Vinod Kumar Shukla (1937-2025): Five excerpts from his fiction (and two poems) in translation

A Silent Place

Bolu and Koona were unable to see Babulal Maharaj leaving the hotel. They looked around, perplexed. Bolu had the freshly sharpened pencil in his hand. Koona remembered that Babulal Maharaj had asked her to write her name down, and that she had to form the letters well when she wrote down her name for him.

“Babulal Maharaj asks people to write down their name after he sharpens pencils for them. I did that. Maybe getting a signature is his way of keeping accounts. Maybe our signatures are a receipt for something,” Koona wondered.

“Write your name in the book,” someone sounded behind them. Bolu turned around. Babulal Maharaj was seated at the table, as if he had never left. “Write your name on this piece of paper, Bolu. Form the letters with care. You should always write neatly.” His buck teeth showed as he smiled.

“Of course,” Bolu said, leaping towards the table. He wrote down his name in beautiful cursive. ‘”ou had left and Kandharu was locking up…”

“Because you couldn’t see me doesn’t mean I have left. As for Kandharu, he likes to finish his tasks ahead of time.”

“Would it be all right if we walked home now?” Bolu asked, turning to face the direction in which his house lay.

“I have a long way to go before I get home,” Babulal Maharaj responded. “It would be good if we all got to our homes at the same time.”

He offered Koona a new twig-pencil as a gift.

“You’ve already given me one,” Koona said. “I’d like to come for the second one when my first pencil is down to a stub.”

Babulal Maharaj offered Bolu a pencil as well. “Hold on to it,” Babulal Maharaj said.

“I am going away for a few days. You might need an extra one while I am gone.”

“When will you return?” Bolu asked, taking a step towards Babulal Maharaj. Kandharu had moved behind, imagining Bolu would step back as he spoke. Now Kandharu went and stood some distance away to avoid any chance of running into Bolu while Bolu walked and talked.

“I’ll return,” Babulal Maharaj said, “when the point of your pencil wears out.”

“I’ll write pages and pages with my pencil. Then you’ll be back soon.”

“But the point of the pencil won’t wear out till I am back.”

“Koona and I will take turns using the same pencil. That way one pencil will wear out fast.”

Babulal Maharaj chuckled. “I am going far away. Even so the point of the pencil will last from the moment I leave to the moment I return.”

A Window Lived In The Wall

Raghuvar Prasad spoke to the department head. “It’s difficult to count on a jitney getting me here on time. If I am late, I have to mark myself absent for the morning.”

“Why don’t you buy a moped?”

“Where will I find the money?”

“Travel by bicycle.”

“I don’t like the idea. My father’s old bicycle never worked properly.”

“Once you start riding it, it will. A bicycle is the best solution.”

“That’s what I’ll have to do. When did you buy your moped?”

“Eight years ago.”

“Do you ever pass an elephant on your way here?”

“I have noticed one recently.”

“Does the elephant move aside when you blow the horn?”

“I don’t know whether it’s the elephant that responds to the horn or the mahout.”

“An elephant is intelligent; it should move aside of its own accord.”

“It probably moves to the side of the road when it sees a bus or a truck coming.”

“That makes sense.”

“Don’t you get scared when you drive your moped right by the elephant? I’d be.”

“I do. An elephant depends on its own intelligence as well as on the intelligence of the mahout. Problems arise only when there is a difference in the reading of the situation.”

“The elephant might be able to make up for the mahout’s mistake.”

“Yes. It can also be that the mahout is right, and the elephant makes the mistake.”

“Yes.’

“I slow down while overtaking an elephant. I keep a safe distance in case the elephant should turn and swing its trunk.”

“Why is that?”

The department head smiled. “An elephant is so huge and its trunk so long.”

“Can an elephant overtake a bullock cart?”

“How would I know? I drive a moped. Ride an elephant or a bullock cart if you want to find out.”

“But what do you think?”

The Windows In Our House Are Little Doors

Yasi and Rasa joined in whenever Vendra called out to their mother. “O Niya,” Vendra would say, and immediately the two children would add “Ma!” so the call sounded like “O Niya Ma!” It’s true the children had joined in after Vendra had called Mother but the calling of the children reached Niya first. Sometimes, Vendra’s calling never reached Niya. But she could tell from Yasi and Rasa’s voices that Vendra must be looking for her. Vendra called out with authority, like someone taking attendance.

“You don’t have to shout,” Mother would say to the children. “I’ll be there soon.”

Vendra heard her and understood that it was really he who was being chided. The next time he needed her, he uttered her name softly. If she hadn’t heard, he walked up close to her and called to her softly. In reality, Vendra looked for one reason or another to call out to his wife all day long.

Vendra and Niya whitewashed the walls of their house once year. They had to paint over the many doodles their children had made on the walls. Many of the lines were marvellous art, worthy of being preserved in museums. That didn’t save the children from being scolded for ruining the house.

Rasa had made pencil marks below where the table rested against the wall. The lines she had drawn suggested face after face. Each time a person looked, a different face emerged from Rasa’s lines. Why did the faces change? Where did the old faces go?

