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The Open-Winged Scorpion: And Other Stories
The Open-Winged Scorpion and Other Stories is a collection of ten powerful Bengali short stories, all translated into English for the first time. Hailing from Murshidabad district in West Bengal, Abul Bashar pens stories about precarious lives of marginal Muslim communities in that district. His tales are shot through with the fears, dreams, hopes, and anxieties of the communities he their poverty and piety, the sensuality of the ancient mythologies they reimagine and remember, the rituals that permeate their lives, and the ever-present influence of the River Padma, which brings the silt that makes the land flourish—and the floods that destroy the crops and the people who plant them. The complex dynamics of the trivial and the transcendental emerge in Bashar’s stories, as the tales become no less than an archive and richly imagined historical testimony of an abject community relegated to the margins of the society too focused on the future to remember people who are struggling in the here and now.
222 pages, Kindle Edition
Published September 15, 2021
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About the author
Abul Bashar
22 books6 followersআবুল বাশারের জন্ম ১৯৫১ খ্রীস্টাব্দে। ছয় বছর বয়সে সপরিবার গ্রাম তাগ। মুর্শিদাবাদের লালবাগ মহকুমার টেকা গ্রামে বসবাস শুরু। কলকাতা বিশ্ববিদ্যালয়ের বাণিজ্যের স্নাতক। হিন্দিভাষা-সাহিত্যেরও ডিপ্লোমা। গ্রামের স্কুলে ১০-১২ বছর চাকুরি। কাজ করেছেন সাপ্তাহিক ‘দেশ’ পত্রিকায়। দারিদ্র্যের চাপ আর সামাজিক বিষমতা ও পীড়ন কৈশোরেই লেখালেখিতে প্ররোচিত। উত্তীর্ণকৈশোরে, ১৯৭১ সালে, প্রথমে কবিতাগ্রন্থের প্রকাশ। নাম : ‘জড় উপড়ানো ডালাপা ভাঙা আর এক ঋতু’। পরবর্তী এক দশক লেখালেখি বন্ধ। জড়িয়ে পড়েন সক্রিয় রাজনীতিতে। বহরমপুরের ‘রৌরব’ পত্রিকাগোষ্ঠীর প্রেরণায় লেখালেখিতে প্রত্যাবর্তন। কবিতা ছেড়ে এবার গল্পে। প্রথম মুদ্রিত গল্প ‘মাটি ছেড়ে যায়’। ‘ফুলবউ’ উপন্যাসের জন্য পেয়েছেন ১৩৯৪ সালের আনন্দ-পুরস্কার।
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May 1, 2022
The Open-Winged Scorpion and Other Stories by Abul Bashar was not my original read for West Bengal. But I am so glad I read it. I loved this collection.
As the blurb says Bashar’s stories are largely about the ‘precarious lives of marginal Muslim communities’ in and around his home of Murshidabad. The proximity to the Bangladesh border and the label of otherness resulting from it, the Padma river and its bounty and cruelty, all this colours the lives of the people who live here. ‘Measure of Land’, for instance, has a landless individual (in fact, landless for seven generations although he’s lived in the same place and is called a refugee), neither Muslim nor Hindu but practising Islam to win the favour of a lord, waiting for the lord’s dog to die so he can be allotted the land that is in the dog’s name. The story turned my assumptions on its head with its ending and I was so moved by the grace and helplessness of nearly everyone involved.
It is not that Bashar’s tale does not have villains but they seem so insignificant. It’s the people, flawed and human—sometimes perpetrating some thoughtless villainy that is soon regretted—that made a place in my heart. ‘Simar’, for instance, seems to have a clear object of hate but instead it made me think about what evil is and who can be called evil, or as the introduction says ‘whether monstrosity is innate to man or whether he is made a monster under the pressure of religious imaginations’. Another story that again upended my idea of good and evil was ‘The Road’.
I found so much beauty in Bashar’s writing but it evokes so much sorrow as well. Bashar’s stories, I felt, were like well-executed photographs of painful subjects. I am so grateful for translator Epsita Halder’s introduction (and of course, her translation itself). It feels like someone holding your hand and leading you into Bashar’s world. It offers wonderful context and some handy interpretations for Bashar’s at times fantastical world inspired by Islamic myths. And the translation is fluid and seems to retain the spirit of Bashar’s writing. The Translator’s Acknowledgements suggests that Halder had long discussions with Bashar. I am sure those discussions, in addition to her obvious enjoyment of Bashar’s writing, make this a beautifully translated work.
Bashar writes about a small part of a large country but I think his appeal is universal because of his humanity. The characters he creates are capable of grace, cruelty, love, hatred, joy, sorrow, oh, everything our real lives are like. Bashar’s stories do what Indian media no longer does—gives us multidimensional people with backstories that generate empathy. It then becomes difficult to muster the kind of mindless hate that Indian TV news channels are fanning these days. I think we need more people reading Bashar and we need more of his work translated.
As the blurb says Bashar’s stories are largely about the ‘precarious lives of marginal Muslim communities’ in and around his home of Murshidabad. The proximity to the Bangladesh border and the label of otherness resulting from it, the Padma river and its bounty and cruelty, all this colours the lives of the people who live here. ‘Measure of Land’, for instance, has a landless individual (in fact, landless for seven generations although he’s lived in the same place and is called a refugee), neither Muslim nor Hindu but practising Islam to win the favour of a lord, waiting for the lord’s dog to die so he can be allotted the land that is in the dog’s name. The story turned my assumptions on its head with its ending and I was so moved by the grace and helplessness of nearly everyone involved.
It is not that Bashar’s tale does not have villains but they seem so insignificant. It’s the people, flawed and human—sometimes perpetrating some thoughtless villainy that is soon regretted—that made a place in my heart. ‘Simar’, for instance, seems to have a clear object of hate but instead it made me think about what evil is and who can be called evil, or as the introduction says ‘whether monstrosity is innate to man or whether he is made a monster under the pressure of religious imaginations’. Another story that again upended my idea of good and evil was ‘The Road’.
I found so much beauty in Bashar’s writing but it evokes so much sorrow as well. Bashar’s stories, I felt, were like well-executed photographs of painful subjects. I am so grateful for translator Epsita Halder’s introduction (and of course, her translation itself). It feels like someone holding your hand and leading you into Bashar’s world. It offers wonderful context and some handy interpretations for Bashar’s at times fantastical world inspired by Islamic myths. And the translation is fluid and seems to retain the spirit of Bashar’s writing. The Translator’s Acknowledgements suggests that Halder had long discussions with Bashar. I am sure those discussions, in addition to her obvious enjoyment of Bashar’s writing, make this a beautifully translated work.
Bashar writes about a small part of a large country but I think his appeal is universal because of his humanity. The characters he creates are capable of grace, cruelty, love, hatred, joy, sorrow, oh, everything our real lives are like. Bashar’s stories do what Indian media no longer does—gives us multidimensional people with backstories that generate empathy. It then becomes difficult to muster the kind of mindless hate that Indian TV news channels are fanning these days. I think we need more people reading Bashar and we need more of his work translated.
Displaying 1 of 1 review