A Mirrored Life: The Rumi Novel by Rabisankar Bal - A review

Book: A Mirrored Life - The Rumi Novel
Author: Rabisankar Bal
Translator: Arunava Sinha
Publisher: Random House India
ISBN: 978-8-184-00615-5
Pages: 215
Rating: 4/5

There are at least a few books every avid reader deems life-changing. Dozakhnama by Rabisankar Bal was one such book for me. For months after I’d read it, I walked around enveloped in its magical haze. It became an impossibly high yardstick that few books have been able to match up to. Naturally, when I heard about A Mirrored Life by the same author, I wanted to read it. I wanted to pit Bal against himself. Knowing it was a novel based on the life of the celebrated Sufi saint, Jalaluddin Rumi made the wait harder. I wanted to savour it, drown in it.

When the review copy finally came into my eager hands, I read it cover to cover in one
breathless sitting. Bal has this way with words… they stick to your skin and then to your soul. Tell me how one can stay unaffected with lines such as these?

'I am complete in you. This skin, blood, bones, marrow, mind, soul... all, all of it is you. This
existence is your existence.'

'You cannot count the number of creatures lurking inside a man. There's a rat, there's a bird too.
Don't be the rat. Try to be the bird.'

'Do you know why the flute weeps?
- It wants to return to the wood of reeds from which it was taken.'

Reading Bal is an immersive experience. The author becomes the subject becomes the reader and back. In his quintessential style, the author often tells a story within a story within a story. The rich oriental tradition of qissas comes alive in his work. Parables over moral discourse, metaphors over reality. Lines are artistically blurred and sometimes you’re not quite sure whose voice you’re hearing. But it doesn't matter because the beauty of these words is so sublime.

It’s no less than a mystical journey that one undertakes with Ibn Battuta, the narrator into the life and times of Maulana Jalaluddin Rumi. The book is populated with several other characters, historical and otherwise, who drift in and out of the plot enriching the narrative. Prime among them are Shamsuddin Tabrizi or Shams - the mad ascetic and Sultan Walad - Rumi’s favourite son and disciple. The book explores the Sufi saint’s relationship with each of these characters and the journey that takes him from being a Maulana (a religious scholar) to a whirling dervish.

But it is when he portrays the relationship between Shams and Rumi that the author is at his most profound. Rumi calls Shams ‘The Sun of Tabriz’, an expression of the deep love and reverence he feels for his spiritual mentor, friend and lover. The nature of Shams and Rumi’s alliance is historical fact, but it is the other-worldly flavour of their relationship that the author succeeds in bringing out. Nothing is profane in their consummate love for it is no different from a seeker’s love for God. The pain of separation and the ecstasy of union are penultimate in this equation. When Rumi whirls in divine rapture, the reader is drawn right in.

Peppered with Rumi’s own poetry, the book is a rich tapestry of human emotion, divine experience and artful storytelling. I wouldn’t go as far as to say that Bal outdoes himself when compared to his last book, but A Mirrored Life - The Rumi Novel is a powerful work unto itself. One must also doff their hat to translator Arunava Sinha who doesn’t miss a trick. I haven’t read the original Bengali version of the book, but I cannot imagine having missed any flavour. It occurs to me as the most faithful translation there can be. And am I walking around with a magical haze around me all over again? Ah, yes.

Illicit by Dibyendu Palit: Impressions

What's that they say about great things coming in small packages? Dibyendu Palit's 'Illicit', translated into English by Arunava Sinha, is just that. With an artistically designed cover and a title like that, the book is a pick-me-up, and thankfully it doesn't disappoint.. ahem... even between the covers. One wouldn't expect any less from Palit, who is a renowned short story writer.

The plot spans just three days and is a slice of the protagonists' illicit life. Jeena, an attractive young housewife is bored of her 'wooden relationship' with much older husband, Ashim. Partha, her neighbour, is married, a father of two, and equally bored in his marital life. We are introduced to them in the high point of their illicit relationship when the two are planning a secret sojourn to Puri. Quelling her self doubts and pangs of guilt, Jeena takes the bold step to be with Partha.

