background, it escapes these. Hanur’s writing is extraordinarily picturesque, it graphically recreates the realities of different worlds. Characters and incidents, as well as the realness of their emotional struggles, binds the reader from beginning to end in one single sweep. Hanur’s scholarship, creative imagination and a reciprocal intuition are astonishing.”
Folklore scholar Krishnamurthy Hanur’s work is considered remarkable even in the original Kannada.
Original title: Ajnatanobbana Atma Charitre
“Hitherwards in the forest region of Maleya Madaiah, in the lap of the eastern forest is Cauverypura. The place gets the name because it is at stone’s throw from the river Cauvery. On its banks is a grove of giant trees. Like the monasteries that we read about in the ancient epics, this grove is dotted with clumps of trees and shrubs. Walk down from the grove and you see the grave of a saint. Hundred steps from there is a hero stone. This one is not a carved, ornamental sculpture of a hero sitting on a horse or angels transporting him to the high heavens in a palanquin. A bearded man with bowed head sits at the forelegs of the horse, with his palms closed in supplication. Not many know the history of this stone.
On either sides are the carvings of the sun and the moon and inscribed below are the following words:
In the Bharata region of this Jamboo Dweepa ... The eastern Mudukutore hillock is glorious... River Cauvery flows in the west Flora, fauna, birds and vast expanse of forest spreads
Hugging the in between villages
Is the nearby Nelli stream...
In the middle of the circular grove of Cauverypura...
Is a Tomb
The Siddha saints lean in meditation
Came from the north, working for the welfare of the world
They settled in this right place
Mingling with people, preaching dharma
Giving medicine to ailing children
Saving the soul sacrificing the body Within the calling distance of these saints Is a stone figure...
The saint atop the horse attained holy feet in the year Seventeen Ninety-Nine in sarvajitusamvatsara on a holy Fridaywithout a fault he followed dharma
Holy, holy god! bless us all.”
Movement, Debendranath Acharya, translated from the Assamese by Amit R Baishya.
Jangam is a fictional account of the long forgotten march of Indian refugees from the erstwhile Burma to British India during World War II. The march was a culmination of a series of anti-Indian communal riots that had been raging since the 1930s. Although the incident is represented briefly in Amitav Ghosh’s The Glass Palace, Jangam is probably the only sustained fictional treatment of this historic incident of mass displacement. Acharya was an eminent engineer and notable scholar, who also wrote satirical articles with the pen-name Dronacharya.
During the march, an estimated 450,000-500,000 Burmese Indians walked to Assam and Bengal, and somewhere between 10,000 and 50,000 people died during the journey because of the brutal traveling conditions and the diseases they contracted on the way.
Original title: Jangam.
“A village of twenty families: Manku actually was a small neighbourhood, a hamlet of poor farmers and laborers. An impoverished colony of Burmese and Indian peasants and day laborers who expended the sweat of their brows toiling for half of the produce of the land that they cultivated for the rich landlords, and who sated their hunger for six months of the year while enduring an acute shortage of food during the other six. The Indian peasants had been transported by the British monarch to increase the wealth of the Empire by cultivating the pure and verdant lands of Burma. They were people who immersed themselves in gambling and other pleasures, and consequently got buried neck-deep in debt – like a herd of mute beasts staying barely afloat when beset with the unbearable weight of life. A group of unknown, unacknowledged, yet indispensable ordinary folk that, in the midst of the cornucopias in their dreams, woke up to the painful realization that they were now destitute, wiped away their tears, and counted the number of days they would probably survive on their fingertips. Inhabitants of the lowest realms of society undiscernible to the collective gaze, they were a group of vanquished soldiers defeated by the battle of life, surviving in anonymity to hide the shame of being poverty-stricken.”
Opening The Way Ahead, Nand Bharadwaj, translated from the Rajasthani by Chandrika Das
Set in a small village near Jodhpur, this novel traces the life of Satyavati, a schoolteacher, who struggles to strike a daily balance between her family’s traditional values and those of the changing society in which she lives. She marries a man who is not from her caste, against her parents’ wishes, and remains unapologetic about it. Satyavati believes in leading from the front and opening the way ahead. This Rajasthani novel received a Sahitya Akademi award in 2004 for its uncompromising portrayal of life in Rajasthan. It has also been translated into Hindi as Aage Khulta Rasta.
Original title: Samhin Khulato Magar
“This district right in the middle of a sandy stretch does not strike one either as a town or village at first sight. How can one call it a village when it only extends two and a half kilometers and has a population of seven or eight thousand? The settlement has a reasonably good bazaar. There are also big and small government offices. In its northwest there is an open stretch of land formed by the merger of two rain-fed rivers spread over four to five kilometers and many wells formed by brackish waters. After the winter this water is taken out and thrown into small plots of land and further used to make salt after it dries. For this to happen summer is the best time. For this reason people involved in this work never find the summer heat unpleasant. This salt is the source of sustenance for thousands of people living in nearby villages.“
Stateless, Prafulla Roy, translated from the Bangla by John W Hood
Kalimuddin and his family are victims of history. Originally lured from Bihar to what would become East Pakistan by the promise of a golden land for Muslims, they had struggled to build a life for themselves in Dhaka where they were a minority amongst a majority of Bengalis. The Bangladesh Liberation War only made things worse and in time Kalimuddin is forced to make the fateful decision to leave Bangladesh. They eventually arrive in Mumbai living with hundreds of others in a chawl, but their ever-pressing need is for work, and getting work without appropriate identity proves to be very difficult. Life as an illegal in the vast metropolis is not only materially hard, it is also uncertain and dangerous.
