Poonam Saxena translates the Greatest Hindi Stories Ever Told

Renu Sud Sinha

How is a literary translator born? If you are a linguist, it can be a profession. However, if you are proficient in a couple of languages and a voracious reader, it can just be a labour of love. Poonam Saxena falls into the second category. A self-confessed lover of Hindi fiction, she has earlier translated works of doyens like Dr Rahi Masoom Raza and Dr Dharamvir Bharati. “The Greatest Hindi Stories Ever Told” is her maiden endeavour at translating short stories.

A collection of 25 stories, the writers included are all well-known names from the world of Hindi literature. Old literary masters such as Premchand, Mannu Bhandari, Bhagwaticharan Verma, Phanishwarnath Renu, Krishna Sobti, Shivani share space with contemporary names such as Asghar Wajahat, Uday Prakash and Sara Rai.

Stories from the Nayi Kahani movement form a major chunk of this selection. This movement that originated post-Independence, and flourished between 1954 and 1963, aptly reflects the turmoil and the churning that a new nation goes through. Mohan Rakesh, Bhisham Sahni, Rajendra Yadav, Kamleshwar and Amarkant, who laid the foundation of this new literary trend, also form a rightful part of this anthology.

Migration to cities as a new social construct brought forth its own ills. Loneliness, cracks in the family system, oppression of women and the marginalised, eroding of traditional values and a new emerging, unfamiliar and uncomfortable ethos, these writers captured the stark reality brilliantly.

Saxena has tried to accommodate a vast range of stories — there is Chandradhar Sharma Guleri’s “She Had Said So”, regarded as first modern short story (1915), as also tales by contemporary writers. The themes are varying as well. Sobti’s “The Times Have Changed” and Mohan Rakesh’s “Lord of the Rubble” underline the fragility of the seemingly strong Hindu-Muslim ties that Partition unravelled quickly.

While some like Phanishwarnath Renu’s “Third Vow” seem dated, Mannu Bhandari’s “Trishanku” and Kamleshwar’s “A Death in Delhi” are a telling comment on our society’s facade of modernism and hypocrisy. Premchand’s “Thakur’s Well”, Krishna Baldev Vaid’s “Escape”, Agyeya’s “Gangrene” and Rajendra Yadav’s “Where Lakshmi is Held” portray women’s exploitation and their yearning for freedom, irrespective of the strata they belong to.

For those unfamiliar with the magic of Hindi short stories, this book is a worthy beginning.