Nabanjur

by Sulekha Sanyal

English (translation)Original Bengali

246 pages, Paperback

First published December 1, 2001

Reviews

[Tejaswini · Rating 4 out of 5]

' The Seedling's tale' by Sulekha Sanyal originally written as 'Nabankur' in Bengali, set up in pre- independence era of rural Bengal is a coming of age novel of Chobbi, an eight year old girl belonging to the higher caste of Ray family. Grown up in a joint & patriarch family, Chobbi is prone to many dictums set by the men of the house & thereby soceity as a whole. She is not like any other girl in the village who confines to her lone destiny of getting married & lengthening her husband's lineage, but she has her own 'self-made' dreams in store.

She observes women in the house toiling with chores & choking in kitchen whole day for which they are prized with a morsel or two of food & sometimes the last mop of the vessel as their meal. She later concludes that not even a single woman she had ever known isnt spared without grief & always a woman has to bare the brunt at the recieving end. She discerns how patriarchy exploits the stance of women bounding them to the four walls of a house & blinding them inside the veil of their anchal.

She sling shots questions at her mother Mamatha : why, what, how to every misconduct against women in the soceity whose answers are either unconvincing or a simple despondent sigh at her daughter's defident gestures. But we see Mamatha silently wishing a future 'unlike' hers & others ; and resultantly she struggles to send Chobbi with her aunt for higher studies to town.

The transition of Chobbi's life journey from childhood to adolescence to adulthood exposes her to numerous prejudices in the system owing to caste, class & creed. From witnessing oppression of her own women of the house, in the years to come her purview expands to behold the hunger cries of drought that havocked entire Bengal adversely. She goes against all the men in the house volunteering relief kitchens & participating various meetings & marchs. All these rebellious instincts were smouldered by her dearest uncle Adhir who had imbibed right from her childhood. She admires his Swadeshi ideologies & modernist traits for which he is thrown out as an outcast from the renowned household.

One could conviniently presume Chobbi as a semi auto biographical character of the author herself by reading her introduction. The author has braided tumult in Chobbi's life events resonating with the hiatus of Bengal in its dire state. The author has drawn out all the glimpses of taboos that reigned the soceity through Chobbi's journey- jinxed situation of widows, the sin of marrying out of caste, reluctantance to provide education to girl child etc.,. The writhing pain of poor wallowing with dreadful draught & relocations that war had wrecked is captured in the hinsight of the plot very distinctly.

Thus this unspeckled translation of 'Nabankur' (seedling) with Bengali vernacular creeping all throughout the text ornated with blossoms of Tagore poetry blooming here & there is a satiating sight of a seedling sprouting from a tiny seed to flourishing with nourishment; a promising sight of tender sapling spreading into a lush foliage.