PATHER PANCHALI

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Pather Panchali

The book Pather Panchali was written by a Bengali with a fiendish name – BibhutiBhushan Bandyopadhyay (or Banerji), a clerk, later a teacher. The material first appeared in a series and was first published as a book in 1929.

Years later it came to be sponsored by the UNESCO in its collection of representative works (India) and sensitively translated into English in 1968. 

The translator, TW Clark, wrote in his Introduction:

“The immediate appeal of Pather Panchali can be attributed to two factors:
1) its vivid, moving and utterly authentic portrayal of the village people and their day to day life
2) the subject was presented through the minds, eyes and lips of a small boy and his sister Durga.
Opu (Bengali for Apu) and Durga are real, live children – thinking, behaving and talking at all times like children. Few authors can rival Banerji’s understanding of the nature of a child and he writes without a trace of adult condescension…”

“The title is untranslatable. If pather means road, panchali has no English equivalent. It refers to a class of long narrative poems which form part of the medieval Bengali literature… Song of the Road  has been used as a sub-title.

“Opu, Durga and their parents live in their dilapidated home in the village of Nishchindipur with its galaxy of children and adults. And portrayed with them, as personified beings, are the trees, fruits and flowers; the paths through the village past the houses, down to the bathing steps, through the jungle and across the open country; the birds, sky, clouds and Opu’s constant companion the evening sun.”

Here are a couple of passages from the book:
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“The wall of their compound was only a few feet from the window where Opu was sitting – indeed the tangle of the jungle actually touched the wall… there was a roof of undergrowth, billowing like the waves of a green ocean, pierced through here and there by trees, festooned with innumerable creepers and old bamboos, whose spikes drooped over the shondali and bonchalta trees. Between the trunks of the tall trees were the thickets locked in a struggle to break through and reach the sunlight… A cucumber creeper swung free in an open space and a convolvulus twined round the mossy branches of an ancient acacia tree…

The flower petals floated down silently like soft rain… The unknown bird scorning the rich profusion of leaf, flower and fruit that grew all around came and sat on the twisted branch of a barren tree. The bird song he heard was like something in a dream… The wonder and ever-changing joys of the forest filled Opu with emotions that lay too deep for words……”

In another passage:

“Durga is observing the festival of the Holy Pond when sisters pray for their brothers… she went through a number of ritual acts prescribed and then drawing a deep breath, she began to intone:
  Oh, holy pond! oh holy flower!
I worship you ‘neath the noonday sky.
A maiden’s purity is my dower;
My brother lives and blest am I “

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The book was introduced to the western world through a film of the same name by Satyajit Ray.  He vividly portrays life in a remote poverty-stricken Bengali village, with its unrelieved grime and squalor. He went on to make a trilogy but in my view the first, Pather Panchali, was the most moving and evocative of the three.

The old Aunt & Durga    [in Ray's film Pather Panchali]

 

Eddie

[Frederick Noronha]

Thanks for sharing this, Eddie, it was informative. Frederick

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_/  फ्रेड्रिक नोरोन्या * فريدريك نورونيا‎

_/  Frederick Noronha +91-9822122436

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