THE great Intizar Husain will complete his ninth decade of life on the winter solstice of this year. To say that he is one of the subcontinent’s foremost Urdu writers is almost an understatement, so wide is his range and scope, so well developed his craft. HarperCollins is to be congratulated on releasing The Death of Sheherzad, a set of 15 short stories of the maestro, translated with painstaking accuracy by noted Indian translator, Rakhshanda Jalil.

In an interesting afterword to the text, Jalil implies that she has translated the words and let the spirit emerge independently of her endeavours. This was a wise decision since any embellishments would have detracted from the essence of the original stories, several of which have been published in Urdu by the Sang-e-Meel press, in forms such as the volume titled Kachhuwe to quote just one example.

Yet this is not to say that the translations can stand in for the originals; no translations ever do, and the gulf between Urdu and English is so wide that no text originally composed in the former language can ever be done justice to in the latter. In the case of novels and stories that have a definitive and clear plot, the translation can hold one’s interest longer than it can with pieces that are less cohesive. Husain’s stories ‘The Death of Sheherzad’ and ‘Reserved Seat’ therefore will automatically appeal to the majority of readers. The former story dwells on a serious dilemma faced by the mythical queen, who finds that contentment in her domestic life has robbed her of the only talent of which she was proud — storytelling. The latter tale centres on the delightfully well-structured character of a fretful, elderly grandmother whose bizarre dreams about the ghosts of her ancestors lead to a fatalistic conclusion that tragically impacts her present-day family life.

Dreams and fables are the stuff of which almost half of these tales are woven. For all his literary weight and seniority, Husain will in some ways remain the ageless Peter Pan of Urdu literature, taking the enchanted reader through realms of fantasy, ranging from moral fables about monkeys becoming humans and vice versa, to dreamy vignettes that give us a valuable glimpse into his private Shia sensibilities, and his reverence for Karbala and Imam Zaman.

There is a sombre aspect to some tales such as ‘Captive’, for example, that comments on the fall of Dhaka. Well-versed in both Hindu mythology and Islamic accounts, Husain’s writing often brings in mystical aspects of history such as the Yajooj-Majooj motif, that is put to good use in a spooky and surreally timeless tale titled ‘The Wall.’ In spite of Jalil’s helpful footnotes, and careful translation, however, some stories are so deeply entrenched in a reliance on the beauty of the original that they end up being elusive to the point of frustration. This is particularly noticeable in the stories ‘Those Who Are Lost’ and ‘Dream and Reality.’ Husain is too intelligent a writer not to realise that even in the Urdu versions these tales do not lend themselves to a straightforward interpretation; alas, in English they may come across as almost inaccessible to readers who have not perused, or simply cannot read, the originals.

Nevertheless, Husain’s ability to successfully capture the spirit and mood of a set of scenes is evident from ‘Clouds’ where a child’s sense of wonder at the capricious nature of clouds emerges with a poignancy and realism that one can only marvel at. Husain’s political comments in ‘Between Me and the Story’ are shrewd and deft, especially since the tale demonstrates a genuinely clever hold over global themes such as the historic tensions between Russia and the United States.

The choice of stories certainly captures the essence of the myriad modes and levels at which Husain’s undeniable genius operates, although one may convincingly argue that a beginner would be better off reading a translation of a classic novel by the author, such as the famous Basti. Although not a master of either humour or satire, Husain’s ‘Needlessly’ reflects a wry world-weariness that readers seeking a good laugh amidst so many serious, and occasionally violent pieces will undoubtedly appreciate. Although many of the stories have no major female characters, or even a female presence, one, ‘The Sage and the Butcher’, does contain a merry and ironic moment where a woman smartly tells off an irate sage for his intolerance and arrogance. This underscores the point that even the most fleeting touches in Husain’s work are well placed, and in this respect the short story genre serves him well. One cannot help but be astonished at the diversity of the themes and characters that abound in this slim but memorable volume.

Neither the richness and elegance of fine Urdu, nor its rollicking, earthy humour can be fully expressed in the most globally dominant Western language of our times. Perhaps it would be sensible of me to step back now, and let Jalil have the last word, for which I turn to the afterword mentioned earlier: “Between languages as disparate as English and Urdu, it becomes especially challenging to find resonances that come close to each other. My endeavour in these translations has been to allow the indomitable spirit of Intizar Husain’s writing to soar above the translation, intact and unharmed.”

“In the blink of an eye, it had fallen into our hands. Strange, very strange indeed! Now we too are an atomic power. An atomic power is a superpower. And who doesn’t want to be a superpower? So now the people of India must be very happy. The people of Pakistan are also very happy. It is the superpowers who are a worried lot now. They had signed countless agreements and counter-agreements among themselves that come what may, they would never use their weapons of mass destruction. Now they are bedevilled by this classic instance of the runaway monkey and the razor; no one knows who the runaway monkey will slash! What is more, who knows when these two will press the button and annihilate the rest of the world along with themselves?”

— Excerpt from the story, ‘Between Me and the Story’

The Death of Sheherzad

(SHORT STORIES)

By Intizar Husain

Translated by Rakhshanda Jalil

HarperCollins, India

ISBN 978-9351362876

179pp.