Another Life

Lonely People, Desolate Lives

That Mohan Rakesh’s influence on Indian theatre and literature has been strong is proved by that fact that old and new production of his famous plays like Aadhe Adhure and Ashadh Ka Ek Din are being performed somewhere or the other in the country.

His short stories are not that well known, especially to younger readers, and Rakesh was one of the heralds of the Nai Kahani movement in Hindi literature.  Another Life, a new book of translations of thirteen of his stories and his masterpiece, Aadhe Adhure has been published by HarperCollins; it not just gives an introduction to his writings, but a lengthy, and rather candid, interview with him at the end of the book offers glimpses of his thought process. He died aged just forty-seven, or his body of work would have been more extensive.

The stories, all set in middle-class India, captures a country changing from feudal, joint-family agrarian, to middle-class, nuclear family urban. Relationships are shredding, the mood is bleak; the women, in particular, are adrift in a haze between traditional and modern. Though, Rakesh’s idea of modernity is women drinking and having affairs (the story Safety Pin). Men are trying to find their place in the workplace and family, with no new role models to fall back –in The Sky Of Steel a man encourages the liaison of his wife with her past lover, who is now a powerful man.

 The characters have complex inner lives, but the stories meandering through extensive descriptions of landscapes, tend towards the simple, and today may seem even simplistic. It could be because the passage of time renders certain people and social phenomena extinct, or because translations are never perfect.

The stories are bleak and, but for one, Savourless Sins, about a man trying to jolt his complacent wife, entirely lacking in humour, as if the lonely people that inhabit Rakesh’s world have forgotten how to laugh.  Like Manorama In Married Women, who judges her maid, Kashi, for putting up with an unfaithful, abusive husband, while her own has abandoned her, so that she can work and provide for his family; her yearning for companionship and a child are not important.

In Glass Tank, which seems to have echoes of Aadhe Adhure, an unhappy woman and her daughter are attracted to the same man, whose exact place in the family remains undefined, but his arrivals and departures cause much emotional upheaval.

Another Life, is a strange story about Prakash, who has split from his first wife, so overbearing that she makes her son lisp, and married a mentally retarded woman. After an encounter with his son and divorced wife, Prakash is left even more lonely and desolate.

The stories have to be read keeping the period and context in mind, or they lose their impact. Most of them also remain strangely incomplete, leaving the reader to imagine what must have gone before and what might happen after.  However, as a reflection of the time when Mohan Rakesh was writing, they are sharp, poignant and with the mildly caustic tone of the disappointed or disoriented.

Another Life: Thirteen Stories And a Play

By Mohan Rakesh (Translated by various)

Edited by Carlo Cappola

Publiser: Harper Perennial

Pages: 408