Grain Of Sand

Rabindranath Tagore

Description

A timeless tale of complex emotional relationships from an acknowledged master Soon to be a major motion picture directed by Rituparno Ghosh, Chokher Bali is Nobel Prize-winning author Rabindranath Tagore s classic exposition of an extramarital affair that takes place within the confines of a joint family. It is the story of the rich, flamboyant Mahendra and his simple, demure, beautiful wife Asha a young couple who are befriended by the pragmatic Bihari. Their cosy domestic scenario undergoes great upheaval with the introduction of the vivacious Binodini, a young, attractive widow who comes to live with them. Asha and Binodini become bosom pals. Binodini is initially drawn to Bihari but then begins to respond to the advances of Mahendra, who has become obsessively attracted to her. After several twists and turns, Binodini elopes with Mahendra, leaving the entire family in turmoil. Bihari pursues them to Allahabad and succeeds in bringing them back to Kolkata, but the question remains: can a marriage that has once been ruptured by breach of trust be mended again into a meaningful relationship? On the one hand, A Grain of Sand: Chokher Bali is a sensational account of two illicit relationships: Mahendra s infatuation with Binodini which blinds him to everything else, and Binodini s secret passion for Bihari of which she is never able to speak. On the other hand, it is a complex tapestry woven by the emotional interplay between five finely etched characters: the impulsive Mahendra, his adoring mother Rajlakshmi, the frail and sensitive Asha, the strong, silent Bihari, and the self-willed and irresistibly attractive Binodini. A compelling portrayal of the complexity of relationships and of human character, this landmark novel is just as powerful and thought-provoking today as it was a hundred years ago, when it was written.

Informations

• Publié par: Penguin Books Ltd
• Date de parution: 24 septembre 2003
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9788184758405
• Langue: English

