Ritwik Ghatak - Stories

ritwik

ghatak

ritwik

ghatak

translated by

Rani Ray

Srishti

P UBLISHERS &. D ISTRIBUTORS

S RISHTI P UBLISHERS & D ISTRIBUTORS

64-A, Adhchini

Sri Aurobindo Marg

New Delhi 110017

First published by SRISHTI PUBLISHERS & DISTRIBUTORS in 2001

Copyright Srishti Publishers & Distributors 2001

Copyright original title in Bengali with

Ritwit Ghatak Foundation, Calcutta

Copyright for the English Transitions Dr. Rani Ray

Rs.195.00

ISBN 81-87075-55-4

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Printed and bound in India by Saurabh Print-O-Pack Noida (UP).

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Contents

Acknowledgements

In Lieu of an Introduction

1. The Tree

2. Solstice

3. On the Trail of the Milky Way

4. The Deposition

5. Shikha

6. Ecstasy

7. The Fairy Tale

8. Raja

9. Touchstone

10. The Earthly Paradise
Remains Unshaken

11. The crystal Goblet

12. Eyes

13. Comrade

14. The Road

15. Love

16. The Divine Resonance

17. Attack

Acknowledgements

The translator gratefully acknowledges the affection, encouragement and help received from the family of Ritwik Ghatak - his wife Suroma and son Ritban - in translating his stories. Thanks are also due to Dr. Bikash Kumar Bhattacharya, Assistant Librarian, Sahitya Akademi Library, for identifying and locating the mythological sources of Ritwiks creative imagination; to Sumanta Banerjee for being the guiding spirit behind the volume; to Sonali Prakash for taking on the roles of reader, editor and critic and to Ira Bhaskar for allowing me to share her undiminished interest in Ghatak.

In Lieu of an Introduction

I

For filmlovers, whether in India or abroad, Ritwik Ghatak surely needs no introduction. But his short stories are less known than his films. For readers, therefore, a few words may be necessary by way of an introduction.

Some artists and writers, after having reached the top, appear to long for a second love a medium which is different from that in which they had established their reputation. The insatiable urge for challenges and adventures on a new soil of productivity probably drove Rabindranath Tagore to seriously take up painting in his late sixties. Or, was it a sense of impatience with the available tools of expression in poetry, which he felt were inadequate for communicating the new and complex concerns that were agonizing him in the 1930s? Were Satyajit Rays forays into the domain of science fiction and detective stories mere exercises in leisurely relaxation, or did they imply something deeper a multi-dimensional artists restless search for the right media form that would suitably express a particular idea or mood of his?

Unlike Tagores paintings or Rays fiction, the bulk of the stories that make up this volume are not experiments by a famous artist in search of a second love. They were written by an individual long before he became famous as a powerful personality in another artistic field the films. They belong to a phase in his life which could be described as that of his first love when as a young imaginative artist, he was groping for a medium that would best suit his creative urges. Like many other artists who spend their initial years of apprenticeship in stumbling from one area to another, experimenting with a variety of media, and finally discovering the most suitable one for their artistic creativity, Ritwik Ghatak also traversed this entire complex artistic terrain before he could reach the medium with which he could find himself in rapport - although he was never totally satisfied.

Ritwiks short stories were an outcome of a brief sojourn during this intellectual odyssey of his. As can be seen, most of the stories in this volume were written within a short span of three or four years, between 1947 and 1950. In order to understand them, therefore, we may have to reverse our gears - from the present to the past, from our familiarity with Ritwik, the famous film-maker of the 1950-70 period, to our search for a young and unknown writer, struggling to shape his own voice during those tumultuous years of a post-War Bengal lacerated by communal riots and the 1947 Partition and ending up in the pathetic hopelessness of the post- Independence era.

Is a reading of Ritwiks stories then merely a nostalgic exercise in remembering a past? Is this collection simply a personal tribute by a handful of his contemporaries and admirers - just to remind his audience of another facet of his versatility which was eclipsed by the more obvious wealth and virtuosity of his later filmography?

It is certainly beyond all this. We strongly feel that these stories are not to be celebrated as mere museum-pieces in a Ritwikiana , but need to be recognized historically as the first artistic steps that led to Ritwiks entry into the portals of cinematography. They therefore claim to be very much a living part of the on-going research on Ritwik Ghataks films. They are as essential as his films, for an understanding of the totality of his being that went to the making of those films. Critics and students have so far depended mainly on his scattered articles, snatches of reminiscences and stray observations, for supplementing their own appreciation of Ritwiks films. The present collection may yield to them both in India and abroad - another major source, albeit indirect, that can help them to explore some of the hidden or less-known origins that might have shaped Ritwiks filmography

At the same time, those who want to read these stories for their own sake, as self-contained literary pieces without any obligation to discover in them embryonic signs of Ritwiks future films are at liberty to interpret the various layers of meanings that they yield. They are works of miniaturist art in their own right - and as deftly-crafted short stories, some of them can easily rival the best in this genre.

II

Ritwik Kumar Ghatak was bom on November 4, 1925 in Dhaka (now in Bangladesh). He was the youngest (along with his twin sister) of nine children of a senior government official who, in the course of his assignments, was posted in different parts of the then undivided Bengal. Ritwik thus grew up in surroundings which provided him with the rich and unforgettable experience of traditional rural life in eastern Bengal. At the same time, he received abundant intellectual stimuli from his family environs that were home to modern European ideas and literature. These two basic ingredients of tradition and modernity shaped Ritwiks artistic temperament.

Remembering his childhood, spent mostly in the small towns of east Bengal in the pre-Partition era, Ritwik was to write later: My days were spent on the banks of the Padma the days of an unruly and wild child. The people on the passenger boats looked like dwellers of some distant planet. The large merchant ships coming from Patna, Bankipore, Monghyr, carried sailors speaking a strange tongue, in a mixture of broken rural Hindi and the dialect of those from across the Padma. I saw the fishermen. In the drizzling rain of the village they would in sudden joy, break into some mad tune which would pull at your heartstrings with the sudden gusts of wind and make you yearn for something vague ... Once in autumn, he sailed off on a boat and lost his way among tall grasses where snakes hid. Overwhelmed with the pollens of the grass, he almost got choked, but the memory of the pollens remained with him forever. At another time, he got hired to act in a play, missed his train, and landed up in a remote village at nightfall. It was the night before the fullmoon. In front of him was a haunted lake. He punted down the lake with a friend in the gathering darkness.