Jenny Bhatt was born in Gujarat, India, grew up in Bombay, and has lived and worked around the globe. But for the past several years, she has made her home
Book Review | Worlds within worlds in Dhumketu’s best classic short stories
Updated Mar 14, 2021, 2:16 am IST
In this collection of stories, you go back in time to the age of Bimbisaar, move to Darjeeling just before and after a world war, and more
Ratno Dholi: The Best Stories of Dhumketu, translated by Jenny Bhatt.
The title story of
Ratno Dholi: The Best Stories of Dhumketu, translated from the Gujarati by Jenny Bhatt, is by no means the only one in the book that grabbed my attention and kept it.
In fact, I liked the opening story in the collection the best, though less because it’s better than the rest than because it was my introduction to Dhumketu (Gaurishankar Govardhanram Joshi), a writer I had never heard of before, though he was a contemporary of Munshi Premchand, Rabindranath Tagore and Saadat Hasan Manto.
Updated:
February 04, 2021 16:35 IST
The uniqueness of Gujarati writer Dhumketu’s craft lies in deflecting attention from the craft itself
Share Article
AAA
The uniqueness of Gujarati writer Dhumketu’s craft lies in deflecting attention from the craft itself
Dhumketu is regarded a pioneer of the short story form. A contemporary of Rabindranath Tagore, Premchand and Manto, Dhumketu the pen-name of Gujarati writer Gaurishankar Govardhanram Joshi (1892-1965) wrote short stories, novels, plays, literary criticism and more. The translator of this collection, Jenny Bhatt, contextualises his work in the introduction while providing insightful details about his craft. The translations of Dhumketu’s own introductions to his work help the reader understand the writer’s approach to the short story form.
Gujarati writer Dhumketu’s renowned short stories are now available in this translated collection
From Ratno Dholi: The Best Stories of Dhumketu translated from Gujarati to English by Jenny Bhatt Author Dhumketu.
Nine bosses had come and gone, but all nine had seemed like fruits from the same tree to Bhogilal. The first boss came and always chose Bhogilal to accompany his wife; the second one lessened that kindness but preferred only Bhogilal for his mundane errands. To be polite by nature, to be sweet-spoken, or to be practical-minded – these are not, by any means, terrible faults. Yet, for Bhogilal, under the auspices of these three kinds of virtues, pounding away at a railway job for twenty-one years under each of the nine bosses had worn him down in nine different ways.