Wives and Others: Short Stories and a Novella. By Manik Bandyopadhyay/Tr. Kalpana Bardhan. New Delhi: Penguin Books, 1994. Pp. xxix, 345. Rs. 125 pb.
All of the works Bardhan has selected were originally published in the 1930's and `40's (xiv) and can be seen as revolving around human relationships and perceptions of the self. Manik's female characters are lively and varied, although in the "Bou" stories they necessarily struggle against, and are often defeated by, the narrowly defined roles assigned to them as wives and mothers.
While Manik's fictional personalities represent social "types," each character is also uniquely lifelike. The plain Sarasi's discovery of--and mortification by--the voluptuousness of her own body in "The Clerk's Wife" ("KeranIr bou") and Shankar's terrifying delusions in "Serpent-like" ("Sarpil") are as unforgettable as the walled compounds and run-down mansions the characters live in. Sumati's healthy egotism in the beginning of "The Spirited Wife" ("TejI bou") is tonic reading after countless portrayals of South Asian women (by writers of every persuasion and background) as beguiling mysteries filled with unexpressed emotion.
Given Manik's qualities as a writer, it is regrettable that Bardhan's translations in Wives and Others are mediocre at best. Manik's deft, powerful blending of literary Bengali with colloquial freshness is only dimly reflected in Bardhan's jumble of idioms: "Little did she know that . . . [Suryakanta] would himself appear one day, accompanied by three friends, to view her as his potential bride, and after checking her out, give his consent."[146] (`The Writer's Wife," 33; reviewer's emphasis). There is nothing in the original to warrant the descent from "potential-bride-viewing" to "checking out." Is it only the difference in editorial effort that results in the vast difference between the prose of the volume under review and the clean, readable work found in Bardhan's earlier collection of Translations Of Women, Outcastes, Peasants, and Rebels (Berkeley: Univ. of California Press, 1990)? Despite Bardhan's attested commitment to Manik and his causes (Translator's Introduction), her murky translations are often a chore to work through even with the Bengali original ringing in one's mental ear. Bardhan is too faithful at times, failing to convert participle-driven Bengali sentences into appropriate English: "Hearing such things constantly, her fearfulness grows" ("The Clerk's Wife," 26) should have ended with "...she grew more fearful."Why couldn't the title of "Andher Bou" simply be translated "The Blind Man's Wife"--parallel to "The Shopkeeper's Wife," "The Writer's Wife" etc. instead of "The Wife of a Man Gone Blind"? All the Bengali titles end in bou , and the original does not signal to us to distinguish between "blind"--a possibly pejorative adjective--and "gone blind"--a vaguely milder one. The sudden variation adds further disorderliness to the generally artless, and perhaps rushed, translation.
Although Bardhan's translations do not bear close reading, Wives and Others is accessible and relevant for non-Bengali readers interested in modern South Asian literature and society. The sheer amount of material translated in this collection can give one a sense of Manik's literary and historical importance, as well as afford precious glimpses into twentieth-century Bengali experience. It should be noted, however, that, through no fault of Bardhan's, the cover of the Penguin paperback seems to participate in a dubious trend of commercial publishing: it baits the prospective buyer to the cultural finesse and possible feminism of the contents by means of "artistic nudes" of South Asian women.