Yasi placed her school bag on the table so it covered the lines drawn on the wall. The lines squiggled as she pulled the school bag away. They may have imagined she was getting ready to feed them.

She moved carefully; she didn’t want the lines to drop to the floor. It seemed to her that Rasa’s lines knew who Rasa was and her lines recognised who she was.

Vendra and his wife laid a thin layer of wash over the doodles so the lines could still be seen. The previous year Niya hadn’t painted over Rasa’s lines at all. “Let them be the way they are for another year,” she had said to herself.

Once It Flowers

There were only two brick buildings here: the village extension worker’s quarters and the police substation. Compared to the other thatched dwellings in the village, both looked grand.

The police substation was not in use; it had been abandoned over a year ago. When it was built, it was situated at what must have seemed the centre of habitation. Now the centre and the police had shifted to nearby Barganv.

Barganv boasted a sizeable population. A rice mill had just been built. There was a timber business with electric saws. There was a flour mill and a middle school. All this activity required a police substation. But in the small village, the old substation looked like a security guard with handlebar moustaches, assigned to provide protection and care to three or four poor people. The villagers did not use the path by the banyan tree even though the substation lay empty. Goats that thought nothing of interrupting the primary school teacher by vaulting up the verandah into his classroom, avoided the substation.

Sometimes cows strayed that way. The herder would be frightened and call out to them to turn back. The cows paid no attention. No harm came to them, probably because of the protection they enjoyed as cows. In the schoolroom, Guruji shouted out the day’s lessons to his students. The students repeated the words loudly after him. The din was deafening; a tiger would have bounded out of the jungle to escape such cries and been hunted down immediately. The goats, on the other hand, were not perturbed. They could be seen happily running up and down the schoolhouse verandah.

There was a sweet-water well in the substation compound. Had there been no substation adjacent to it, the well would have attracted other dwellers. But even though it had been empty for a long time, the village didn’t extend towards the police station by so much as a hut. It kept its distance as before.

Moonrise From the Green Grass Roof

We take notice of birds when we’re children, less often when we grow up. We talk while we sit, we talk while we walk, we grumble when we’re alone. We talk lying down. We talk in our sleep. But the patrangi bird talks only when it flies. It grows quiet upon alighting.

If it has something to say, it will fly. If it has nothing to say, it will perch. Patrangi. Sparrow-sized. Long tail narrowed to a point. Likes open fields. Can be spotted on fence posts and telephone wires. Noisy before settling down for the night. One flock finds a perch and falls silent. Another flock takes off with a ruckus.

It’s wonderful to hear the bird talking while it flies. But it must get doubly tired – making sounds and flapping wings. So it doubles its resting – by staying still and staying silent.

There’s a six-year-old in second grade. He wears a new earth-coloured shirt that’ll look old the first time it’s washed, and dusty-red shorts. He blends into the background when he walks across a muram field, disappearing from view before he has disappeared. Approaching from a muram field, he arrives suddenly as if transported by a zoom lens. He has dark, curly hair combed down in the back. He longs to fly. He gets lost in thought while he is seated somewhere. His mother calls out, ‘Lost in thought?’ as if she was calling him by name. He’s known as Lost in Thought at school, too, though in the student register his name is listed as Bolu. He was called Bolu, or the Talkative One, from the chattering noises he made as a little baby.

It took a while for his mother to discover that Bolu talked only while he walked. He would stand still or sit down when he was silent. He learned to make intelligible sounds after he learned to walk. When he dragged himself on his belly, he could make “cha” or “ba” sounds. When he learned to crawl on hands and knees, he could say “cha-cha” and “ba-ba”. Luckily, he didn’t talk in his sleep.

All fiction translations by Satti Khanna.

Seeing Mount Dhaulagiri…

Seeing Mount Dhaulagiri,
I was reminded of its picture,
as I’d seen the picture first.

Among the pictures in my house
are portraits of my ancestors.
I haven’t seen my ancestors,
so whenever I think of them
it’s their portraits I think of.

But not after seeing Dhaulagiri.
Now it’s the ancestors who come to mind
and not their likenesses.

This year too in these plains…

This year too in these plains
there are no mountains.
For centuries the mountains have stayed in one place;
it’s time they moved.
The Vindhyas, for instance, should come closer
to the bus stand and law courts,
and the Satpuras should go behind
the village school or farm.
The Himalayas seem unfair
to a place that doesn’t have the Himalayas;
this maidan seems unfair
to a place that doesn’t have a maidan;
Tatanagar seems unfair
to a place that is not Tatanagar.
This year let this level ground be displaced
not to the Terai but the Himalayas,
the ground’s highest point rising like a Himalayan peak.
Let’s have Bhopal this year
near Bakal and Paniajob,
Varanasi on the banks of the Mahanadi,
Gariaband near the Ganges,
Chandigarh near Sanchi,
Nandgaon near Faridkot,
and Madras next to Moradabad.
All places should be displaced
and brought near all other places,
so that every place is near every other place
and not a single person is displaced
because of drought, terrorism, or war
from the village this year.

The poems have been translated by Arvind Krishna Mehrotra.