The Greatest Telugu Stories Ever Told

As much as translations have us look at the world outside, they have the salutary effect of bringing a more familiar world closer than ever. That’s the feeling I had when I read The Greatest Telugu Stories Ever Told, a collection of 21 stories drawn from legendary and contemporary writers. As someone who reads Telugu short stories mainly in the Sunday supplements of Telugu newspapers, reading this book served as a call for re-dedication, if you will, to read wider and rediscover authors known and new.

The Greatest Telugu Stories Ever Told brings together old greats and more unfamiliar (to me) names, spanning some eighty years. The stories chosen are varied, though the themes are common enough. There is the debate of right vs wrong and sin vs survival. The Madiga Girl by early modern storyteller Chalam reflects on lust, prostitution, morality and exploitation, while Predators by Syed Saleem, a contemporary writer, has the reader both cringing and sympathising with the protagonist who is forced to rob unclaimed bodies to eke out an existence. One has to inure oneself to all soul-searching if one is to subsist, and no, the horror doesn’t let up.

Then there are stories that deal with class differences. The Coral Necklace by Achanta Sarada Deviis the only story in this collection that I remember reading in the original Telugu is a haunting tale of privilege and guilt built on a scene that plays out in our lives ever so often - blame and condemn the household help when something goes missing, and refuse to redress it when we have been proved wrong, because our dignity, not theirs, is anyway more important.

How far would we go to help a stranger brought to our doorstep in difficult circumstances? An Ideal Man by Addepalli Prabhu confronts us with an uncomfortable question. Is your mind justifying all the reasons why you would not help – and there lies the source of discomfort. The world isn’t simple, we can’t trust anyone off the road, can we? And to top it all, there’s a class difference. What if we’re being taken for a ride, or worse?

Bad Times, by Illindala Saraswati Devi, is set in 1948, when the Nizam’s territory is on the brink of joining the Indian Union. A nawab dies as his fortunes are in shambles, and his son prepares to hand over his sisters to his debtors in lieu of the money owed. It’s the servants of various stripes who come to the rescue. Like most other stories in this collection, it’s a story that casts a sympathetic eye on all the characters and their compulsions.

The plight of senior citizens is a theme that I see repeated ever so frequently in the Telugu short stories I read. This book includes at least two stories that fall under this head. Eye-Opener by Chaduvula Babu is a tale of filial neglect and misjudgment while Vempalle Shareef’s The Curtain, with its focus on the purdah, ends in a thought that I found stunning in articulation and heart-rending in emotion.

Rayalaseema’s water scarcity

Rayalaseema’s scarcity of water and its infamous faction killings are the missions for two stories by noted writers Bandi Narayanaswamy and Palagiri Viswaprasad. Dalit concerns and struggles find voices in other stories. In Eclipse by Boya Jangaiah, the central character recollects how his father, appealing to be forgiven for his son’s transgression in entering the temple, was ‘accosted by apathy’. Jajula Gowri’s Signature reflects the travails involved in getting an education, not the least being the procurement of a caste certificate.

Exiled, by the celebrated Madhurantakam Rajaram, has a poor shepherd soliloquising to the Mahatma about the machinations of the upper classes – they have decided that he will be the sarpanch as the government has decreed that the post is henceforth reserved for his community.

Several writers from the Muslim community find a place in this book. Breeding Machine by Shaik Hussain Satyagni brings into focus the practice of talaq and the preference for male progeny, which, of course, transcends religion or race. Despite the sorrow the story brims with, it is an uplifting story with the female protagonist ultimately finding familial support. Not all the stories are exclusive to the concerns of the community or even expressly set in it. Dada Hayat’s story The Truant is a charming story that provides the reader a much-needed breather from the rest of the emotionally charged fiction in this anthology. Adventure by the colossus Kodavatiganti Kutumba Rao (KoKu) is another such.

The Night After by Kanuparthi Varalakshmamma, one of the earliest Telugu women writers, is one of two stories that address the aftermath of retirement. The few women writers featured in this book are from somewhat older times and I would have liked to see more contemporary voices as well. A volume of 21 stories cannot represent the breadth and scope of stories written over decades, so can we have more such books, please?

The translation is smooth and succeeds at conveying the feel and the spirit of the story. Here and there I felt some phrases could have retained the original word. What, for instance, are blackberry beads (Eclipse)? Rudraksha beads? And what is a fort (Water)? Is it a locality that has come to be so called after a fort in the area or an actual fort which has become a public space? What is Chanti asking for when he asks his mother to ‘make a treat’ for him (The Truant)? I wish the original story titles had been mentioned. But these are minor discomforts for a larger venture in a language whose literature has not seen as much translation, and few as accomplished, as it should have.

(Sravanthi Challapalli is an independent writer and editor based in Chennai)

About the Book

The Greatest Telugu Stories Ever Told

Selected and translated by Dasu Krishnamoorthy and Tamraparni Dasu

Aleph Book Company

₹699 / 200 pages

Check out the book on Amazon

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