Review: A new translation of Portrait of Love by Suryakant Tripathi Nirala
Few writers dare to question, irritate and agitate the reader like Nirala did. Gautam Choubey’s translation successfully catches the spirit of the original
I was introduced to Suryakant Tripathi Nirala at school. Naturally, I didn’t care for his stories. That reaction wasn’t about the experience of reading him but about learning relevant sections by rote so I could fill up the pages of my exam sheets. Some time after I was done with schooling, I began rereading all those writers I had first met in text books hoping that this time, the experience would be different. I’m glad I did. Nirala is considered one of the greatest voices in Chhayavad poetry and his work remains relevant even today.
Gautam Choubey, the translator of Nirala’s A Portrait of Love: Six Stories, One Novella provides a brief history of Nirala’s life and then guides the reader into his literary world. Nirala recognized the duty of a writer to put pertinent questions before his reader and seamlessly incorporated issues of class, caste and gender into stories like Chaturi Chamar. Chaturi is a skilled shoemaker but that isn’t his only quality. Though illiterate, he is immensely knowledgeable about Kabir and the meaning of his couplets, which impresses the narrator. The story goes on to reveal the power dynamics between different castes and how they are instilled at a young age. The layered commentary on different aspects of the social life of rural India makes Nirala who he is. In the title story, A Portrait of Love, he presents two contrasting characters, both with their own kinds of flaws. Babu Premkumar, a graduate student in Lucknow is more interested in pretending to be a nawab and failing continuously while his hostel mate Shankar comes from a traditional Brahmin family and believes in conservative values. Both of them believe in the supremacy of their way of living, one rooted in class privilege and the other in caste. The story goes on to reveal how easily Premkumar, who is proud of his looks, is fooled into believing that a girl is deeply in love with him. The story works on many levels as it challenges rigid Brahminical ideals even as it ridicules lavish lifestyles that are often unthinnkingly considered modern or ‘civilised’.
A master of wit, Nirala, who was born in Bengal, uses satire to enable the reader to appreciate comedy even in tragic social realities. His free-spiritedness was not limited to his literature and also encompassed his life. The translator mentions an anecdote about Nirala getting hold of ₹300, which he handed to Mahadevi Verma in an attempt to avoid spending it. However, he still managed to splurge it all within a week by helping out fellow writers, students and acquaintances in need of cash. He did not let his analytical side win over his humanity in life; his stories too tell the same tale.
The last translation of his work that I read was Kullibhat, intricately translated by Satti Khanna and published in English as A Life Misspent. I had high expectations from this translation too, which Choubey has fully met.
Along with the background of his stories, Nirala often included several smaller details, which made them even more authentic. This quality has been conveyed quite efficiently in this English translation. The six short stories in this volume – Sukul’s Wife, Jyotirmayee, Portrait Of A Lady-Love, What I Saw, Chaturi Chamar and Devi – and the novella, Billesur Bakriha, have intersecting themes but still carry their own unique narratives.
In many of the author’s works, there is a peculiar absence of a distinction between the self and the stories, which makes it difficult for the reader to ascertain if it is fiction that he is reading or something that the author has lived through. Perhaps it is exactly this quality that also makes the reader identify with them. Nirala’s silent rebellion against normalised discrimination speaks volumes in the stories like Devi where the character, Pagli, who is mentally ill, is left to fend for herself and her child even as the world moves on. Apart from making a statement through the title, Pagli is also carefully etched in order to highlight society’s hypocrisy. Few writers dare to question, irritate and agitate the reader and point at the looming presence of oppressive structures. Nirala’s name will forever be on that limited list.
Chittajit Mitra (he/him) is a queer writer, translator and editor from Allahabad. He is co-founder of RAQS, an organization working on gender, sexuality and mental health.