 This lecture is titled short story as a genre and the lecture is divided into two parts. The first part deals with the Indian tradition of short story and what we have tried to do is to separate out the classical from the folk, although there is a sense of continuum that we do maintain. And in the second part then, we move on to the first flowering of the modern Indian short story within the ethos of nationalism. And within this framework, we will share the wonderful short stories of Tagore and Munshi Premchand and problematize certain issues related to these short stories. So in terms of the Indian classical tales, we would make a distinction between classical tales and the folk tales. Although within the classical tales, there is certainly a distinctive kind of presence of short tales that are very different from mythological stories. However, some of the modern anthologies of short stories, they have remarked and I am reading one of the representative remarks here that the modern short story has derived a great deal from these classical tales. So let me read this out. It is possible to trace the origins of the short story in Indian literature back to the earliest writings from the subcontinent. The Mahabharat and the Ramayana can be read as short story cycles in which each episode is a self-contained narrative. That is a really very important point of view and I do want to tell you that in recent years, lot of creative as well as critical work has grown from this source onwards. The people have looked back at these stories, reexamined the premises of these stories and created their own new fresh interpretations. We would not have time to read those stories, but when you begin to read more extensively, do have a look at some of the recent writers and their exploration of the classical base. We would like therefore to actually offer you some examples of classical tales that are not mythological in nature. Two tales have been selected by us, the obtuse monkeys from the Jatak tales and the blue jackal from the Panchatantra. Both have didactic quality and what we have tried to do is to sort of bring back a sense of the narration by asking Matthew, one of our students in the course to read these stories for you and we have also given a bit of a sense of the video context in which we would like you to imagine these stories. So here is Matthew reading the obtuse monkeys first and then the blue jackal. The obtuse monkeys. Once upon a time a tribe of monkeys lived happily in the pleasure garden of the king of Banaras. The king's gardener looked upon them as his friends and they in their turn were devoted to him. Now one day a great festival was to take place in the city. The festive drum sounded early in the morning and the townsfolk turned out in thousands to keep holiday. The king's gardener felt a craving to join the festivities. He thought to himself, why should I not have a holiday once in a while? After all that is very little to do in the park. Only a few young saplings have to be watered. Surely my friends the monkeys can do that much for me. So he went to the leader of the monkeys and said, my friend you know that this park has to be well looked after. His majesty and his subjects enjoy many benefits from it. Today there is holiday making in the city and I decide to take the day off. At the same time I cannot neglect the park. As you know young plants have to be watered. Couldn't you do the job for me just for today? The leader of the monkeys said, oh yes brother we shall look after your plants. Go and make merry to your hearts content. Thank you said the gardener but see that you do not let me down. And then after supplying the monkeys with water skins and wooden buckets he went off to the city. The monkeys immediately started their work of watering the young plants. Their leader instructed them in this way, friend remember that we have only a limited amount of water we must not waste it because if it is finished before the work is done we shall find it difficult to get more. We should water the trees according to their requirements. So it would be better if you pull out each young plant and examine the size of its roots. Then you can give plenty of water to those which have big and long roots. On the contrary a small quantity of water will do for plants with tiny roots. You are quite right sir said the other monkeys and did as their leader told them. They pulled out all the young plants in the garden and watered them according to the size of their roots. Thus with every desire to do good the faithful monkeys did great harm to their friend the gardener to the king and to all those who enjoyed the benefits of the pleasure garden. And that is what the ignorant and the foolish always do. They harm those whom they want to help. The blue jackal. This jackal named Chandrava lived near the suburbs of a city. One day hunger goaded him inside the city where he roamed the streets looking for food. The city dogs barked at him and snapped at his limbs with their sharp teeth until the poor jackal was terrified. He fled blindly trying to escape from the dogs and strayed into a dire's house. There he fell into an indigo tub and lay concealed for many hours. At dawn he managed to crawl out of the tub and somehow reach the forest. His body dyed a deep blue. All the animals of the forest gave at him an amazement. They thought that an exotic creature had mysteriously appeared and scared for their lives kept at a distance. Taking advantage of their dismay, Chandrava called out to them. Now now you foolish creatures, don't be afraid, Indra has taken mercy