“Abruptly, a
furred dark glove forced itself through the darkness. Its hard blunt nail made
its way into Juni’s clothes and with one sharp pull tore her only honour into
two. Ghosts burst into laughter. Exactly in a human voice it commanded in the national
language, ‘Abbe saala, batti bujhaa, batti bujhaa.’ And all semi-spherical
yellow eyes went off. Entire house was plunged into impenetrable darkness. Horrified,
Juni screamed for the second time, a huge rock from the dark cell itself fell heavily
upon her. Strangling her, it tied her to the bed. She desperately fought to
push the darkness aside. She was floundering like a lunatic for a little bit of
light. She made every effort to tear off the thick fur and stout skin of the
darkness with her teeth and finger-nails. But the darkness, now even darker, relentlessly
kept descending upon her, and grabbed her completely exhausted body, and wildly
tearing all the remaining obstructions the darkness, with its all brutishness,
thrust itself into her furthest depth.”
This is the
English translation of a paragraph from Nunko Chiya, a novel in Nepali version
of Bengali original Nun Chaa by Bimal Lama. Nepali translation is accomplished
by Samik Chakraborty. Isn’t it very interesting that the novel was written in
Bengali by the one whose mother tongue is Nepali, and it has been translated
into Nepali by the one whose mother tongue is Bengali?
In the
paragraph quoted above, (English translation mine), the writer, employing the
metaphor of darkness, dark fur etcetera, has so grippingly brought alive the
rape scene committed by an armed raider during the period of the Gorkhaland
movement in 1986 – 88. The scene created with the words in the paragraph
violently stirs the reader’s sensibility. Isn’t it like a powerful symbolic
scene come out of the mind of a highly creative and deft cine director? Isn’t
it like a great cubistic painting?
The novel,
Nunko Chiya, is undoubtedly a work of great artistry. The subtle interlacing of
two strands of the story beginning a few chapters later is simply superb,
outstanding. Ending of the novel exhibits even greater artistry of the writer.
Only the one with great craft and aesthetic sense can create such kind of work.
I wish this novel be translated into English by some competent translator and
published by internationally well known publisher.
No comments:
Post a Comment