Modern Assamese Short Stories | Upendranath Sarma

Two women writers of the period need particular attention. They are Sneha Devi and Nirupama Borgohain. Sneha Devi is a remarkable writer of the Ramdhenu days who has not yet laid down her pen. Her style is straightforward and simple. Yet, her studies of the middle class world have a freshness which is rare in many ambitious experiements. She describes people and situations from her own experience. She creates wonderful sketches of the flow of love and affection awakened in the human heart. Nirbhejal is a remarkable story told with great sympathy and insight into the human heart. When Mohini comes as a servant girl to Sheela’s house Sheela was a little baby. Sheela’s original name is Sarbamangala and Mohini calls her ‘Sangmangla’. This infuriates Sheela as she grows old. Mohini cannot think of living in a house other than Sheela’s mother whose compassion for the orphan girl is immense. Mohini is given in marriage, but returns under tragic circumstances. She has now grown deaf, but she works day and night for the family. Sheela cannot suppress the senseless hatred of the girl and hurts her on all occasions. Sheela’s parents realise that Mohini cannot stay with Sheela and thinks of sending her to some other family. Sheela overhears them and realizes her outrageous behavior and all ends well. The story is one of the best written in the Indian tradition. Sneha Devi is never overconscious as a writer and follows ‘nature’ as it were.

Nirupama Borgohain’s style has an easy flow. She represents the romantic side of the Ramdhenu age in stories like ‘Akash Chowa’ (Reaching to the skies). In some other stories she has written convincingly about the hopes and aspirations, drprivations and disappointments, and joys and sorrows of middle class women and probed into their distinctive problems. She has thrown some new light on the relation between men and women. In Kshanik (instantaneous) a pair of husband and wife newly risen in the social scale is suffocated in the limited life of a college campus and walk to the countryside and rediscover themselves. The Lady, elated at the beauty of the scenery and the birdsong is besides herself with joy and forgets the small trivial details of daily life that suppress their spontaniety. A strange, wonderful beauty flickers in her face and her young husband is charmed. But, the glorious moment wanes, for the evening arrives and her face wears the dazed look of daily existence and she returns to her daily rounds like school children obeying the school bell.

Dr. Nilima Sharma has also written with some piquancy about middle class life. Her intimate account of the conflicts between a pair of Khasi husband and wife is particularly attractive, for its record of the sufferings peculiar to a woman’s life. Prabina Saikia’s short stories represent the distinctive female point of view. Her Chitraturanga (the horse in picture) is a remarkably distinctive story where a trivial object calls to the mind the days of the narrator’s glowing experience of the first flush of adolescence and makes her enter into a dream world. The style and the experience smack of the symbolic and the modern. Mamoni Raysham Goswami started writing in her early teens. Her early Riniki Riniki Dekhicho Jamuna gives us a sort of first hand account of the wakening of youth and the first taste of love in the life of an adolescent girl. The approach is romantic, but novel. Though from direct Western influence, the story catches the emotional, psychological movements and the heart-throbs of an adolescent girl with remarkable success. Her recent stories, which seems to be an offshoot of her larger experience of life is connected with her novels and marked by harsh realism. In ‘Sanskar’ she draws with bold hand how blind superstitions can push a man to unspeakable depths of cruelty. But, the tone of her realistic stories is not a little forced.

The short stories of Homen Borgohain must be considered somewhat apart from his compeers. He can be considered as a new path finder of the Age of Ramdhenu. He came under the influence of existentialism and Freudian psychology at an early age (in his teens) and finds their reflection in some of the most exotic stories of the period. His early experiments and his bold attitude to literature made it possible for him to develop a powerful and distinctive view of life. Psychological aberrations or expressions of an unhealthy mind are legitimate subjects of modern literature. Borgohain was rightly conscious of the deformity and psychological angularity in the post war Indian life. It is true, that though many of his experiments are worth reading, yet, it is possible that some of them are anaemic for want of the proper milieu. Existentialism which was born to satisfy the emotional need of a society shattered by the two World Wars could not find deep roots in the Assamese society which was still largely rural and naïve. That is why we must call Borgohain a lonely genius; but, the soil he upturned has later given him a chance to gather a rich harvest in modern fiction. Some of his stories, particularly some that are rooted in peasant life express his prestigious talent. His pen has protested against man’s inhumanity to man and against social injustice. In Jalchabi, a powerful story of the post independence times, he depicts the life of women deprived and exploited through centuries. Borgohain has here rightly refused to see the traditional gestures of the peasantry through a prism. The natural love between men and women has vanished as in a water sketch. Borgohain reflects best the trends of modernist short story. The picture of reality that lent colour to some of the best stories of Malik, made their reappearance in such stories of Borgohain as Narakat Basanta and Ismail Sekhar Sandhanat but are depicted with bolder strokes of realism.

With the disappearance of Ramdhenu there occurs a semi-dark condition in the field of Assamese literature. Many litterateurs ceased to write for want of a suitable forum. Manideep and Navajug fostered some new talents, but these journals could not find the same place in the hearts of their readers as their great essors. The writers of the sixties were deprived of a steady audience as a result of the vacuum created in this manner.
With the disappearance of the Ramdhenu, an age comes to an abrupt close. The social milieu is also different. The optimism and the festive atmosphere of the decade after independence has an abrupt turn. The rapacity of the ‘novoriche’ and the economic crisis destroyed every fibre of the society. With the growth of industries in India (though hardly visible in Assam), cheap poverty stricken modernity envelopes the countryside and breaks down age old values. The speedy transformations of the society have a tremendous effect upon society. Corruption becomes deeprooted and with the growth of vested interests, exploitation of the poor reaches its zenith. Hypocrisy and corruption became the natural concomitants of social life. Some of the older writers keep their eyes closed on these evils and fail to take up the challenge of the times. Some take the path of satires are effete. Only a few writers take up the challenge and attempt to write stories with significance.