on you. Since you have no monarch, Indra has appointed me as your king. My name is Chandrava. You may live peacefully under my protection. At this all the animals of the forest, lions, tigers, monkeys, leopards, elephants, rabbits and the rest bowed before him and swore loyally, Oh master, they said, tell us our duties and we shall carry them out. So Chandrava appointed a lion as his chief minister, a tiger as his personal valet and a leopard as the custodian of his betel box. An elephant was made the doorkeeper and a monkey was placed in charge of the royal umbrella. And when the jackals came near him, he insulted them and drove them away, although they were his own kit and kin. In this way Chandrava lived in kingly glory. Lions and tigers killed animals for him and he ate the most delicious morsels and then he distributed the remainder of the food in a grand royal manner. One day, while he was sitting in his court, he heard the noise made by a pack of jackals nearby. At this his body quivered with pleasure and tears of joy filled his eyes. He jumped up and gave vent to a piercing howl. For a moment the animals surrounding him were stunned. But soon they understood the situation and felt ashamed at their discovery that they had been imposed upon by a mere jackal. They pounced on him. Chandrava tried to escape but a tiger pursued him and tore him to bits. As we had indicated earlier to you, folk tales are ancient stories. So they are different from classical tales and they also continue to circulate and are told and retold in different ways depending on the context in which they are anchored. They have deep roots in oral tradition and folklore and they are steeped in the life of a community and often are performed in front of or presented to an audience. And I think one of the fortunate things in recent years has been their revival in print culture. In fact even Bollywood has been influenced by the folk rhythms and the folk tales in different ways and some good films also have come out of this engagement. So now in terms of folk tales, we would like to foreground a particular aspect of the folk tales because in the next lecture we will I think continue to build this connection between the folk tales from you know our diverse culture and some of the women oriented tales. So there are these varied contexts of narration and within the domestic setup Ramanujan has identified tales that are male centered and tales that are women centered. Amongst the women centered tales, we would like to share a particular story that he has included in his collection which is called a ritual tale or a vratakatha. And the reason we have included this tale for your enjoyment and learning is related to the fact that women although they did not become writers very easily, but I think women continue to exercise their imagination to express their imaginative leaps in different ways. This particular story has a sense of urgency with which the imagination is nurtured even within the seemingly restrained restricted ritualistic world view. This story is titled a story in search of an audience and I am reading just parts of it. The story is longer and is divided into two parts where first it starts with this woman in search of someone whom she can narrate a tale and secondly what happens to this unborn child who listens to the tale. So here is the story, this is translated from Telugu. Once on the day of Ratasaptami, the seventh day of the month of Mag, when they take the temple chariot in procession through the streets, an old lady took a ritual bath from head to toe and performed a puja. She had to tell someone the story of the sun god on that Sunday in the month of Mag, that was part of her observance of the day's ritual. So she took a handful of rice colored yellow with turmeric and set out to find someone to whom she could give the sanctified rice and tell the story. But everyone she met was in too much of a hurry. She was sad that she could find no one to listen to her story but she was patient. She finally went to the back streets and found a pregnant woman of the salt seller caste who said she would listen to the woman's story but that she was terribly hungry. The poor woman said she had to have some paesum first. She wanted it made with milk and sugar and a full measure of rice because she was very very hungry. The old woman went home made a full measure of the sweet pudding and brought it to the pregnant woman. The woman was very happy and ate it all but before the old woman could begin the story she was fast asleep. While she slept like this without a thought in the world the old woman just waited the ritual rice in her hand. Suddenly she heard the child in the womb of the pregnant woman say to her, Why don't you tell me the story? I will listen to it. Put the grain of rice in my mother's navel and tell me the story. The woman was delighted. She carefully filled the sleeping woman's navel with the ritual rice. Then she told the round belly in front of her and the baby within it her story for the Sundays in the month of Mag. After she finished her story she sang a lullaby that said, Wherever you go deserted villages will become prosperous towns, cotton seeds will become pearls, dried trees will be covered with fruit. Snoll cows will give milk, barren women will have children, lost jewels will be found and dead men will come back to life. Oh baby you will have such powers as will make a king's heart glad. In the second part the narrator points out all the benefits of listening to this tale by the child in the womb and so I leave it at that. But in other words