Byomkesh comes alive in English
A still from Byomkesh Bakshi
After captivating readers for several decades with his action-packed adventures, Saradindu Bandyopadh-yay’s immortal detective Byomkesh Bakshi is now wooing a new generation of admirers in their language i.e. English. And author-translator Arunava Sinha has taken the responsibility to carefully translate the three mysteries, originally written in Bengali, for this volume by Puffin Classics, in order to connect the old school detective to the Facebook generation.
When Sinha was asked to translate the super sleuth’s exploits into English, he jumped at it as he confesses, “the Byomkesh Bakshi stories belong to my mental list of ‘Books I Want To Translate’”.
While the new generation is clueless about who this “guy” was, Sinha firmly believes that an English translation will obviously bring Bakshi within the reach of a much wider audience than the original Bangla version could have. “The Facebook generation is largely unaware of Bakshi, even his exploits on TV were aired for a different generation. More than ever, I think the Facebook Generation loves real-life heroes and hero figures. Bakshi can fill those shoes easily with his cerebral skills and his ability to get the bad guy,” says Sinha.
The selected stories were chosen on the basis of two criteria: hitherto untranslated, and suitable for young readers, informs Sinha. As the stories take the reader as well as Byomkesh to different locales during his mystery-solving escapades, Sinha says that curious minds need not necessarily have a background in Bakshi’s legend.
He stresses, “The stories stand on their own. I don’t think fiction needs homework. The curiosity about the character and the background can be satiated easily enough by reading more Bakshi stories, which are available in two volumes of translations by Sreejata Guha.”
Before signing off, Sinha says that the visual medium will raise interest in the detective genre enormously and adds, “Dibakar Banerjee’s next film is likely to be based on one or more Byomkesh Bakshi stories, and I’m pretty confident that it’s gonna be fabulous.”
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