Sketches
by Hootum the Owl: A Satirist’s View of Colonial Calcutta
A translation of the original text, Hootum
Pyanchar Naksha by Kaliprasanna
Sinha, translated and edited by Chitralekha
Basu, with an insightful
foreword by Amit Chaudhuri, and
illustrations by Sumitro Basak,
ostensibly documents Calcutta of the 1860s’.
While offering a witty critique of its
social mores, it is also the story of a city in the making and the inevitable
conflicts between the traditional and the modern, the bigoted and the liberal.
Although the tone is that of self-deprecation and general contempt for all that
seems to be falling apart in the city, Sketches by Hootum is the
writer’s tribute to its unending spill of life that exasperates even as it
overwhelms.
Kaliprasanna
Sinha
was playwright, publisher, and philanthropist. Hootum Pyanchar Naksha
was written when he was twenty-one. Before his early death, aged thirty, he had
been active in the Indigo Revolt, supporting the social reforms of his time. He
published an eighteen-volume Bengali translation of the Mahabharata from original
Sanskrit.
Chitralekha
Basu is a literary critic
and writer who has recently completed a three-year assignment with China Daily, in Beijing. Her writings appear in Memory’s Gold: Writings on Calcutta (Penguin/Viking) and First
Proof: Penguin Book of New Writing from India.
Amit Chaudhuri is an acclaimed
novelist, a literary critic and an exponent of Hindustani classical as well as
experimental music. His most recent book On
Tagore: Reading the Poet Today (Penguin-Viking, 2011) has won the Rabindra
Puraskar.
Sumitro Basak is a well-known painter
who has exhibited in India and abroad.
8.5 x 5.5” hb, 288pp ISBN 81-85604-86-2
Price Rs 800
tel: +91 33 2466 0812
www.stree-samyabooks.com
Reviews:
‘Kaliprasanna Sinha…brought out at enormous cost to himself
the Bengali translation of the Mahabharata for which he is still remembered. Hutom
Pyanchar Naksha, which Chitralekha Basu has translated, was a collection of
short, satirical pieces that Sinha also wrote. Everything we need to know about
the man, his milieu and the context of his work is in Amit Chaudhuri’s
brilliant foreword to this book, in the three chapters—Kaliprasanna Sinha the
Trailblazer, The Translator in Wonderland and Introduction—with which
Chitralekha Basu eases readers into her translation, and in the detailed
footnotes with which she ends each sketch.
…almost every sketch is on the celebration of a festival,
which reminds us how few the opportunities for entertainment were in 19th
century India, even for the rich. Their lives seem to have revolved around
these religious festivals, with enormous time and money spent on the
preparation of shows and tableaus, which would attract the common man as well,
who usually appears in the sketches as part of a crowd thronging the rich man’s
compound to gape.
The problem for a translator is that a translation that captured
the idiom and tone of the original, the newness that made it valuable, would
also have to be in English that was as new, a voice of an emerging sub-culture.
That would have confused the most readers, so Basu has chosen the sensible
option, using the English of a bilingual Indian of the 21st century,
but that removes the rationale for translating these sketches. We should take
this simply as a labour of love.’
Satyabrata Pal: The Book Review/ February-March 2013
http://www.thebookreviewindia.org/articles/archives-1212/2013/februarymarch/2-3/a-milestone-to-modernism.html
'In
her introduction, Basu further adds the names of the freethinking contemporary
Bengali author Nabarun Bhattacharya and the acerbic newspaper columnist and
Chandrabindoo band member Chandril Bhattacharya to the list of those who have
reintroduced Hootum—or its literary constructs—in the reader’s domain.It
is almost like Hootum, the smart-assed voyeur of an owl in Hootum Pyanchar
Naksha who depicted Calcutta life from the 1850s by casting a caustic eye
and creating ribald eyewitness sketches, is slowly finding its perch back in
the Kolkata of the 21st century.'
Shamik Bag: Livemint, 26
October 2012
http://www.livemint.com/Leisure/zKLDMh3eQbrShlT1gLEzML/Owl-post.html?facet=print
'Undertaking the translation of any work that has
attained iconic status is always a daunting task, and Basu deserves kudos for
this courageous and largely successful attempt. Swarup Roy attempted the
first-ever translation in English of this book in 2007. The complexity of the
text however calls for more than one rendition, and Basu’s, with illustrations
by Sumitro Basak, is a welcome addition.'
Sucheta Bhattacharya: TimeOut, 9 November 2012
http://www.timeoutbengaluru.net/books/reviews/sketches-hootum-owl
Hootum Pyanchar Naksha is a 'difficult — if
not an impossible — text to translate into English. Chitralekha Basu is to be
commended for taking on this daunting task.No translation of the text can be
thoroughly satisfactory, especially to those who love the original but,
nonetheless, it is important to make a translation. It is too important a work
and what it presents is too important a source of information for 19th-century
Bengal to be left for the edification and enjoyment of only readers of Bengali.'
Rudrangshu Mukherjee The
Telegraph 14 December 2012
http://www.telegraphindia.com/1121214/jsp/opinion/story_16311854.jsp#.URIJSB1OPp9