in folk tales there are also enormous variations in terms of how this need for expression of one's imagination, how that is exercised and I think that is a very very interesting part of the folk tale trajectory. We have already discussed these ideas. You can go back to lecture 21 in order to consider the imaginative possibilities of folk tales and see what you want to do with this idea. Let us now shift to the second part of this lecture where we want to talk about the first flowering of the modern Indian short story which actually I feel this flowering took place within the ethos of nationalism. And so many of the ideas that we have discussed earlier I think we will bring them on board but primarily focus on the short story. The short story no doubt is deeply connected to the novel as a form but at the same time I think it has its own identity, it has its own demands and it also is linked to the print culture and the publication of magazines, journals in which you know stories figure prominently and people even sort of the ordinary reader apart from academicians the ordinary readers also buy these magazines to read the story many times these are you know published in different parts. So in that sense we are very, very keen on focusing on the short story as an independent art form. The reason it is important to look at the short story within the nationalist framework is also related to the fact that the short story in some ways you know had greater degree of flexibility as opposed to the novel you know as you saw that the folk tradition was already there and there was also the classical tradition apart from that that sense of urgency with which you wrote and with which the reader read the stories also shaped the nature of that form. Critical survey of Indian short story a review article by M. S. Nagarajan maps 1935-45, 1960-70 and 1980-2008 as important milestones for the Indian short story based on Murali Das Melvani's book themes in the Indian short story in English and historical and a critical survey. In terms of the term first flowering this is derived from a review article but you know it caught my attention because while talking about a book of Indian short story in English the reviewer M. S. Nagarajan used this term in terms of the short story in English but in general I think this first period that has been identified by him as in terms of the short story I think is very valuable for us in terms of you know stories in Indian languages also. The second milestone according to him is 60-70 and the third is 1980-2008 and we will keep that in mind while separating materials so that historically also we can anchor our discussion. So in terms of these stories that we have talked about definitely the question of languages and the question of English as an additional language it was a very sort of important debate that shaped the consciousness of different writers whether they wrote in their mother tongue or they wrote in English I think they were influenced by these debates because on the one hand no writer wanted to remain isolated. So English offered a sense of modernity in terms of new ideas that could be explored in order to shape the new nation and at the same time the rise of the vernacular was also dramatic because there was this surge and this intense desire to express one's own sense of Indianness. So a lot of this discussion according to many scholars and we have quoted them earlier they have pointed out that the rise of the vernacular was actually the sort of key element in shaping the secular nationalist consciousness. So and of course the fact is that languages on the margins remained in a troubled state at that time also. So much of what happened in terms of the language scene it was related to languages which already had the writing tradition because remember we have many languages where the writing tradition was not so strong gradually they have also changed. So when we talk about the complex relationship between English and Indian languages we are doing this because we really have to accept the fact that translations from Indian languages into English also have played a very important role in enabling other Indians and people of other nations to get access to the world view of very many important Indian writers. And it is within this framework that we want to look at the issue of translations as a creative issue in terms of writing in every Indian language due to the plurality of the Indian context and we do accept that this becomes much more complicated when Indian writers write in English. We have already discussed some of these ideas earlier. So you know we have foregrounded them because for the short story the same ideas are very important. At the same time we do not want to just leave you with the discussion of these ideas in terms of you know generalized sense of these ideas. We thought we would share some concrete examples of stories that have been translated and the translation process also has gained momentum in our country. For example the two Tagore short stories that we have chosen these actually stories have been translated very recently in 2002 they have been published. So the two stories indicate that many short stories of Tagore were not translated or there are new translations that claim that they really express the nuances much better. So the whole avenue of translations is also in a very very important avenue which I think we should really not ignore in our desire to be creative and to contribute to the understanding of our own experience in an enriched fashion. So therefore these two stories have been