Storizen Magazine June 2019 | Madhulika Ra Chauhan Storizen Magazine June 2019 | Madhulika Ra Chauhan | Page 32

STORIZENEVENTS
HOT OFF THE PRESS
like air escaping from a punctured
bicycle tube. There’s a nail to
hang clothes from and a wall-to-
wall string for the washing. When
the clothes are dry, you place the
carefully folded shirt under a
pillow and lie down to sleep.
Money is a concern, but the
bazaar is the place to go and
spend time in, especially if you
have nothing to buy. The fear that
you
may
be
overcharged
accompanies every transaction,
but joy is not entirely absent. The
book also includes Shukla’s
memoir, ‘Old Veranda’, with its
unforgettable scene in which a
bus bound for Rajnandgaon, the
city of his birth, is travelling
‘through the air at great speed’.
Few works of modern Indian
literature come alive in English,
and fewer still in the way that
these stories do in Arvind Krishna
Mehrotra’s and Sara Rai’s brilliant
translation.
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ABOUT THE AUTHOR
VINOD KUMAR SHUKLA is a poet
and
novelist
from
Raipur,
Chhattisgarh. His first collection of
poems, Lagbhag Jai Hind, was
published in 1971, followed by Vah
Aadmi Chala Gaya Naya Garam
Coat Pehankar Vichar Ki Tarah in
1981. His first novel, Naukar Ki
Kameez, was published in 1979 and
made into a film by Mani Kaul. In
1999, Shukla received the Sahitya
Akademi Award for his novel
Deewar Mein Ek Khidki Rehti Thi.
ARVIND KRISHNA MEHROTRA is
the translator of The Absent
Traveller and Songs of Kabir.
Among his recent books are
Collected Poems and Translating
the Indian Past and Other Literary
Histories.
SARA RAI has translated The
Golden Waist-Chain and Munshi
Premchand’s Kazaki and Other
Marvellous Tales. She is the author
of three collections of short stories
and one novel in Hindi, and is the
recipient of the Rückert Prize 2019.
She lives in Allahabad.
JUNE 2019