Kanhu and Other Stories

 

Tsundoku is a Japanese term, it means, acquiring books, but letting them pile up without reading, or books ready for reading when they are on your bookshelf. I am one, I have greed for books. If I am travelling and have to wait for the flight or train, I love to spend the time in the book stall of the airport or railway station. At a time I order/purchase three or four books, I may have read two; I shall order another three, if I happen to read good reviews in the Sunday newspapers or magazines or if a friend recommends certain books that he has read or is reading. The two books of the four I have purchased earlier remain unread. In the process unread books get piling up. Later, looking at the shelf, when I come across an unread book, I pick up to read. 

I had purchased Kanhu and Other Stories, an anthology of ten Odia short stories translated into English by Saroj Misra in 2015, but had not read. Recently I caught sight of the book in my shelf and read those interesting stories.

The first story of the collection is Gourahari Das’s Kanhu’s Home; the main character of the story gives the title of the book. Kanhu is a poor village boy; his drunkard father has abandoned his mother for another woman. Kanhu comes to Bhubaneswar; Mr Patnaik employs him to supervise construction of his house and cajoles him to believe the house will be his. Poor and simple minded Kanhu believes, supervises sincerely the construction and dreams of staying with his mother in one of the rooms.  The construction is completed; he has gone to his village to bring his mother. Shock and disillusionment grip him when he returns and the security person of the house prevents him from entering the house he has believes his own.

                                                                          (Gourhari Das)

Sudarshan has an iron chest; no one except him knows what is in it. He never parts the key with anyone, not even his wife. He is above ninety. His sons, daughters in law and grand children believe he must have kept in the chest gold, jewellery or some valuable things. He dies. The chest is opened and it is found, the chest has land documents, a few silver coins and a box of letters written in Bengli. The old man reads and writes Bengli. The only other person in the family who reads Bengli is the eldest daughter in law, but she also keeps the contents of the letters secret and the mystery remains (Mystery of the Closed Iron Chest, Sahadev Sahoo)

                                                       (Sahadev Sahoo)

An old woman and his wife have to live separately. His two sons and daughters in law are good, they love their parents, want to look after them in their old age, but, being low paid employees and having rented small houses and, staying in two different places, they cannot afford to keep both the parents in one house of any of them. During the time of chariot festival (Rath Yatra), both his sons and their parents have come to Puri to have a darshan of the Lord on the chariot. The old man meets his wife after five years. Lord Jagannath not only meets his devotees, but He also enables the estranged old couple meet each other. (The Last Opportunity, Bipin Bihari Misra)

Paresh Kumar Patnaik’s story Inauguration of Electric Crematorium is a political satire. The minister is to inaugurate an electric crematorium and a corpse is required. The organizers have arranged a dead body with much difficulty, but he has a strange disease. If truth is told he feels pain, if lie is told he feels fine. Excessive truth has killed him. The minister reads the speech prepared by his speech writer and the speech contains, as usual, lies. The dead man starts shaking his body. Immediately, on advice by the speech writer, the minister switches over to telling truth. The man is dead again. The doctor laments, the man could have been cured back to life and been alive.

                                                                      (Paresh Kumar Patnaik)

The story of Ramachandra Behera, ‘The Wound’, is about a rustic poor and simple man who with his wife takes care of orphans, not known to outside world. The TV persons of a channel discover and telecast the good work done by the poor people. That changes their idyllic life, damages their peace of mind. The wound caused is difficult to heal. Saroj Misra’s story, Mission Heart tells about a wife who employs a young man to wean away her husband from his lover to save her own marriage, but she falls in love with the young man and is pregnant by him. In Bibhuti Patnaik’s story Gagan Majhi and his Kin, Janhavi goads her police officer husband to evict the road blockade to ease supply of raw material to the company’s steel plant, so that the company would not close down and her brother could save his company job. Her police officer husband succeeded in evicting, but a few tribal people lost their lives in firing. Janhavi gets nightmares of Gagan Majhi’s men strangulating her. Travel and Shoes by Sripasad Mohanty is a funny story on daily commuters from home to office covering more than a hundred kilometres a day by train. One daily commuter steals the shoes of a co-passenger and sells him back his shoes.

Besides, the book contains stories of Shyama Prasad Chaudhury (Drowning) and Barendra Krushna Dhal (Goalkeeper). In Drowning, Nandita’s husband is captivated by the beauty of Ipsita and on return from tour, he tells his wife he has saved Ramesh, his assistant from drowning, though he actually believes he has saved Ipsita. Next day there is news, Ramesh is drowned and dead. In Goalkeeper, PK, a great football fan has bribed Janmejoy, the ace goalkeeper of the opposite team to skip the game or play badly so that his team would win. Janmejoy refuses to be bought up; despite he, being a poor clerk and his dire necessity, he returns the money.

The ten stories of the book reflect Odia culture and tradition, the life of its people. The selected stories are readable; a must read for everyone. The book, published by Leadstart publishing under Platinum India Classic is available on Amazon and other e-commerce platforms.

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