Shibram Chakraborty
The Merry Adventures of Harshabardhan and Gobardhan is a delightful collection of stories about two brothers — Harshabardhan and Gobardhan. They are well-meaning but bumbling chaps. The stories are gently told but the brothers can get into some silly scrapes. With every story you want to read more and more. For once the book blurb encapsulates the stories well — “Mildly dishonest timber merchants, foolhardy adventure buffs, reckless explorers, blundering do-gooders, occasional philosophers and gullible blokes, the endearing duo creates the most hilarious misunderstandings, commits the silliest mistakes and falls into the weirdest traps.” I read the book in one go. Loved it!
Harshabardhaner Akkalav by Shibram Chakraborty - Bangla Books PDF Read Unliimed online Bengali Books from gobanglabooks.com. Bengali writers popular books are available in the website. 5000+ Bangla books are totally free which is uploaded by various users.Stay Connected. The big cat in the locality is a real worry for Tuntuni. She wants to gobble up Tuntuni's little ones. But Tuntuni manages to keep the cat away by being overtly polite and giving her a lot of respect. Shibram Chakraborty (1902-1980). His best known short stories and novels are renowned for their unique use of pun, alliteration, play of words and ironic humour. The most famous and recurring characters in his stories are the brothers Harshabardhan হর্ষবর্ধন and Gobardhan গোবর্ধন and his sister Bini. How the source of financial trouble can vanish, leaving others stranded, was illustrated in the delightful short story “Rnam Krttva” by the celebrated 20th-century Indian writer Shibram Chakraborty. In the story—which I translated into English and included in my book “An Economist’s Miscellany”—the desperate Shibram asks an old school friend, Harsha, to lend him 500 rupees ($7) on a Wednesday, to be repaid the following Saturday.
According to the delightful author blurb in the book, Shibram Chakraborty ( 1902-1980) wrote extensively for both children and adults, using his trademark humour and wordplay to tell stories about the peculiarities of human beings. Chakraborty was a free spirit who ran away from home as a boy, took part in the freedom movement and went to jail as a teenager — he never finished school — and lived alone in a boarding house in Calcutta most of his adult life. His stories are about eccentric people in absurd situations, and brim over with fun and puns.
Arunava Sinha is an experienced translator. By now I have lost count of the number of books he has translated from Bengali into English. Many of his translations have been sold abroad as foreign editions in English and other languages. Here is the link to an interview I did with him in 2011: http://www.jayabhattacharjirose.com/jaya/2013/08/22/arunava-sinha-on-translating-buddhadeva-boses-classic-tithodore-and-the-future-of-translations/ His translation of this particular book is as competent as the others I have read by him. This translation made me giggle and chuckle. Then I was left wondering. Did he have to intervene in the text to transmit and convey some of the original puns from Bengali into English? Is translating humour difficult? How do you translate wit? Did he have to worry about losing some of the original material or did he manage to retain much of it? And this is what he said ( quoted with permission):
Sometimes I think this book is really for adults, not kids. At least, the wordplay is not for children. The policy I followed was to always have a pun in the translation whenever there was a pun in the original. And yes, it was not possible to retain both the meaning and the pun in most cases, so it was pun first. In that sense there was a replacement of material, but none of it changed the story. The puns don’t really take the story forward, they are effects. I did some readings to kids in schools, and they seemed to enjoy the stories.
I would happily recommend this book for confident readers of 11+ and above. But I suspect this book will go down very well with adults too. The stories would travel well to foreign shores too since they are not too complicated in cultural details. The illustrations by Shreya Sen Handley complement the stories well.
Shibram Chakraborty The Merry Adventures of Harshabardhan and Gobardhan. Translated by Arunava Sinha. Hachette India, New Delhi, 2014. Pb. pp. 150 Rs. 250
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28 June 2014
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