Goopy Gyne Bagha Byne and other Stories , livre ebook

Penguin Books Ltd - Upendrakishore Roychoudhuri

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88 pages

English

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This book is a selection of the best of stories by Upendrakishore Roychoudhuri, and the most fascinating of his characters: Goopy and Bagha, dedicated but unsuccessful musicians who are cast out of their homes because their music drives their families and neighbours crazy; Tuntuni, the little bird; the clever fox; Majantali Sarkar, the cat; the intrepid Granny Hunchback; and many others. Swagata Deb s vibrant translation brings Upendrakishore s unique magic to a wider audience, giving a new lease of life to these evergreen tales.

Informations

Publié par	Penguin Books Ltd
Date de parution	23 décembre 2015
Nombre de lectures	1
EAN13	9788184758856
Langue	English
Poids de l'ouvrage	1 Mo

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UPENDRAKISHORE ROYCHOUDHURY

Goopy Gyne Bagha Byne and Other Stories
Translated from the Bengali by Swagata Deb
Illustrated by Dipankar Bhattacharya
Introduction by Ruchir Joshi
PUFFIN BOOKS

PUFFIN BOOKS
CONTENTS
Introduction
TALES OF MEN
Goopy Gyne Bagha Byne
Kenaram Becharam
Dukhiram
The Monkey Prince
The Ghangosaur s Tale
TALES OF GRANDMOTHERS
Clever Granny Hunchback
Poor Granny Licey
TALES OF BIRDS
How Tuntuni Fooled the Pussycat
How Tuntuni Scared the Barber
How the King Lost His Nose
The Sparrow and the Crow
The Sparrow and the Tiger
TALES OF FOXES
The Tiger, the Fox and the Lion s Uncle
Uncle Tiger and Nephew Fox
How the Weaver Married the Princess
The Witness Fox
The Stupid Crocodile and the Learned Fox
TALES OF A CAT
Majantali Sarkar
Translator s Note
Classic Plus
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Copyright
Introduction
It s hard to remember that our parents were once children. And it s almost impossible to imagine our grandparents as kids, playing in the mud, shouting loudly as children do, getting their faces dirty and scraping their knees. The stories in this book are written by a man who never quite lost from within the mischievous kid he once was, who kept that kid jumping and playing pranks even when he was a much older person.
Upendrakishore Roychoudhury was a man who was deeply interested in the world. He was a man who could do many different things: he learned to print books and then developed his own technology to improve the printing learn and develop technology for printing books, draw and paint and so on. He was a man of many talents but he s now best remembered as a master of the short tale, the magical yarn that draws you in, makes you laugh, makes you wonder, makes you scared and worried for the characters and then makes you happy.
Upendrakishore Roychoudhury might seem like a long name to some people; today he might have been called something like Upen Roy-C, but let s call him by his initials, URC. So what this URC shares with many of the great storytellers who wrote stories meant for kids is a love of life, a vivid imagination, and a great command of simple but beautiful language. Like the Grimm Brothers, Lewis Carroll and, more recently, Roald Dahl, URC wrote stories that have entered the very dna of the language in which they were written-in his case Bangla-so that people refer to his characters by way of a shorthand, like you would use a well-known smiley icon in text message. URC also started the first Bangla children s magazine, Sandesh , that his son, his grandson and now great-grandson have continued to publish.
URC picked up many Bengali folktales, stories usually told orally and passed down generations, polishing them into little gems of printed text, such as the Tuntuni stories. At the same time URC also wrote many original stories, the most well known of which is Goopy Gyne Bagha Byne which gives the title to this book. I won t tell you too much about this great, funny, touching magical yarn (and if you happen to be Bengali, and of a certain age, you won t need me to tell you anything) except to say that URC was the first of a very remarkable three generations of artists. His son Sukumar Ray (he dropped the Choudhury part of the surname) also wove his way into a great and happy place in Bengali culture, producing the superbly funny pieces of children s writing Abol Tabol, HaJaBaRala and Pagla Dashu . Sukumar died at quite a young age, thirty-six, when his son Satyajit was only two years old. This Satyajit grew up to become what many consider to be India s greatest film-maker.
The reason Goopy Gyne Bagha Byne is known outside Bengal is because Satyajit made one of his most brilliant films, a full-length feature film, out of this great short story. Now that the story is available in this lovely translation by Swagata Deb, and with its superb illustrations, I would urge you, if you haven t seen the film, to wait and read the story before you see it. Think, if you will, of the story and the film as two very different but related magical creatures. This book is marker of the beginning of a great line which begins with Upendrakishore and gives us the gift of the hugely multi-talented Satyajit.
Ruchir Joshi
Dec 2015
TALES OF MEN
GOOPY GYNE BAGHA BYNE
This is the story of a man who could sing only one song.
His name was Goopy Kyne, son of Kanu Kyne the grocer. Goopy could sing only one song, but no one else in the village could sing anything at all. That is why they called him Goopy Gyne ( gyne means singer ).