Extrait

RABINDRANATH TAGORE
A Grain of Sand
Chokher Bali
Translated from the Bengali by Sreejata Guha
Introduction by Swagato Ganguly
PENGUIN BOOKS
Contents
About the Author
A Note on the Title
Introduction
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Chapter 37
Chapter 38
Chapter 39
Chapter 40
Chapter 41
Chapter 42
Chapter 43
Chapter 44
Chapter 45
Chapter 46
Chapter 47
Chapter 48
Chapter 49
Chapter 50
Chapter 51
Chapter 52
Chapter 53
Chapter 54
Chapter 55
Author s Note
Copyright Page
PENGUIN BOOKS
A GRAIN OF SAND: CHOKHER BALI
Born in 1861, Rabindranath Tagore was one of the key figures of the Bengal Renaissance. He started writing at an early age, and by the turn of the century had become a household name in Bengal as a poet, a songwriter, a playwright, an essayist, a short story writer and a novelist. In 1913 he was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature for his verse collection Gitanjali . At about the same time he founded Visva Bharati, a university located in Shantiniketan near Kolkata. Called the Great Sentinel of modern India by Mahatma Gandhi, Tagore steered clear of active politics, but is famous for returning the knighthood conferred on him as a gesture of protest against the Jallianwala Bagh massacre in 1919.
Tagore was a pioneering literary figure, renowned for his ceaseless innovations in poetry, prose, drama, music and painting, which he took up late in life. His works include some sixty collections of verse, novels like Gora , Chokher Bali and Home and the World , plays like Red Oleanders and The Post Office , over a hundred short stories, essays on religious, social and literary topics, and over 2000 songs, including the national anthems of India and Bangladesh.
Rabindranath Tagore died in 1941. His eminence as India s greatest modern poet remains unchallenged to this day.
Sreejata Guha has an MA in Comparative Literature from State University of New York at Stony Brook. She has worked as a translator and editor with Stree Publications, Seagull Books and Jacaranda Press. She has previously translated Picture Imperfect , a collection of Saradindu Bandyopadhyay s Byomkesh Bakshi stories, Taslima Nasrin s novel French Lover and Saratchandra Chattopadhyay s Devdas for Penguin. Her translation of Tagore s Home and the World is forthcoming in Penguin.
Swagato Ganguly did his PhD in Comparative Literature and Literary Theory from the University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia. He is currently Assistant Editor with The Statesman in Kolkata.
A Note on the Title
Although A Grain of Sand is not a literal translation of the original title, I chose it because it powerfully evokes the most significant nuances contained in the phrase Chokher Bali, which literally means a grain of sand that lodges in the eye, an irritant, a source of discomfort. In itself an innocuous speck of dust, a grain of sand can bring tears to the eye, and cause a pearl to form inside the oyster s shell. Due to the tensile nature of the source language, the two words together evoke layers of meaning that make the phrase virtually untranslatable in English. One of the metaphorical evocations is that of the grain of sand that lodges inside the shell of an oyster and helps in forming a pearl. In my reading of Tagore s Chokher Bali , Binodini performs the function of this grain of sand. She lodges herself within Mahendra and Asha s household, afflicts their romance and through tears and tribulations, helps their relationship mature into a pearl. When Binodini suggests playfully to Asha that they be Chokher Bali to one another, she infuses an added dimension of reciprocity into the function of the grain of sand-it is an insight into the fact that both women will rub each other the wrong way, irritate each other s feelings and sentiments, just like the discordant grain of sand that the wind blows into one s eye. My choice of the title arises out of an attempt to capture this complex imagery implicit in the original phrase. It is, of course, one of many possible options and hence deserves this elaboration, following which I hope readers will feel free to name the text differently, depending on the dominant notes it strikes in each individual mind.
Bangalore
August 2003
Sreejata Guha
Introduction
In what has been called the first modern novel written in India, A Grain of Sand , whose Bengali original Chokher Bali was first published in 1903, has subjectivity and the probing of emotional and psychological depths as its hallmarks. The breakthrough it achieved can best be appreciated if it is counterpointed to Bankimchandra Chattopadhyay s 1873 novel Bishabriksha ( The Poison Tree ), which it rewrote and explicit references to which are strewn through it.
Both novels centre on the problematic figure of the upper-caste Hindu widow, whose remarriage was traditionally forbidden and who was enjoined to mortify the flesh and lead a spartan existence. Groups of social reformers had emerged by the latter half of the nineteenth century who placed the spotlight on women s issues such as lack of education, confinement to the home s inner chambers, the condition of widows, and the marrying off of child brides to adult men. Although widow remarriage had been legalized by 1856, social taboos were strong enough to ensure there were few takers of the legal privilege among the Hindu elite. At the same time, the custom of child marriages coupled with low life expectancies ensured that many women would be widowed at an early age. It is the troubling question of the sexuality of the young widow, officially purged through a regime of ascetic denial but nonetheless still thought to be present, that lurks at the centre of both novels.
The titles give away the difference in their approaches. In The Poison Tree Nagendra s wife Suryamukhi leaves home when he marries Kundanandini, a young widow. When Suryamukhi comes back to the household Kundanandini consumes poison and dies. The novel has an atmosphere of Gothic foreboding and dread, and Bankimchandra (or Bankim as he is referred to in A Grain of Sand ) reminds the reader through overt authorial intrusions of the ill consequences that flow from widow remarriage. This structure of a cautionary tale is underlined by the title-the poison tree which yields its fatal fruit, is the attraction the young widow has for the rich and well-established Nagendra.
A Grain of Sand , on the other hand, refers to sand that gets in the eye and can cause one to blink reflexively. It is the name (Chokher Bali, shortened to Bali or sand ) that Binodini, the beautiful widow who is one of the most interesting and complex women characters in all of Tagore s fiction, playfully proposes she and her rival Asha, teenaged bride to wealthy rentier and spoiled mama s boy Mahendra, call each other in preference to more flowery nicknames. It becomes a precise and naturalist image for the stormy relationship that develops between the two women. Authorial intrusions are limited and the plot unfolds through psychological interplay between the characters. Moral judgements, if any, are made exclusively through the shape given to the narrative.
Bankimchandra s forte was historical romance and The Poison Tree has an epic flavour-we are granted limited access to the interiority of the characters. Kundanandini in particular is a cipher, an enigma, a child of nature who doesn t quite fit into any social order, a pawn in games that other people play. The only point at which she becomes voluble is after she has swallowed poison, when she confesses her desire for Nagendra. Tagore, by contrast and radically for his time, grants us unhindered access to the subjectivity of Binodini, a passionate woman who overthrows the norms of widowhood to make direct appeals to the men she loves, and whose emotions become the central pole of the novel. When Binodini tells Behari, a do-gooder who is also Mahendra s friend and consort, I may be bad, or wrong, but do try to see things from my point of view just this once and understand me, it might as well be an appeal that Tagore is making to the reader of his day.
Tagore s characters are chock-full of sensibility, which makes the novel a sturm und drang tract where desire and jealousy circulate in a complex quadrangular chain between Mahendra, Binodini, Behari and Asha. The chain is made yet more complex if one throws in Mahendra s possessive mother Rajlakshmi, who is yet to get over her obsessive attachment to her son. A Grain of Sand brooks comparison with Tagore s novella Nashtaneer ( The Broken Nest ) published the same year (1903) and the 1916 novel Ghare Baire ( Home and the World ). In The Broken Nest Charulata, the central character, grows intimate with her husband s younger cousin Amal; Home and the World features a quadrangular relationship between the wealthy landlord Nikhilesh, his widowed sister-in-law, his wife Bimala and his friend Sandip. Home and the World was written after Bengal had been racked by the agitation against partition of the province decreed by the colonial government in 1905; politics finds its way into the narrative as transgressive sexuality appears in conjunction with militant nationalism. Both the latter novels have been turned into exquisite films by Satyajit Ray.
Tagore excels in portraying the delicate nuances of the relationship between the Thakurpo (husband s younger brother) and Bouthakurani (brother s wife, often abbreviated to Bouthan) living under the same roof in a joint family household. A leitmotif that runs through all