Meanwhile, some of the young writers continued the Ramdhenu tradition. In Nirod Chowdhury, we receive the sunset glow of the ‘Ramdhenu Age’. He seems to represent the tradition of Romantic Realism so dominant in the field of Assamese short story. Some of his stories have a weak structure and possess more than one centre. But, he has created a sheaf of stories that are unified wholes. His stories are appealing and he knows a story-teller’s art. He knows how to arouse the curiosity of the readers. His capacity to digest his experience is great and he can easily shape them into stories. In his stories we meet various tales of men and women-a labour girl whose spirit is crushed under the stress of poverty; a teacher harassed by man’s hypocrisy and lust; a tea garden labour girl who becomes a kept to preserve the integrity of her mother. Chowdhury has thrown much light on various areas of middle class life. He does not introduce any revolutionary ideas and he does not desire a complete change. He is deeply attracted to the beauty and colour of life. His innate sense of form can give shape to his stories in a natural manner. His language is lucid and colourful. His great weakness is the absence of critical realis. But, Chowdhury has been able to bridge the growing rift between the writer and his audience. His picture of tea garden life is the best since Rasna Barua wrote Seuji Patar Khini.
Imran Shah and Saidul Islam have a strange similarity with Nirod Chowdhury. They also represent Romantic realism. These two writers are not free from sentimentality. Islam’s Nepathya Nayika is extremely readable, but, he has not maintained complete integrity of form. The story begins dramatically with an ironical situation. But it could not enliven the reality and gravity of the central situation. Ourdhadoihik is realistic and it has a clear relation to modern social tendencies. That our society still has woman like ‘Maju Bowari’ shows that life has still something to offer. Imran Shah has also written one or two realistic stories; but, he has hardly surpassed a story like his own ‘Olympia Bennett’ which is marked by a sense of close observation. Atulananda Goswami has also written a few readable stories in this period.

Towards the end of the seventies decade, there emerged a progressive journal called Natun Prithivi. This journal have a clear forum to progressive writers of the short story, mostly influenced by Marxist ideas. With the discontinuation of ‘Manideep’ and Navajug writers of the old Ramdhenu school, lose their moorings, and they concentrate rather on the publication of their stories in book form. Sheelabhadra wrote regularly in Natun Prithivi, but he is really a contemporary of Birendrakumar Bhattacharyya. He began to write with zeal at a time when most of his contemporaries lost interest in the genre. In spirit, Sheelabhadra belongs with the writers of the sixties. His stories are self consciously realistic, a fact also reflected in the title of his first collection Bastava (reality). It took sometime for him to shed off the slackness of his structure. But, soon he shaped his distinctive style. He uses racy and colloquial words speech rhythms. He is compassionate towards the suppressed and the exploited class, but he does not follow any rigid political ideology. Sheelabhadra has a wide experience of life which he has since been utilizing to give shape to his stories. Sheelabhadra has been able to steer clear of middle class prejudices. He writes with sympathy about the common man is bold enough to speak the truth about the deluded people of his class. His stories are the fruit of his experiences secreted for several decades. Because of his openmindeness Sheelabhadra has the capacity to convert all his first hand experiences in the creative form. He writes in a style which can be described as critical realism. He presents his situations and characters in the context of the social condition. He has loved to express how class hatred and prejudice have been the cause of great sufferings. He believes that the analysis of social conditions is the pre-requisite for a clear understanding of the psychological entenglements. This is best studied in his story ‘Sangram’. Here, we find a clear representation of man’s love, jealousy, envy, class-hatred, passion for social climbing and a tendency to compromise, practically all that disintegrates middle class life.

Sheelabhadra has a deep sense of characters. His insight often penetrates like the torchlight and reveals a character to its depths. This is made possible because of the adequacy of his social awareness. Sheelabhadra is one of the rare Assamese writers who examine the social foundation of a character as one would examine the roots of an uprooted plant. It is because of the lack of such penetration that most writers of the times have created characters that are forgotten no sooner than they are studied. In his recent stories Sheelabhadra has discarded conventional plot and character and allowed the situation to develop in a way to bear the total vision. Undoubtly, Sheelabhadra is the greatest short story writer who has emerged in the last two decades and a half. The anarchic condition that is obtained in the post war European society shows the decline of the West, and writers discover a mode of thought to describe the impossible situation and called it ‘existentialism’ for the want of proper milieu. Such experiments are bound to be anaemic and exotic-looking. Nagen Saikia’s ‘Astitvar Sikali’ (the chain of existence) attempts to naturalize such ideas in Assamese literature; but the back ground situation and atmosphere of these stories are exotic against the agriculture based Assamese civilization, and they are lacking in the intimacy of natural life. The subject matter of a story like ‘Bondha Kothat Dhumuha’ (tempest in a closed room) does not justify the exotic theme in which it is enclosed. Dr. Gobinda Sharma experimented with the stream of consciousness mode with some success, but the central experience on which the story is based is rather narrow and middle class.

Upendranath Sarma writes on Indian Review.