June 20, 2004

Anumber of critics are of the view that Munshi Premchand is the first professional short story writer of Urdu literature. Bearing in mind the vagueness of the claim, one can take issue with it. But one could not dispute the fact that Munshi Premchand’s note-perfect delineation of rural life and its conflicts and the norms that bedevil a typical Indian society in his novels and shorter pieces provided new grounds to his contemporaries to build their dreams of fiction on. Writing initially in Urdu, the remarkable author also wrote in Hindi and produced nearly 300 short stories and novels, some of which (Sevasadan, Rangmanch, Godan, Gaban and Nirmala) can easily be described as masterpieces.

Gaban, the English translation of the book under discussion, was first printed in 1931. Like all of Munshi Premchand’s books, Gaban also addresses the subject matter that the readers are familiar with like the back of their hands: women’s love for jewellery and men’s love for women. In a nutshell, the story pivots around Ramanath, an attractive young man with a lot of human shortcomings.

His beautiful wife, Jalpa, always hankers after jewellery and pushes him — not always in a wily manner — to make sure that she remains decked up. The pace of the book quickens when Ramanath steals his own wife’s jewels, an act prompted by the fact that his family had gone into debt to make his marriage ceremony a success. This leads Ramanath to getting involved in convoluted economic tie-ups with people at work, resulting in Ramanath’s humiliation and escape from home.

Somehow Jalpa finds out where her husband is and upon discovering that he has become putty in the hands of the Calcutta police, she does her utmost to redeem him and herself — and succeeds.

Despite the assumption that the plot seems a tad run-of-the-mill, the way Gaban is narrated by the author would make the likes of John Grisham seem envious. Apart from the brisk clip at which the story runs, the true-to-life characters are strongly etched out by the master yarn-spinner. This all sounds like cliched showering of praise but the fact of the matter is that this is precisely where Munshi Premchand excels. How society makes a commoner succumb to worldly woes and how intrinsic human goodness occasionally triumphs.

Having said that, this particular translation of the novel (by Christopher R. King) leaves a lot to be desired. One is aware of the fact that translating a work of art is a thankless job. The translator keeps on dangling between how to make the translation contextually faithful and how to make its narration as linguistically rich as the original — not to mention the cultural cleavage that can often be the most challenging impediment to overcome. This is precisely where the translator’s role comes in. He has to strike a balance between the two enormous challenges. For example, the reason why Milan Kundera (the renowned Czech fiction writer) is widely read all over the globe is that his books (despite being originally written in Czech and French) is that his thoughts and phrases — if not the entire language — are so fluidly transported to other linguistic realms that one often feels that the text is written in the language one is reading. Christopher R. King has tried too hard to keep close to the original in Gaban but that makes the English version sound pedestrian. “Burned by milk, he even blew on buttermilk before drinking it” can never be a proper substitute for, “Doodh ka jala chhaj bhi phoonk phoonk ker peeta hai”. The English language itself is rich in proverbs that can readily convey the meaning of the above-mentioned saying. “Once bitten twice shy” is one example to make it sound less vapid.

Gaban — The Stolen Jewels
By Premchand
Translated by Christopher R. King
OUP, New Delhi. Available with Oxford University Press, Plot # 38, Sector 15, Korangi Industrial Area, Karachi. Tel: 111-693-673
Email: ouppak@theoffice.net
Website: www.oup.com.pk
ISBN 019566263-6
309pp. Rs296.40

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