Lifescapes

Bengali literary magazine Desh may have helped him along by serialising his first novel, Haribangsha, in 1942-43; Satyajit Ray may have filmed his opus on the city, Mahanagar; but Narendranath truly lives through his vibrant, varying characters. "Every writer takes something from the people he knows; but he makes things too. It seems as if the characters make themselves. A writer's joy comes from this loss of personal control. He gets from this a taste of some mystery which is hard to unravel." (Atmakatha.)

From the manic obsessive Nashrat Ali in Chand Miya to the "wandering" mind of Pranabesh babu who wants to disappear without 'leaving any whereabouts', his characters have a will of their own. Thrown among them are Jainuddin and Renu who thirst for love (Once Again, Asthma); a mother who searches for a perfect match for her daughter (Son-in-law); Bangshi who tries in vain to beg, steal, borrow a 'covering' for his wife (A Piece of Cloth); Govinda who saves a scrap of paper where his love's first poem is published—despite the fact that his family survives by making paper bags.

Some typos, a couple of mixed pages notwithstanding, Ray's selection of 11 out of 500 is fairly representative. That goes for the translation as well, which is lucid. Which is only a tribute to Narendranath, who never delved in the high prose of his illustrious predecessors but chose to speak the language of the man on the street.