placed before you with reference to our earlier discussion of Tagore in lecture 23, module 2. And you can go back to that lecture in order to see the detailed framework in which the stories can be read. The first story is titled Balai and it is the name of the protagonist who is an orphan and he lives with his uncle and aunt and what Tagore has explored in this short story is the clash between Balai who loves nature very deeply. To the you know even every single blade of grass to put it in a literal fashion is something that you know he feels for, he feels that nothing should be destroyed and at the same time naturally the uncle's point of view is very different. So he has contrasted these two viewpoints in Balai and what we I would like you to consider while reading this story and also listening to Kishore's comments later on. You can decide whether this is a story that represents certain kind of anthropomorphism that is he loves these plants because he thinks of them as you know he is given a kind of life to them which is human life and human meaning is associated with them or is it just deep empathy for nature which means that you know he sees the life which unfolds in front of him as you know in terms of their its own vitality rather than just sort of impose the sense of human feelings on it. So try and see what that story represents. We have placed Kishore's critical comments on the short story and before that we also have placed a video of tiny plants so that many times what we miss out in seeing maybe you will see it from Balai's point of view and then listen to Kishore's comments. You can read the story on your own and what we would really like you to do is to read the original and then the translated text. If you know Bangla then read the original tale and then read the translation. It would be very good if you are able to do it at least for some languages. It will help you understand issues much better. This video is titled the tiny plants in a garden. This video of my Pawai garden represents gardens surrounding any home. Gardens are cultivated and nurtured on a daily basis. Due to this close proximity to plants we begin to notice plants that grow on their own in every nook and cranny. While watching this video you will be able to recollect the sense of discovery that you experience when you watch the tiniest plants, their shape, colors, pattern of growth. They evoke a new sense of intimacy, a primordial relationship maybe. The beholder becomes a friend, protecting them from aggressive cultivation of only or neat plants. They pull you close to nature's unhindered schemes. In Tagore's Balai, Tagore describes Balai's response to tiny plants in these words. His worst troubles arose when the grass cutter came to cut the grass. Because he had posh countless wonders in the grass, small creepers, nameless violet and yellow flowers, tiny in size, here and there a nightshade whose blue flowers have a little golden dot at the center, medicinal plants near the fence, a kaalmeg here and ananth mool there, neem seeds left by birds, sprouting into plants, spreading beautiful leaves. All those were cleared with a heartless weeding tool, none of them were prized trees of the garden. There was no one to listen to their protests. So I'll start this thing with my response to one of the quiz questions. I'll read out the question first. This is regarding the Revin Thanath Tagore story, the Balai. The worldview of the writer is implied in the short story. With this idea in mind, describe the contrast between Balai and the narrator. And what is Tagore's worldview in this particular short story, Balai? The answer. Through Balai, Tagore sketches the conflict between the innocent and profound nature of an older and deeper value system with the no-nonsense and shallow attitude of the post-industrial age practicality. The young motherless Balai sees a foster mother in nature. While Balai is deeply aware of even the subtlest elements of nature, the practical narrator is neither aware of his surroundings nor of the emotions of his nephew and wife. Where Balai sees deeper profound beauty and harmony, the narrator sees only shallow inconvenience. Balai, who represents a time long past, is sensitive to the feelings of the tiniest blades of grass, while the modern man is insensitive to even those closest to him. The story also represents the loss of belongingness in today's world. While Balai has a sense of belongingness and oneness with nature so strong that he feels nature to be a part of him, the narrator is isolated from everyone and everything. Tagore's deep connection with nature and his spiritual awareness is seen in the way he describes humans as different elements of nature, weaved together in a harmonious form. His belief in the Advaita philosophy and the undying nature of life is represented through nature. Very skillfully, Tagore hints at how only those like Balai who are aware and have a sense of belongingness can comprehend the pilgrim's goal of endless life. The second story that we have placed before you is laboratory, where the scientist is a protagonist. It portrays the complex aspirations of a scientist come engineer in pre-independence India and again we have discussed this story earlier. What we asked Kishore to do is to provide his comparative assessment of Balai and Lab from his own point of view. And I thought that was a very important exercise although actually he gave a very extensive analysis of the second story in addition to whatever comments he wanted to offer on Balai. But I asked him to concentrate on his own personal view of