1 Traditional worship of serpents on the fifth day of the bright half of the lunar month of Sravana observed by Hindus throughout India, Nepal and other countries.
1 Refers to both, the fifteenth century saint poet Kabir and his bhajans.
2 Songs sung during Holi.
1 Angel of Death.
1 The phrase refers to a type of protest in which protesters would go unshaven to depict the despicable double-crossing nature of those against whom they were protesting. There is possibly also a Hindu–Muslim communal connotation in the reference to the growing of the beard in the sense that the bearded Congressists (now posing as Muslims) would be a constant eyesore to the Hindu bania (trader) community.
2 Rai, Raja and Khanbahadur are empty honorific titles given during the Raj to the erstwhile ruling upper-caste and upper-class males who would agree to serve their British masters as a result of which the people in their principality or province would automatically be colonized.
3 The phrase ‘dharma aur niti’ refers to a range of attributes whose meanings sometimes overlap. Dharma has all these meanings: social/caste/religious custom, right behaviour, law, justice, duty, and virtue. And niti might mean all these: guidance, moral conduct, public and private morality, and ethics.
4 The name Moteram is used as a pun; ‘mota’ in Hindi means one who is obese.
1 One of the gods of the Hindu trinity (Brahma, Vishnu and Mahavir), often invoked for protection.
1 In the Hindi story, Mirza Sajjad Ali’s maid is named Hariya while in the Urdu story, she is named Abbasi.
2 In the name of Imam Husain, who was killed by the forces of Yezid in the battle of Karbala. Shias are accustomed to taking oaths in his name.
Notes
Premonition
First published in Urdu with the title ‘Khwab-e-Pareshan’ in Kahkashan (August 1919), and later collected in Prem Batteesi 2 (1920). Now available in Kulliyaat-e Premchand 10 (2001). It was published in Hindi with the title ‘Anisht Shanka’ in Aaj (June 1921), and later collected in Mansarovar 8 (1950).
The Urdu version is larger than the Hindi version. In Urdu there are five sections indicated by the Arabic numbers 1 to 5. In Hindi, there are no section breaks. What is Section 2 in Urdu has been left out entirely in Hindi. The following is the English translation from Urdu:
Kunwar Amarnath was a bundle of contradictions. He was independent but restrained, a man of wealth but enlightened, an aristocrat but humble, influential but a friend of the poor. His parents had died when he was still a child and he was brought up by officials. He was deprived of parental love. He got whatever he asked for, he didn’t have to cry and howl. Indeed, seeing his peers crying he would often want to do just that. He sometimes yearned to be reprimanded, even beaten. In his mind, a beating was just another form of love. He longed for the kind of love which also involved getting beaten. He saw children trailing their mothers even after getting beaten by them. And when mothers picked up the children on to their laps after finishing their chores, how happy the children felt! How they felt totally secure in their mothers’ laps and how they hid their faces in their mothers’ aanchal. But for him, there was no mother’s lap or aanchal. If he had no occasion to cry, he had no opportunity to laugh either. His childhood was cheerless and devoid of any sweet memories.
When he came of age, he began to receive proposals of marriage from the families of rajas and aristocrats. As dowry, he was offered land estates and huge amounts of money. But Kunwar Sahib’s heart was hungry for love. He had been looking for this fruit of paradise for years. He got to know beautiful women, became familiar with their bewitching ways. He also met women who were enterprising and had a sense of humour. But he didn’t find love.
Having despaired of women from palaces he turned his attention towards poor men’s huts, and here he got what he was looking for. Manorama was the daughter of a poor Brahmin. Her father was an attendant at the court of Kunwar Sahib. She used to play with Kunwar Sahib from early childhood. Even the gods didn’t know that one day she would become Kunwar Sahib’s wife. Kunwar Sahib chose her to be his wife. His relatives and friends objected to the alliance. But Kunwar Sahib had a mind of his own. He married her and made her a queen.
Extract translated from the Urdu by M. Asaduddin
The Murder of Honour
First published in Urdu with the title ‘Khoon-e Hurmat’ in Subh-e Ummeed (September 1919), and later collected in Prem Batteesi 2 (1920). Now available in Kulliyaat-e Premchand 10 (2001). It was published in Hindi with the title ‘Izzat ka Khoon’ in Gupt Dhan 2 (1962).
The Bookbinder
First published in Urdu with the title ‘Daftari’ in Kahkashan (October 1919), and later collected in Prem Batteesi 1 (1920). Now available in Kulliyaat-e Premchand 10 (2001). It was published in Hindi with the same title in Aaj (1921), and later collected in Mansarovar 8 (1950).
The Urdu version is more expansive, fluent and rich in detail. The Hindi version is comparatively stark, and less fluent, shorn of interesting details that make the story in Urdu much more enjoyable. The aphoristic statement—‘A person who endures family conflicts is in no way less brave than a soldier who fights in battlefields’—with which the Hindi story ends is missing in the Urdu story.
In the Urdu story, the reader gets to know that the bookbinder’s colleagues in his office contributed a sum of money to meet the domestic expenses of Rafaqat, the protagonist, for a month. The Hindi