Although Goopy could sing only one song, he sang it all the time! He couldn t spend a single minute without singing. If he wasn t singing, he felt as if he couldn t breathe. When he sat in his father s shop and sang, all the customers would run away. When he sang in the fields, all the cows would tear their ropes and flee. Soon people stopped coming to his father s shop. All the cowherds stopped taking their cows to the fields.
One day Kanu Kyne decided he had had enough. He chased Goopy out of the house with a thick rod. Goopy ran to the fields. There the cowherds came running at him with sticks. Finally, he escaped into the forest and started practising his song very hard.
In another village close by, there lived a man called Panchu Pyne. Panchu s son loved playing the drum. While playing his drum, he would shake his head, tap his feet, glare at everyone, gnash his teeth and frown fiercely. People in his village would gape at him and marvel Aaa-aah! Oo-ooh! Sometimes he would let out a RRRROAR, just like a tiger. When he did that, his audience would run away in fear and stumble and fall! That is why he was known as Bagha Byne (which means the tiger-like drummer ). Everyone forgot what his actual name was.
Bagha would start playing his drum with gusto every morning, and so great was the force of his playing that he would also break the drum by the end of each day. His father would have to buy him a new one the following morning.
In the end, Panchu Pyne could not afford to buy Bagha any more drums. But how could Bagha give up drumming? People in his village said, We will all collect money to supply Bagha with drums. It is our good fortune to have such an accomplished drummer in our village. He shouldn t stop playing.
After much discussion, they decided that they would buy him a drum that was so strong and sturdy that even Bagha would find it difficult to break.
And what a drum they bought for him! It was three-and-a-half feet wide, equally tall, and its skin was made from buffalo-hide! Bagha was overjoyed. I ll play it standing up, he said.
So from that day Bagha played his drum standing up. The drum had a fine sound. It was not only marvellously loud, it was also amazingly strong and remained undamaged even after Bagha played it day and night for one-and-a-half months.
But his parents heads started throbbing from listening to him, and they thought they would lose their minds. All the other people in the village also started feeling dizzy in the head. No one can say what could have happened if this went on much longer.
One day all the villagers came armed with big sticks and told Bagha, Dear brother, we will give you ten pots of sweets. Please go somewhere else. If you stay here, we ll all go mad!
Poor Bagha! What could he do? He had to take his drum and go to another village. They heard him play and greeted him enthusiastically.
But within two days, the people of that village also threw him out. After that, wherever he went, he was driven out in no time.
Bagha started roaming the fields. When he felt hungry, he would go back to his village and start drumming. The villagers would quickly bring him food and heave a sigh of relief when he left! But soon they stopped bringing food. They brought sticks instead.
Enough is enough, thought poor Bagha. It s better to go and live in the forest than to suffer fools. What can happen? I may get eaten by a tiger. But at least I ll be able to play my drum. And he went into the forest with his drum.
Bagha lived quite happily there for some time. He could play his drum without people chasing him with sticks. But after a while, his peace was disturbed. The forest had no tigers, but it did seem to have one Terrible Beast! Bagha hadn t seen it, but he had heard it roar in the distance. Its bellow would make him tremble all over. This creature will probably eat me up and my drum too if he sees me! Bagha thought, and decided he should find another forest to live in.
The terrible beast was none other than Goopy Gyne! What Bagha thought was the beast s roar was Goopy practising his song in another part of the forest!
Goopy could also hear Bagha playing the drum and he too was terrified by its loud roar. Finally, one day, he decided to run away from the forest. He could not live in fear of the beast.
As he was making his way out, he saw another man carrying an enormous drum on his head. Goopy was amazed to see him. Who are you? he asked.
I am Bagha Byne. Who are you? said Bagha.
I am Goopy Gyne. Where are you going? asked Goopy.
I ll go wherever I can find a place to stay, Bagha replied. All the people in my village are idiots. They can t appreciate good music. That is why I came to stay in the forest. But there is a terrible beast here. If I stay here, the creature will surely eat me, and my drum too. That is why I am going away.
You are right, said Goopy. I was also running away from this beast. Tell me, where did you hear it roar?
From the east, said Bagha. From the bamboo thicket.
Why, that was me! cried Goopy. You heard my song! That wasn t the beast! The beast roars on the western side of the forest, by the big banyan tree.
That was the sound of my drum! said Bagha. I was playing it under the banyan tree.
As they realized that they had got scared listening to each other s music, they burst out laughing.
Then Goopy said, I am a Gyne and you are a Byne