SR Hussain?s Urdu fables, in a translation that rings true.
The Mirror of Wonders: And other tales
Syed Rafiq Hussain; translated by Saleem Kidwai
Yoda Press: Rs 250, Pp 165
The Mirror of Wonders is exactly that and more. A collection of eight stories translated from Urdu, it piques one?s interest as the author is not very well-known. Syed Rafiq Hussain, an engineer, was born in the late 19th century and died in 1944 before his work was revealed. He wrote for only about a decade and his first collection of stories, Aina-e-Hairat (The Mirror of Wonders), was published two weeks after his death.
Most readers will be fascinated by his life. The uncertainties of Partition prevented Hussain?s family from publicising or translating his work. Hussain also fell between stools in terms of genre. He had ?vowed? to never write on love, believing that the sentiment preoccupied Urdu writers far too much. He chose instead the animal kingdom, drawing parallels with human lives?all his tales are fables establishing that humans and animals are essentially similar in what they do and how they conduct themselves. Stories like Ummeed (the author?s first short story written around 1937), The Mirror of Wonders and Atonement?are chilling accounts that startle because they start innocently but build up with keen observations of the animal world and the author?s understanding of human relationships.
Hussain spent most of his working life as an engineer in Uttar Pradesh. During his days posted in the forested lands of the Terai, he became acquainted with animals closely enough to draw from them in his writing. An agnostic, he laughs at human hypocrisy and his characters? negotiations with God in various forms and faiths.
His literary journey is even more remarkable as he had no formal knowledge or training in Urdu and learnt it in fits and starts. His stories, as he himself admits in an account on his working style, resulted from a collaboration between his daughter and sisters, who helped him find the right phrases and words.
Other than introducing Hussain to the reader, with an account by the author himself sensibly included in the book, the translation itself deserves commendation. Saleem Kidwai effortlessly succeeds in retaining the flavour and the idiom. You find yourself eager to back-translate in your head, to experience what it must have sounded like in Urdu. Retaining animal calls, the sound of a car slowing down or the rattle of a chain dragging on the road, in the form in which they would appear in an Urdu story adds to the sense of the authentic and has succeeded in almost creating a third language. Somewhere between Urdu and English, that?s the world that the beautiful Mirror of Wonders reflects.
