ALL WE HEAR IS RADIO GAGA
Strongwilled women, nostalgia, and hope are explored in this collection of stories that have featured on a popular radio show
Agirl journeys into her mother’s past to reluctantly connect with her dead mother’s old lover; in a dusty hinterland town, a manager on a coal-mining project falls in love with a dancing girl; an ageing widow struggles to build a bridge with her daughter-in-law. Stories like these appear in this collection. Storywallah, the peddler of stories and his mandali, which translates from Hindi as a troupe of performing artists, aptly define Neelesh Misra, lyricist, radio storyteller, journalist and writer, and the writers he has handpicked. Their stories have featured on his radio show ‘Yaadon Ka Idiotbox’. These are the tales emanating from small town India, the voices and choices of provincial characters. The 20 works in this collection by writers like Kanchan Pant, Jamshed Qamar Siddiqui, Chhavi Nigam, Umesh Pant, Manjit Thakur, Anulata Raj Nair, Ankita Chauhan, Shabnam Gupta and Snehvir Gusain are tales of loss and longing, of patriarchal stereotypes versus quasi-feminism, of hope and hopelessness, nostalgia and modernism. The settings range from Kosi to Jabalpur, Asansol to Bhopal, Nainital to Dalhousie.
Some of the narratives like ‘Munjhi’s Palace’ make a case for seemingly strongwilled women. Here, a rustic Rajasthani girl disdainfully breaks ties with her man when he mistrusts her. The female protagonist of ‘A Divorced Girl’ on the brink of a second marriage walks away when asked to quit her job. “Gaurav’s forehead was furrowed with confusion. He couldn’t believe what had just happened. Divorced women don’t say no.” Similarly, for the young widow of ‘Amaya’: “There were so many restrictions on her. If she resisted she got trouble. If she agreed quickly, everyone behaved well with her.” When she eventually defiantly wears a coloured sari, it is because she has had enough. These women who toe the patriarchal line most of the time decide to speak up for themselves at crucial junctures.
Another leitmotif is that of the return to one’s roots or nostalgia for the home of one’s childhood. “Your children will never understand the taste of guavas grown in your own courtyard,” Shivshankar’s mother says when she visits him in the city in ‘A Bird In Flight’. Distraught by the impending sale of his former home, he returns one last time to spend a night there. It is a familiar sentiment for many who have migrated to bigger cities, sacrificing childhood homes at the altar of pragmatism. In ‘Home’ a middle-aged NRI is tortured by yearning for the house his father sold to secure the funds to enable him to travel abroad. Nostalgia is interpolated with the need to make good for lost time or mistakes. And then there’s love. A young couple relearns love in the time of marriage in ‘Yellow Roses’ and an old widowed pair find it in each other in ‘Together’. There is romance on a holiday adventure in ‘The Muffler’ and there is the quirky other-worldly love between a mor- tal and a spirit in ‘Satrangi’. In ‘Overcoat’, an old overcoat, its pocket filled with memories of a love suppressed by an older member, reveals a family secret.
Among the pieces that stand out is Shabnam Gupta’s ‘Ayesha’, a story about the pain of a father whose little girl has disappeared. Kanchan Pant’s ‘Our People’ visits the burning space of communal tensions in the life of a young girl. Both are stories of loss. But where there is life yet, there will be hope. These stories were all written for a radio format and Neelesh Misra’s sonorous reading resonates with listeners in the familiar language and idiom. It is evocative and speaks to them. The same story translated into English (read an unrefined form of Hinglish) in a print format does not pass muster. Translation is tricky business. Only a master craftsman can transport the native essence of any language effectively to another one.
In ‘Storywallah’, the translation comes across as stilted. One can almost read the original sentence in Hindi. “That year was the worst of my life. I broke inside.” (’The Seal’) Or “I reached home in a scattered state that day…” (’Nails’). Glaring linguistic errors abound whether it is in the wrong usage of prepositions or just an overriding usage of Indianisms. A better translation could have helped tide over the medium mismatch. ‘Storywallah’ is a brave attempt by an interesting initiative. But the medium doesn’t fit and much is lost in translation.
AMONG THE PIECES THAT STAND OUT IS SHABNAM GUPTA’S ‘AYESHA’. IT IS A STORY ABOUT THE PAIN OF A FATHER WHOSE LITTLE GIRL HAS DISAPPEARED AND HIS NEARFUTILE SEARCH FOR HER.