Literary starkness

The Dark River
Krishan Chander
Translated by Suresh Kohli
Harper Collins
2014, pp 133, Rs. 250


Who does not love to pick up a work of Krishan Chander (1914-1977) when browsing a book fair? Especially when one is still young and the romantic stars have not faded in the hard glare of middle age? It was enough to know how to read simple Hindi to wander in his fictional world. Much later, when the critical antenna began to compartmentalise the fiction, segmentation was a natural result: the very best, the best, the passable.

One is never in doubt of Krishan Chander’s genius in weaving a story that was anchored in the life he knew. The lovely Kashmir of his childhood stung by the trauma of partition, and Bombay where he made his living in the blinding glare of the film world while watching its underbelly, a veritable inferno, then and now. However, he was a man for different seasons, sometimes romantic by tendency, sometimes realistic due to his closeness to the Progressive Writers’ Movement.

Whenever he was not sure of his way, the story wobbled. But  Krishan Chander never disappointed. The Dark River presents his four stories translated by Suresh Kohli, one of our finest practitioners of this difficult art.

Three-fourths of the book is taken up by the title story. The Dark River opens with supernatural touches, reminding us of all those films that have followed Kamal Amrohi’s Mahal. Staying in a deserted bungalow in an uninhabited area can be a darkling experience, even for the die-hard rationalist.

The first-person narrator is an artist, which complicates the weaves of fancy, getting knotted with self-doubts and a nameless dread.

“I lay on my bed, reading. But I could not sleep. Gradually, the silence in the fort became so overpowering that I felt uneasy despite myself. It seemed like the walls had eyes and they were staring at me with hatred and rage. I felt as if I was an unwanted guest.” The murdered girl who had been raped by a Britisher was now haunting the fort and zeroing in on this painter. Is it really so? Almost till the end we remain in the dark, while the parallel tale of Naseema and Mahmood takes jabs at the hero’s personality.

Krishan Chander maintains the suspense till the end, when we do let out a sigh of relief. It is true there has been a horrible murder, a suicide, and all the horrors imaginable: but, mercifully, there has been no ghost! It is good to know the author himself requested Suresh Kohli in 1975 to translate his Ganga Bahe Na Raat, though he never lived to see the English version that was published two years later. One of life’s sad ironies with a romantic touch that we come across aplenty in The Dark River.

Nothing new under the burning Bombay sun: girls sold away by parents, leering customers, and the helplessness of the female in a world of poverty, drinks, drug-trafficking. Krishan Chander takes no sides when it comes to religion. Hindus, Jews, Muslims and Christians are part of this wretched army that torture the innocent. No wonder Lata has waves of questions: “What was home? What was marriage? What was happiness?” That is Krishan Chander for you.
When Jagmohan’s wooing results in a metaphorical slap in the face, he hears a boy laughing, the story ends with the words: The laughter of a new Kashmir. That is Krishan Chander for you.

Gangs employed to break strikes were apparently everyday affairs in pre-independent India. “Savant, Amjad, Gurdyal, Rangachari, Rakeebu and D’Costa. Somewhere, on a dark night in some street corner, in some secluded area of a chawl, a knife flashed, plunged into someone’s back.” Breaking the Strike is a paean to the immortal call of Karl Marx, “Workers of the world, unite!”