these stories. So here is Kishore keeping you the comparative perspective. Now I would like to present a short review of another of Rabindranath Tagore's stories, the laboratory. After the small review I would be comparing this particular work with Tagore's Balai. Now the first, the short review. The laboratory which was one of Tagore's last short stories is remarkably different from Tagore's other works. In the story he successfully captures the intricate nuances of real society through the depiction of Nanda Kishore and Sohini. In Nanda Kishore Tagore captures the scientific aspirations of Indians in a pre-independent India combining the idealistic passions with very real ethical shortcomings. For example Nanda Kishore is shown to have siphoned off funds from the railways to pursue his scientific passions. And in Sohini, Tagore captures the new woman, sharp, dynamic and free. One realizes how deep an understanding of human nature Tagore had by the way he paints a more real world relationship between men and women, one in which love is often used as a tool of manipulation and how the lack of restraint can become once undoing. From the contrast between the laboratory and Balai. In this work, the laboratory, one doesn't see the harmony and oneness normally seen in Tagore's stories, particularly Balai. Tagore towards the end of his life had started focusing more on social issues and portraying the world as it was. No matter how different the writing style, the fact that Tagore's writing still strikes a special chord with a reader cannot be disputed. Now I shall move on to how, I mean move on to slightly more personal section, how I relate to both stories and the explanation regarding that. As a young engineer and researcher, I find the laboratory to be a very special story because of the way Tagore has captured the pursuit of science and learning and the challenges associated with it. Tagore's emphasis on passion and complete focus on one's research work in particular strikes a chord. We see this in the following excerpt from the story. What do you see as his greatest strength as Choudhury? Shall I tell you? Not his learning but his total dispassionate reverence for learning. What further adds to the charm is the fact that Tagore has been able to capture the challenges involved in research work brilliantly. These include being distracted by faint love, being affected by narrow-minded individuals, ridiculed by those who can't comprehend what you're doing, etc. Many experienced young researchers would agree that the love theme has in fact been depicted to a level of scary accuracy and this quotation from the story would highlight this. Rebati's real work had come to a halt. The flow of his inquiry had been broken. His mind would be intent on Nila's arrival. Nila did not think that the damage to his work was damaging the world in any way. Did not think that the damage to his work was damaging the world in any way. He thought it all to be a huge joke. The story successfully paints a picture of contrast. Nanda Kishore had never let any woman affect his work while the naive Rebati falls into Nila's trap, with narrow-minded people like Nila not even realizing the harms of what they are doing. Now, on a slightly different level, how the spiritually inclined person and creative writer in me relates to these two works. Clearly the spiritual person and creative writer in me clearly loves Balai far more than the laboratory. Balai must be acknowledged as an idealized world far from the real world depicted in the laboratory. Deep down, although I realize that such an ideal world is not possible, the very thought of existing in such a world captivates my imagination. The depiction of the world down to the tiniest blades of grass and the oneness emphasized in Balai have the ability to completely transport one to a different and perhaps better world. Most of us have had to live a chained life in cities for professional reasons. Balai stirs up the deep desire in all of us to just let go of it all and head out to some river, forest or mountain top and become one with nature and find that moment of peace and contentment. After all, why can't we just all return to that innocent way of life? Now after listening to Kishore's comments and also after reading the short story, I think we will once again emphasize that there are issues that we need to understand and these are listed for your consideration. Are the cultural nuances lost in translation? Is every translated text trans-created? These will remain open-ended questions that we will have to answer each time we read a translated text or we will have to keep it in mind because after all, we are trying to see or we are trying to seek better understanding of a text. But this will remain a constant factor and it will our understanding and our analysis will vary depending on the specificity of the piece that we are reading. So please keep that in mind. You know this thought I wanted to place before you after looking at some very critical titles that Sujit Mukherjee offered vis-a-vis Rabindranath Tagore. For example, he has in his book Translation as Recovery, he has critical essays titled Rabindranath into Tagore, the translated poet, the English Rabindranath etc. They are by suggesting that some drastic changes occur in the process of translation and I am not sure if he is comfortable with that. So in other words, this is also a critical exercise, a critical cultural exercise because are you transforming the text in order to fit some other preconceived notion of what you want the writer to sound like etc. Since you