‘The One Legged’: This Bengali novel in translation is a shocking exploration of children’s psyches

The One Legged is an affecting translation of Sakyajit Bhattacharya’s Bengali novel Ekanore. The translator, Rituparna Mukherjee, evokes the haunting sights, smells and sounds of this fictional world into a new language. Here is a particularly vivid passage:

The sky was turning red, and some of that color splattered over the tip of the palm tree. … When that exultant cry was slaughtering the night alive, blood trickled down the chin of a fractured moon, and the wind bore on its shoulders the odor of burning flesh, turning the reddish mist odorous. Tunu felt that this strange nocturnal smell could permeate his skin and stay with him throughout his life. He didn't see if the embers from the burning had reached the forest … or realise how far the southern sea wind had carried the fire … Someone, turning over the bowl of the sky, poured the melting yolk of a duck egg, which would flow for miles, far away to the depths of the sea.

Perversion of young minds

Though the setting of the novel has an eerie quality, it elicits curiosity more than fear. The book has been classified as “speculative fiction”, but I would prefer to call it a psychological thriller. It is an unsparing, and truly unnerving, exploration of the perversion of young minds. At one point, the many strands of this intricately woven narrative tied me up in knots. As I got closer to the climax, I felt that the novel might sink under the weight of the questions swarming all over it – just like the angry red ants that surround the protagonist, Tunu, in a sudden twist in the tale. My doubts were laid to rest by the ending, which, though terrifying, satisfied my ever-growing curiosity.

The title of the novella is derived from an old Bengali folk song about a one-legged ghost who carries a knife and a pot, cutting off ears and sprinkling them with salt. Those familiar with the myth of Ekanore are likely to expect a story about the ravages of this supernatural entity. What you get, however, is much more complex. Bhattacharya draws upon the myth to reveal the darkness of the real world and the ways in which we trick children into obeying our commands.

Ekanore, or any ghost for that matter, is invoked to keep children from doing mischief, creating the impression that being good will surely keep them safe. But the world is not such a simple place – a truth we all learn the hard way. The book made me wonder whether we do children a disservice by telling them half-truths:

Paresh was silent for some time. Then he spoke in a gritty voice, “We say, we tell small children, ‘if you’re naughty, Ekanore will take you away.’ Incorrect. It doesn’t matter whether you are good or bad. If it wants to catch hold of someone, it will. Most definitely.”  

The novella doesn’t just problematise the lore of Ekanore that seeks to hide the true nature of reality from children. It also calls into question another, even stronger, (mis)conception: children are the emblem of innocence. Though this myth is more than just wishful thinking, it blinds us to the complexity of children, leaving us unprepared for the rude shocks they can give us.

Although I am conscious of our propensity to idealise children, I didn’t realise that this myth held sway over me, like most other people. My inability to even dimly suspect what was coming revealed the power of the myths we create for ourselves. In our attempt to find comfort in a chaotic world, we invest children with glowing attributes they may not always possess. The book busts our comforting myths, forcing us to understand the nature of children and the symbolism of Ekanore in all its complexity. All evil seems to be projected onto Ekanore, who might actually symbolise the malevolent streak in human beings.

The cost of misdeeds

The narrative focuses on the thoughts and experiences of the nine-year-old Tunu. He has been sent to live with his maternal grandparents in a rather isolated place. Though they live in a big house, it offers Tunu little comfort. He can feel the sadness that hangs heavy in the air. His grandmother, Dida, spends most of her time holding on to the bars of the window in the forlorn hope that her son, who presumably fell into the clutches of Ekanore, will return one day. Tunu, who is ravenously hungry for love and attention, blames his maternal uncle, Choto Mama, for Dida’s inattentiveness:

[Tunu] suddenly felt angry. Choto Mama was responsible for all the trouble! This was his first time at his maternal grandparents’ place since birth. …  [H]is mother would regale him with stories of this ancient mansion under the sky …, the ominous forest, and the continuous drone of the beetle at night, hearing which the blood in his heart would lurch and splash. His mother told him that Dida adored him, that she would attend to his every need! But here she would absent-mindedly cling to the rails of the window the whole day, waiting for Choto Mama. She would stare on helplessly …

Only Gublu, the baby of the household help, can bring a smile to Dida’s face, dispelling, if only briefly, the looming shadow of her lost loved one. This ray of light is also extinguished when Gublu becomes the prey of the demon dwelling within a dreadfully wayward human. When a helpless madman becomes the object of suspicion, I lamented the tendency to turn the vulnerable into scapegoats. The man, who barely survives by begging and foraging for food, is lynched for committing a carefully executed crime. This reminded me of something I had read a long time ago: those with mental illness are more often the victims than the perpetrators of crime. I also shuddered at the thought of how commonplace lynching has become today. Instead of calling forth protective care, the fact of vulnerability is drawing out people’s bestial impulses.

The text has another layer to it: the terrifying ways in which dead souls avenge the wrongs done to them. As a firm believer in the futility of revenge, which is doubtlessly sour and perpetuates the cycle of violence, I would not view the vengeance of the dead as poetic justice. In fact, the novella shows the generational cost of misdeeds, which rear their ugly heads time and time again, leaving devastation in their wake.

Writer Sakyajit Bhattacharya and translator Rituparna Mukherjee have created a story that will stay with me for a very long time.

One Legged, Sakyajit Bhattacharya, translated from the Bengali by Rituparna Mukherjee, Antonym Collections.