Mannu Bhandari’s Short Stories Explored the Inner Worlds of Women in India's Cities, Small Towns

My introduction to Mannu Bhandari was through her celebrated short story Trishanku. I was instantly hooked. It is written in the voice of a lively young girl who tries to understand her mother’s puzzling, contradictory behaviour. Tanu’s mother wants to raise her daughter differently from the way she was brought up, without the suffocating shackles that marked her own growing-up years. At the same time, she can’t fully let go of her conservative upbringing, and morphs into an autocratic parental figure when she thinks Tanu is overstepping her limits.

It’s a very relatable (and eminently readable) story, emblematic of a post-Independence generation caught between the forces of tradition and modernity. I wasn’t surprised to learn that it was Bhandari’s personal favourite. Trishanku, like many of her stories, was drawn from her own life – Tanu was a stand-in for her daughter, Rachana.

Bhandari’s first short story collection, Main Haar Gayi, came out in 1957. Main Haar Gayi was actually the name of the first short story she ever wrote. With great trepidation she sent it off to the magazine Kahani, and waited anxiously for a reply. Months passed and she heard nothing. Just as she had given up all hope, a letter from the editor Bhairav Prasad Gupta arrived in her postbox – he had not only accepted the story, but was lavish in his praise.

Bhandari never looked back. She wrote most prolifically in the 1950s and ’60s (she had published four short story collections by 1970), a golden period for Hindi writers. It was the time of the Nayi Kahani movement, which turned its gaze on urban India, memorably chronicling changing social mores and the inner conflicts of characters grappling with this churn. The movement is primarily identified with its three male founders Rajendra Yadav (who Bhandari married, though they separated later), Mohan Rakesh and Kamleshwar, but Bhandari was very much part of it, with her stories of women’s aspirations, triumphs and failures. She gave voice to a generation of women striving to assert themselves. Also remarkable was her keen, perceptive take on the drudgery and dreams of the middle class and lower middle class in India’s burgeoning towns and cities.

Her writing is deceptively simple, but as she herself said, that is the hardest way to write. Above all, Bhandari wanted her stories to establish a deep connection with her reader.

It is high time this wonderful writer’s short stories were translated into English and Vidya Pradhan’s book hasn’t come a day too soon. Pradhan has translated 18 out of more than 50 stories and I’m sure it wasn’t easy to make the selection. Bhandari has confessed that her early stories were written in single bursts of enthusiasm. She almost spewed them out. (It was only later that she began writing after thought and reflection.)

Also read: The Importance of Rebecca Solnit

Though her early stories date to the period when she was living in Calcutta and working as a teacher in Ballygunge Shiksha Sadan (she moved to Delhi in 1964 where she took up a lecturer’s job in Miranda House), most of the characters in those stories are drawn from her growing-up years in Ajmer, specifically Ajmer’s Brahmpuri mohalla. Like the elderly Soma Bua in the tender, moving short story Akeli (one of my favourites), who, Bhandari says, was someone she had known in Brahmapuri. Soma Bua lives alone in her little kothri and tries to overcome her loneliness by turning up – mostly uninvited – at celebrations and ceremonies in her neighbourhood, whether it is a wedding or a mundan. I was delighted to see Akeli in Pradhan’s book (The Lonely One). Just as I was pleased to see Bhandari’s first story (Main Haar Gayi/I Have Lost) in the selection – because it was Bhandari’s first and also because it’s a lovely story about a writer and the characters she’s trying to write, where the light treatment masks real issues.

Also read: Dare I Write an Ode to Agha Shahid Ali?

Bhandari wrote with great sensitivity about younger women’s lives, and some of these stories have been translated by Pradhan, such as Nayi Naukri (The New Job), about a college lecturer who finds her job and life getting subsumed under the unstoppable force of her ambitious husband’s rapidly rising career. Kamre Kamra Aur Kamre (Rooms, Room And Rooms) touches on a similar theme. In Stree Subodhini (The Wise Woman), a woman writes a letter addressed to other women, warning them against getting involved with married men. Pradhan has also included what is probably Bhandari’s most famous short story: Yehi Sach Hai (This is the Truth), which was made into a charming, extremely successful film by Basu Chatterji, Rajnigandha (1974). It is written in the form of a diary by a research scholar, Deepa, who lives on her own in Kanpur, and is torn between her loyal suitor and an old flame. Deepa is remarkably candid and forthright, as she documents her dilemma. Most of these stories are from Bhandari’s later collections.

Some of my other personal favourites are missing from Pradhan’s book, such as Deewar, Bachche Aur Barsaat (published in Bhandari’s first short story collection), where a gaggle of gossiping women talk about a young woman who has taken the bold step of leaving her husband. Then there’s Ret ki Deewar, which details the burden of expectations on an engineering student – his cash-strapped lower middle class family looks to him as a solution to all their problems.

But Pradhan obviously couldn’t include every story. Till such time as all of Bhandari’s short fiction is available in English, readers should pick up The Wise Woman And Other Stories for an introduction to a writer who deserves to be widely known outside the Hindi-speaking world. Bhandari is not an easy writer to translate. Her style seems easy, but it’s tough to get it right in English. Also, as Pradhan writes in her Translator’s Note, Bhandari evokes the ambience of small-town India so beautifully, it’s difficult to convey the same emotion in English. But Pradhan’s translation is deft, smooth and engaging. Namita Gokhale’s Foreword is a bonus, giving readers an insight into Bhandari’s life and work.

Poonam Saxena is a journalist and translator. She has translated Dharamvir Bharati’s Gunahon ka Devta from Hindi to English (Chander & Sudha) and also Rahi Masoom Raza’s Scene 75. Her latest book is The Greatest Hindi Stories Ever Told, where she has selected and translated 25 stories. She is also the co-author of film director Karan Johar’s memoir, An Unsuitable Boy.