The shape-shifting presence of violence in Kale Adhyaye

The English translation of Manoj Rupda’s Hindi novella has made it to the longlist of the sixth edition of the JCB Prize for Literature

- Kinshuk Gupta

I congratulate Manoj Rupda on the translation of his 2018 novella, Kale Adhyaye, from Hindi to English as I Named My Sister Silence by Hansda Sowvendra Shekhar. But he says he doesn’t know enough English to read it himself. Not accustomed to the spotlight as a Hindi writer—a language he feels has a shrinking reader base and inchoate book-marketing strategies—Rupda is delighted at the overwhelming response of readers and critics alike to this title. The book has made it to the recently-announced longlist of the sixth edition of the JCB Prize for Literature.

Equally humble is his journey to becoming an accomplished Hindi short-story writer, whose fine-spun stories interweave the complexities of interpersonal relationships with the convoluted realities of a postmodern India. Having dropped out of school after repeatedly failing his Class 6 mathematics exams, and later being inducted into the family sweet business, Rupda had little chance to procure formal language training. Being a writer was never his plan.

“I read a lot of fine stories on the scrap paper, that would later be shaped into cones for dispensing bhujia,” he recalls. Hindi translations of Franz Kafka’s multilayered The Judgement or Nobel-prize winner Knut Hamsun’s Pan, which focused on the relationship between man and nature, had him so immersed that he often forgot to serve his customers.

Kale Adhyaye was inspired by the massive explosion depicted in the 1970 film Zabriskie Point. The uncanny silence in the film Charulata became the starting point for his novella.