Original title: Akta Desh Chai
“The vast sky overhead was as black as tar. There was no enchanting moonlight, for the moon had not yet risen. The countless stars, like the eyes of dead fish, looked down on the world below. On such a night the sight of the stars made one shiver. However, this kind of dark night was very appealing to Fayaz Ali. To him, all such nights were a blessing, because only in the dark could his work be carried out.
From his appearance one might guess that he was not a straight or innocent man, and such a guess would be quite correct, as Fayaz, indeed, was particularly artful and cunning. He was a tout, or a middleman. He had just one job, just one interest, and that was to pull the wool over the eyes of the Bangladesh Rifles (BDR) and the Border Security Force (BSF) and bring people into India from the other side of the frontier. He had elevated his work almost to the level of a fine art. Indeed, the substantial security forces of the two countries had no idea of Fayaz’s modus operandi. He was as silent and as devious as a snake in making his operations smooth and skilful.”
Fence, Ila Arab Mehta, translated from the Gujarati by Rita Kothari
In the words of Mrinal Pande: “To understand what communalism feels like to those who have felt its fetid breath and sharp claws, one must not read social scientists, but seek out writers like Ila Arab Mehta, portrayer of Fateema Lokhandwalla and her brother Kareem, two human beings looking for that most basic of human needs – a roof over their heads, in a country that prides itself on being secular.”
Original Title: Vaad
“Like any child of eight or nine, Fateema was not particularly interested in understanding her life and family or the conditions in which they lived. Her Bapu wore a chequered lungi, at least when he was home. Ba sometimes wore a sari, but most often a loose salwar kameez, her head always covered with a dupatta. When other women in the village fasted and participated in festivals, Ba would be busy grinding. This did not seem strange to Fateema. On one or two occasions, Fateema had asked her parents if she could go to the temple for the evening aarti with her friends Naveen, Vinay, Indira and Jeenal. Her Bapu had simply said, ‘No, it’s just not done.’
‘Our religion is different, that’s the way it is’ he had added. ‘Not everyone is alike. Are all trees same? Some are tall, some are not. These are Allah’s miraculous ways.’”
Unspoken Things, Mridula Behari, translated from the Hindi by Lise McKean
Unspoken Things is an extraordinary saga set in India of a daughter, mother, and grandmother. The book takes readers on a journey that spans half a century. It begins in the early 1940s with Mrinalini, the teenage daughter of Yadunandan Prasad Verma, a prosperous lawyer turned freedom fighter. Inspired by her father and the Independence Movement, Mrinalini reads and writes revolutionary poetry and recites it at political protests in their North Indian town of Kabirganj.
In the aftermath of a tumultuous rally, the son of a visiting freedom fighter escorts her home to safety – and kindles her interest in him. As the various characters draw closer, readers are left to observe how the consequences of big and small decisions ripple across and intersect with lives.
Original title: Kuch Ankahi
“Rama often felt that her entire life was meaningless. She had a burning desire to do something altogether new and different, something important. She told herself it was impossible, that society wouldn’t allow it. Shivangi avoided her mother for a few days and didn’t say a word to her. What could Rama do? She looked at Mrinalini with pain in her eyes, as if saying, see how she tortures me? Shivangi had shown her inquisitiveness in the past with questions like, ‘Mother, why do we live alone?’
‘Alone? What do you mean by alone? Your grandmother and I are here with you,’ Rama answered.
‘I mean, everyone’s father stays with them.’
What could she say? She sidestepped discussing the composition of a typical family and said, ‘You’re still a child, you don’t understand.’
‘I’m not a child! I’m in seventh grade. Where’s your wedding portrait? All my friends’ parents have one at their house.’
Trying to placate her she said lovingly, ‘Let’s have some ice cream. It’s right here in the fridge.’ Back then the question hadn’t taken such a hold and it wasn’t hard to change the subject."
The Last Puff and Other Stories, Anu Singh, translated from the Hindi by Manisha Chaudhry
A journalist and documentary-maker converts her experiences and imagination into a series of contemporary short stories in Hindi depicting life in different parts and among different social classes in India. The stories straddle both urban and rural settings.
Original title: Neela Scarf
“The Last Puff
‘He ought to be home with his parents. He owes them his life. He didn’t owe me anything,’ said she in a deeply weary voice, resting her head on her roommate’s shoulder. ‘I’ve known him since childhood. He is not ready for a change. He never was. And just look at me, changing every minute… wanting to be someone else all the time. I have no idea what I am looking for. Who I want to be. He won’t be able to endure this constant search and then will end up hating me. He will feel miserable and helpless. I can bear his going away but I can’t bear his leaving me just because he couldn’t bear me the way I was,’ she babbled in a monotone as if she was slowly getting high on the puffs of her cigarette."