Lokkho Calcutta

At a time when Sanskritised Bengali was the accepted norm in literature, nakshas (sketches) broke new ground. Pioneered by Pyarichand Mitra (Tekchand Thakur), this genre was popularised by Kaliprasanna Sinha during the mid-19th century. Hootum Pyanchar Naksha (literally 'Sketches by Hootum the Owl') is a set of 10 satirical portraits, by Sinha, in Bengali of ordinary life in 19th-century Calcutta. The book is memorable both for its astute observations and razor-sharp satire that does not spare anyone – from the Brahmin to the untouchable, the housewife to the prostitute, the Bengali babu to the anglophile – including Hootum himself, the storyteller and the author.

Now translated into English by Swarup Roy, The Observant Owl is a brave and successful attempt at translating a 19th-century text – replete with colloquialisms, slang and idiomatic usage on the one hand, and culture-specific descriptions, innuendoes and comments on the other. Detailed footnotes and a comprehensive glossary enhance the translation to a great extent. Illustrations from that period, chosen carefully by Roy, make the sketches come alive.

The book includes a set of three interesting excerpts of reviews of Hootum Pyanchar Naksha that came out between 1862 and 1872. These give a glimpse of the responses to the book at the time, which, ironically, are laudatory and sharply critical of its crass colloquialism. The foreword by the Calcutta scholar Partha Chatterjee provides Sinha's biography – his works, along with the place that this collection of sketches occupied during a period that Chatterjee calls "early modernity in Calcutta, when new urban institutions, practices and arts were beginning to emerge that were not yet shaped by the forms of colonial modernity." While a wide range of characters have been meticulously sketched and attacked here, the nouveau riche are the main target throughout. Their indulgences include forgery, gambling and deception, all in the attempt to amass wealth.

The book's 10 chapters focus on themes ranging from festivals to forgery, epitomising urban decadence in Calcutta at the time. The narration assumes the quality of a late-afternoon gossip session, where wit and tea flow like wine, while being extraordinarily vivid and insightful in its description of events, characters and their milieu. In his introduction, which speaks to us more than a century after it was written, Kaliprasanna claims that these sketches are not targeted at anyone in particular, but rather at everyone, including himself. Interestingly, the term he uses for target is lokkho, which also means 'to observe'.

Jiggery-pokery and more
The first chapter is on the Charak festival, where devotees, typically from the lower classes, engage in spectacles of self-torture such as hook-swinging in order to please Shiva. Needless to say, Hootum does not rest at simply describing the Charak fair, but also engages in a hilarious description of the "babu way" of engaging with it. From the festival, the scene moves to Calcutta's community pujas in the next sketch, a phenomenon started by those who did not have the wealth or infrastructure to perform these ceremonies individually. Raising funds for these pujas often bordered on extortion, a practice that comes under Hootum's unsparing axe. Other distinctive aspects of community pujas, such as khemta (a type of dance) and kobigan (poetry competition) are depicted with the descriptive cynicism that characterises Hootum's writing.

In the third chapter, Hootum declares, "people talk about 'the dexterous Chinese' and the 'pugnacious Bengali', but Hootum wants to talk about gossipy Calcutta." He then goes on to say, "It is only natural for a city full of lazybones to bristle with gossip and rumours all the time … those who haven't been instructed in moral values don't know what falsehood really means. They fib as casually and unabashedly as they wear a plain Dhoti."

The next sketch looks at the city's professional charlatans, who make a living out of duping people. "When the Hindu faith called the shots, people didn't know anything about the properties of substances, chemistry or geology," he writes. "They had great faith in the occult. English education has put a damper on their faith. But then, Calcutta is a city of the weird … Charlatans of every kind flock to the city to make money. They dupe people with their jiggery-pokery." The babu, the nouveau riche, the anglophile and the Hindus who seek friendships with Muslims and Christians for a purpose, are the objects of attack here.

Indeed, Hootum's preoccupation with the Bengali babu finally makes itself fully evident when he devotes an entire chapter to Babu Padmalochan Dutta, the blue-eyed boy of the sahibs, the 'chance avatar' and his journey to babuhood. "Snanayatra at Mahesh" is another riotous sketch on how Gurudas Gain's (a carpenter at Shearwood and Co) bathing pilgrimage with his family and a pack of illustrious friends turns into drunken decadence.

In the next three sketches, the Hootum lens is directed at the Rathyatra, the chariot festival; the Ramlila, albeit with the clarification that it has been brought to Bengal by the khottas, a derogatory term for migrants from Bihar and Uttar Pradesh; and, of course, the festival of festivals, Durga Puja. The subject matter of the last of the sketches is of historical significance for the time – the railways. Set against Baba Premananda's and Baba Gnanananda's pilgrimage to Benaras, Kaliprasanna's satire is at its best, spanning a breadth that covers one and all – godmen, babus, brahmos and railway officials who are "always ready and waiting to torment passengers and humiliate people from their own community".

Despite its share of brickbats for the rampant use of slang and 'indecent exposure' (of the babus and the bhadralok), Kaliprasanna's Hootum Pyanchar Naksha has never been out of print since its publication in 1862. This robust and daring translation – the first ever – deserves the same popularity.

~ Anomita Sen is a lover of books and does sundry editorial jobs by calling herself a Freelancer. She is a mother and has a masters degree in Philosophy.