know he has raised these questions, I wanted you to be aware of them. But at the same time, I have to tell you that our students did not experience any barriers in reading these two short stories and in fact they seem to accept bilingualism as a cultural reality. In other words, if at all there were stumbling blocks in the translation, they would have articulated it, they are critical readers, they did not find anything problematic about the translation. In terms of the issues of bilingualism, I think Tagore himself had a very, very open view or he was very open minded about the role of other languages especially English because as I said earlier, there was such a desire in the nationalist period to really be in touch with the rest of the world. And this, whether writers wrote in their mother tongue or they you know also had access to other cultures who read them like Tagore. In both cases, they were interested in reading the writing of other writers and they were interested that their writings be read by people in other nations. So therefore, these debates of translation, these are debates about the Indian identity and therefore, another question that immediately crops up is related to the access or our access to these translations in terms of the rural urban divide. So, if we are located in urban India, are we able to read stories about rural India effectively and also are we listening to voices from the margins. My answer is that yes we should actively in fact seek these voices. In terms of the rural urban divide, another very important Indian writer who was able to bridge this divide because of his own deep sense of you know diversity of his own background and also different the variations within the Hindi belt, he wrote about the rural as well as urban characters. So, I want to place Munshi Premchand's short stories before you and of course, this is such a rich feel one would not be able to do full justice to it right now, but what I would like you to do is to read at least one or two short stories and also recognize that even here there are very complex issues of translation. For example, many of these stories were written by Munshi Premchand in Urdu and then they were translated into Hindi by the writer himself or sometimes by other interpreters and in that process many changes have also occurred you know and recently I just chance to see this report by Seema Chishti in which she has pointed out that two stories Khafan and Puski Rath and this is based on interviews of important scholars in the field she has pointed out how in the Urdu version of Puski Rath it is said that there are 16 additional lines when the central character's wife quizzes him at length on what is happening and she ends up taking an assurance from him that the farmer will continue to farm and fight his circumstances. Now, something like this is extremely important because in this story that is being discussed here titled Puski Rath Halko the farmer seems to almost give up because you know he faces so much adversity and it is such a bitter winter that he is not able to really look after his farm and his farming interests and Munni his wife is really very very bothered by this situation and they are wondering if he should actually go back to being a labourer rather than you know remaining a farmer and Jabra their dog he is the only source of solace for Halko in some ways. So if the last 16 lines are missing from the Hindi text then surely I think it makes a crucial difference to the content of the story because in the last 16 lines Halko regains his ability to fight against the adversity that he faces. So let us listen to that last part you can again read the Urdu version and the Hindi version whenever you can. The other short story of Punshi Premchand that we would like you to read is the chess players and I would really like you to read it in Hindi first and then in any available English translation the translation that we had access to is was undertaken by PC Gupta and it is available in BN Pandey's anthology. What you will also realize is that many of these short stories of Munshi Premchand are so powerful and they are you know so so evocative that films have been made out of those short stories. One of them is the fabled film version by Satyajit Ray. So read the chess players and then see the film by Satyajit Ray. We offer you only a glimpse of that film where you know the army the British army is about to take over you know the kingdom of Lucknow and you know they sort of it is full of hired soldiers led by the Britishers and on the other hand these two characters the main characters they are totally absorbed in the game of chess and their Epicurean lifestyle and at that particular moment in the story they have this intense interpersonal conflict. So they are so absorbed in these you know sort of destructive activities that they have no strength to fight the Britishers or to even protest against their easy take over of the kingdom at all and there is this young child who watches this scene and laments that there is not even a sort of sound of protest, a gesture of protest. So this is the scene we have placed before you. We hope you will enjoy it and we hope you will read Indian writers in their own in the languages that you have access to and see the translation process or undertake translations yourself. You can also look at translation as a very complex activity and translation as a term also can have enlarged meaning because it can also mean transference from one medium to another medium. So do examine these ideas and we will move on to the next lecture.