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ANAND YADAV'S "JVAN": A CRITICAL NOTE Author(s): Ian Raeside Reviewed work(s): Source: Journal of South Asian Literature,

Vol. 17, No. 1, A MARATHI SAMPLER: Varied Voices in Contemporary Marathi Short Stories and Poetry (Winter, Spring 1982), pp. 64-65 Published by: Asian Studies Center, Michigan State University Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/40874007 . Accessed: 25/09/2012 01:28
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i Ian Raes de "JVAN":A CRITICAL ANAND YADAV'S NOTE Anand Yadavis one of the secondwaveof Marathishort-story writers, one of the generation laid by the post-war which built on the foundations quadrumand Madgulkar.He beganwritingpoetry,1but virate of Bhave,Gadgil, Gokhale from early sixties his short stories started to appear regularlyin the the Marathi in monthly magazines--especially the elite Satyakath. A selection of these was publishedin bookform 1967 underthe title Khdlal (RoaringWater) in and his first novel, Gotavala (Caste Assembly), publishedin*1971, received high critical acclaim as well as*a state prize. all writer. Almost Yadavwas once verymuch typecastas a "rustic" {grmlri) his early stories have a village setting and involve the strains and sufferings of peasant life in rural Maharashtra.The dialogue is all in the thick dialect in of Kolhapur district, represented the Devanagari script by elisions and are often hardgoingfor the foreignreaderand, transpositionsof letters which no doubt, for somenative speakersas well. Oftenthe wholestory is writtenin this style in the form a first-personnarrative. MorerecentlyYadavseemsto of have beenextending rangeand "Jvan,"the storytranslated here, has an his some the dialogue and the unspoken of urbansetting. Evenhere, though, thoughts of Babanare represented the substandard in speechof an illiterate bankpeon. literature that it associated withgrmZn All the sameYadavis so much be might objected that "Jvan"is not really typical and i mustconfess to having made this choice largely because of the near impossibilityof findingan equivalent to rustic Marathispeechwhich wouldbe acceptable to bothEnglishand American and elsewhere2 quite recentlyMadhav readers. I have referred this problem to he Gotavalawas to Achwal devotedan article in Satyakatti explain why thought to untranslatableinto English.3 Evenurbansubstandard speech is hardenough for translate, but at least there are fairly well-establishedconventions whichis usuable and familiar to anyone a representing kindof pseudo-Cockney, charactersin whohas read Shaw Weils or even the speechof someof the minor or American P. G. Wodehouse, substandard or English. A further difficulty in translatingrural stories is that there are so many have no simpleequivalent in any of "things"in the rural economy India which kindof English. Yadav's "Mot"(Draw-Well Bucket), for instance, one of his short stories that is mostadmired Marathireaders, presentsin almosteyeryline by to of the dilemma whether describe, to ignoreor to transcribewithexplanatory as in whichis as ordinary Marathi "carburator." Eventhe word footnote some title requires a short illustrated article to conveyit fully, unless you happen to have seen the bucketof a drawwell. "jTvan," translated here as "Alive," literally means"living, existence." 1970. It is in the "slice-of-life" in It first appearedin Satyakath August funeral than the descriptionof a Hindu of category short story, beinglittle more the seen through eyes of a detached,indeedreluctant, participant. Its setting west further or is almostcertainlyOnkareshwar the non-Brahmin grounds burning which are the traditional burning ghats of Poona. Theylie just across the river Poonaand withinsight of westernized from parksand busystreets of moern the perhaps traffic over Lakadi Bridge. Soontheyare to be closed downthe continuous 's the funeralrites of Poona citizens banishedto a have been already--and discreeter place where,as in the West,deathwill no longer intrudeuponthe living.

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the The contrastin the story between unselfconscious matter-of-factness the of enactment half-remembered of ritual by Jadhavsaheb slumfuneraland the bemused is an illustration of the sameprocess. Technicallythe story seemsto meto be ratherflawed. It begins as if we the are to see all the eventsof the day through eyes of the peonBaban. The of atmosphere the bankbeforethe blowfalls, the flurrythat succeeds it, his to the ruminations how get through day withthe least discomfort himself--all on to this is given in short staccato sentencesthat seemappropriateto a member the of lowerorders caughtup in the affairs of his employers, detached,sardonic. but The reporting the speeches is the first jarring note. The pompous of and are beingmocked the authorhere. Onefeels that Baban hypocriticalwords by wouldnot have heardthe long wordsas clearly as this. He wouldhave caughtthe drift perhapsand paraphrased or dismissedthem verbiage as them, morelikely simply that did not concern him. From on the authorintervenes now more and more. The tone becomes more literary. As well as beingtold whatpeople do and howtheylook, we beginto hear about whattheythinkand feel. Babanas narratoris there still and it is he whosees and hears the other funeral, but more and more is displaced he funeralguest whois now Yadav,the educated, speculative, sometime byAnand in he recalling his emotions tranquil ity. In the final paragraphs has takenover completely. In spite of this shiftingviewpoint the story strikes meas effective. The formalitiesof a Hindu funeral, so often describedand yet barely comprehensible in the colorless prose of an anthropological alive and moving in account, become the shiftingpatternof responseof familyand friends, client and servant, and orthodoxy uneasycompliance. Afterreadingit one understands, unthinking to just a little more,whatit means be a Hinduliving in the twentieth century. NOTES is in 1. Oneof Yadav's poems translated by G. Sontheimer SouthAsian Digest of I RegionalWriting II (Heidelberg: SouthAsian Institute, 1973), 147-149. The and 2. "Introduction," Rough the Smooth (Bombay:Asia PublishingHouse, 1966). 3. "Gotva]ni anuvdche 1974, pp. 25-34. pras"na,"Styakatha,September

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