Book Review: 'Flaming Flowers, Vol 1' By Bishnupriya Chowdhuri

Reviewed work: Flaming Flowers, Vol.1, Ed. Bishnupriya Chowdhuri, Kolkata: The Antonym Collections

I want to wander about in this city, one evening, all alone. That evening, I wish to be isolated like a sleeping being, nobody looking for me.

The readers are flaneurs within. Walking for ages relentlessly, they engage actively in transgressing the ‘shadow lines’ that haunt us like stubborn ghosts.

Regional literatures in translation with all its richness and beauty are still peripheral. Only recently, translators across the globe are seeing rainbows in the clouded sky. Bishnupriya Chowdhuri’s edited project Flaming Flowers, Vol.1 is conceivably one of the most potential additions to the oeuvre of translated works for its choice of stories from seven women writers of two Bengals. The tales are finely sensitive, touching, insightful, and above all, brimming with a delicacy of expressions and moving images. The representation of the ordinary makes the volume delightfully extraordinary.

The stories stream effortlessly; with each, there is a turn, and yet, they are one. The translations do not mar the distinct flavour and the flow of the narratives. The songs like “Where have you gone, oh bhramar?” are, however, onerous for other cultures to comprehend. For Bengalis, those words immediately invoke the original music and the country rhythm. The stories, all translated by women, mostly echo the plight of women of different socio-economic backgrounds thriving for the final respite: while Maya (Maya, an Illusion by Anita Agnihotri, tr. Malini Mukherjee) waits with her empty trunk, promising unknown treasure, to be put on the pyre, Nuri (A Cloudless Night, an Eclipsed Moon by Papree Rahman, tr. Shabnam Nadiya) leaves the colony silently with the newborn for the uncertain after what happened on nights when waters were filled to the brim. Every story speaks of a void ineffably dark, deep and multilayered. The denouements are ambiguous and open: they fascinatingly meander in oblivion.

The translations have blurred to some extent the distinctive signature styles of the writers that can be discerned in the originals. Perhaps, it is inevitable. Shaheen Akhtar’s stories are on a tangent to the rest in the collection. It appears a little strange why an educated lady with a job, Rosie, desires to give herself to a man like Chowdhury (Cold Tea by Shaheen Akhtar, tr. Rituparna Mukherjee). However, her stories are unique in their colours and textures of narrating lives.

Nostalgia and longing for the lost add an enchanting sepia tone. The image of a mother knitting crochet under the hurricane lamp, as she refuses all engulfing technology, is now a distant memory. The stories are vibrant with oblique ideas that compel the readers to rethink the commonplace.

“Nightmares are good to have…

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For me, if I get a really good one like I am travelling around different countries or have a rare gift, I wake up feeling rotten to the core knowing nothing of those really happened. But imagine, a killer is chasing you in your dreams and you are running for your dear life along endless paths. Then the killer grabs you…You will be so light after you wake up.” (A Different Kind by Nasreen Jahan, tr. Bishnupriya Chowdhuri)

We are all challenged like the plump rooster (Murder by Tilottama Majumdaar, tr. Subarna Banerjee) fighting endlessly. Living is not as simple as Ibrahim Miya’s calculations (Up above the Sky so High by Papree Rahman, tr. Sukti Sarkar). Who cares to know why Khalamma walks bare feet down the road in ‘the asphalt-melting midday heat of the month of Bhadra’ in a fugue state? (The Edges of Love by Shaheen Akhtar, tr. Shamita Das Dasgupta) The chain of oppression is unfortunately so naturalized that we barely notice them. And, we are all perplexed to the core like Ratan Master at the end of the day (Murder by Tilottama Majumdaar, tr. Subarna Banerjee). We travel in and out of others’ stories and live our shared tales. These stories are possibilities that flow like rivers.