In the next three days that Jeena spends with Partha, she discovers that all is not as it seems. Partha's lust takes an aggressive turn and Jeena feels violated. Beguiled by shame, self pity and doubt, she decides to head back home and put to an end everything illicit.

Illicit is a deliberate and intense book. The author takes his time to build upon his Jeena's guilt, purposefully punctuating it with the mundane. We see her squirm uncomfortably under the weight of her feelings one moment and pondering upon a cup of tea the next. Now she is losing sleep calculating her risks and now she is flowing with the moment. Palit's skill is apparent in the way he juxtaposes these contrasting elements, much like real life. He takes no moral stance and simply tells the story of the greatest kind of conflict - one that a person has with himself.

The language is simple and accessible; at least the translator, Arunava Sinha, makes it seem so. The lucid prose makes for easy yet thought-provoking reading. Palit is a gifted writer for he leaves you sighing at love's (sometimes) futile cause at the end of its 128 pages.

There was no one at the Bus Stop by Sirshendu Mukhopadhyay: Impressions

Thanks to prolific translator, Arunava Sinha, I am learning to be a Bengali all over again. Sinha has translated a number of books by some of the most famous names in contemporary Bengali literature. Thanks to him, 'probashi' (expat) Bengalis like me are getting to savour the wonderful literature Bengal has had to offer in the last few decades. I grew up hearing my mother wax eloquent about writers like Sirshendu Mukhopadhyay, Sunil Ganguly, Bani Basu, Sankar and others and they were always a world away... until now. Sinha's long list of translations include wildly popular novels, short stories, young adult fiction, and children's stories so far.  I also hear he's also translating some poetry. He has opened many wonderful doors to my mother tongue, one of which is this novella 'There was no one at the Bus Stop' by Sirshendu Mukhopadhyay.

In the middle of a fact-heavy sociological book that I'm dragging my feet, I needed to read something light. So I picked up the slimmest volume from my to-be-read pile of books on my flight to Goa. I didn't realise just how much weight the pages of a book can bear. Although I finished the book in less than two hours, 'Bus Stop' was anything but light.

Set in Kolkata the 70s, 'Bus Stop' is a simple enough story of an extra marital affair. However, it is the sea of emotions that the protagonists experience that drowns you with them. Debashish, a impudent man in his middle age is in love with Trina, a woman he knew as a girl. Freshly widowed, Debashish feels little or nothing about his late wife, but his young son, Robi has many of his heartstrings. Trina is ageing gracefully, with two adolescent children and a husband who cares more about his garden than his wife. A chance meeting brings them together and sows the seeds of desire in Debashish's heart. A melancholy Trina, squarely ignored by her family, gets drawn to him too.

The plot unfolds in a single day marked by two momentous decisions taken by the protagonists. Debashish is compelled to leave his son with his sister for a 'better' upbringing, while Trina, spurned by her family, leaves her home and goes to Debashish, hoping to reach some conclusion about her life. However, they are unable to savour their togetherness plagued by guilt and wrongdoing. It's a love that never will be.

 It is in portraying these evocative feelings that Sirshendu Mukhopadhyay's genius lies. The author's language is shorn of frills, yet amazingly lyrical in places. There are clever suggestions and plenty to read between the lines. There is none of the melodrama to express overwhelming emotions, nor explicitness to express intimacy that we see so much of in today's 'literature'. Understated, yet hard-hitting are adjectives that best describe the author's style. All I can say is that I flew through the book with lumps in my throat. Read it for Bangla literature. Read it for an insight on the beautiful and complex nature of human relationships.
   

My Kind of Girl by Buddhadeva Bose: Impressions

Some books grab you by the throat, some lie next to you under shady trees on summer afternoons in companionable silences, and some, you must coax and cajole into a friendship. My Kind of Girl by Buddhadeva Bose started out being the third kind, but by the time I finished, it had become the second. My relationship with this book was one of old school romance - just what the book is about.

In the 'literary' age where more people know of E L James than say, Jane Austen, where consummation comes before courtship, My Kind of Girl is a 'difficult' book. It is a book that forces you to slow down, a book that will take you back in time to an inhibited world, where the only way of loving was longing.

My Kind of Girl, a translation of the Bengali 'Moner Moto Maye' is really a collection of four short 'love' stories held together by a looser, larger plot. Four stranded travellers - a doctor, a writer, a bureaucrat and a contractor - find themselves in the waiting room of a railway station and must spend a night together. They seek the warmth of each other's love stories to fend off the cold in their air and their hardened hearts.

Stories of young, and mostly unrequited love are narrated, transporting the reader to a time of innocence, a time purity, a time where a brush of the beloved's hand was enough to last one a lifetime. There is the thick-headed Makhanlal's story of  love for his neighbour that never comes to pass; Gagan Baran, the bureaucrat's story of Pakhi, who loved him as a 16-year-old and forever after; Dr. Abani's story of how he met his wife through a friend who broke her heart; and the writer's story of 'Mona Lisa', who he and his two best friends loved and lost together.

Every story is told with a tenderness we, as a people, as readers, have forgotten. To those who've grown on the fodder of Mills & Boons and Sidney Sheldons, Buddhadeva Bose's book will seem painfully primitive in the beginning. But one must give it time; one must open their hearts to the kind of love that is not about easy, sweaty sex and porn-perfect characters. One must slowly dance to the plaintive flute that a lovelorn heart plays. One must partake of the pain of longing, a pain that has no recourse or end. There are no happy endings, just twinges of sorrow to take back from these elegiac love stories. These are stories about 'Your kind of person', but one you can never have. Through its stories and its style, My Kind of Girl harks back to the romantic in you, the romantic you thought was gone forever.

Kudos to Arunava Sinha for translating not just the words but the delicate sentiments bound within the pages of this book. But this book is only for those who know how to take it slow.

Dozakhnama by Rabishankar Bal: Impressions

Have you ever been burnt by a book? Been trapped between its pages, gasping for air? Have you felt that if you read any more you'd die; but if you didn't read, you'd die anyway? If you've not had the pleasure of such a pain, read Dozakhnama.

Page after page of this book, I've been burned. Page after page, I've suffered as a reader. Page after page, I've yo-yoed from heaven to hell and back. I've seen creations divine, and endured the labour pains that every creation demands. Author Rabishankar Bal takes you through the agonising journey of two creators of beauty and if you are a writer/poet yourself, the book feels like a kick in the gut. And yet I held on, read it as slowly as I could, wishing this sweet pain would never end.

Dozakhnama is originally a Bengali novel by acclaimed author, Rabishankar Bal and it has been translated into English by Arunava Sinha. Between its pages lie Saadat Hasan Manto and Mirza Ghalib conversing with each other from their graves. The sutradhar is an author who has stumbled upon an unpublished work of Manto's and has set out to translate it. In this mysterious manuscript is recorded this fantastical conversation between modern Urdu writer, Manto and one of the greatest poets in Indian history, Ghalib.

Speaking across nearly a century, Manto and Ghalib share the stories of their lives with ghosts for company in the night. Manto and Ghalib take turns in every alternate chapter to share a piece of their lives and soon the line between historical facts and fiction is blurred. Bal owns their voices with such confidence that one is loathe to believe that the words are not really Manto's or Ghalib's. Sprinkled with little dastaans and poetry by greats like Mir and Rumi and of course, Ghalib, the book charts not just the life of these two artists, but also the literary ethos of India from the 19th through the 20th centuries.

Though far removed from each other in time, Ghalib's and Manto's journeys seem similar. But then, all artists have journeys like these - travelling through their personal dozakhs, their private hells while creating honest art. Ghalib and Manto both had their share of love, poverty, victory, heartbreak, alcoholism, and persecution for their truth, their words. Ghalib's India at the end of Mughal rule, and Manto's India at the end of British rule are very different, yet the trials of an artist's life are the same, the cycle of pain and creation neverending. Bal chronicles their lives and poetry and pain in one seamless breath, creating this masterpiece of a book. A thought must also be spared for Arunava Sinha and how he too must have partaken of this fire when translating this book. It's brilliant and I believe none of the effulgence of the original work was lost in translation.

Do yourself a favour. Read this book.