A tale that starts and ends at the Padma-Nadi , Manik Bandopadhyay's 1936 novel, Padma Nadir Majhi depicts the social lives of a fishermen community of the fictional Ketupur village . Bandopadhyay's tale is neither an ambitious saga nor a mythical tale of the children of the river . Having multiple narratives in the novel , it is a tale about everyday life and it is the river Padma that stands as a witness to all these voices in the novel. Padma- nadi's presence is felt throughout the text and it shapes, breaks and reshapes each of these character's life.
Padma Nadir Majhi opens with our protagonist Kuber and his friend Ganesh in the middle of the river Padma. Bandopadhyay soon introduces us to a number of characters who inhabit the novel - be it his handicapped wife Mala , the conniving character of Rasu or the character of Hosain who almost carries the narrative of the text single handedly. It is a novel that is rooted in the community as well as in the individual. Bandopadhyay upholds the ethos of this fishermen community situated on the banks of Padma through his use of the real as well as the lyrical. It is this confluence of the real and the lyrical that also provides a sense of orality to the text. We also feel the presence of an unknown narratorial voice which sometimes come forward through the storm that rages in the river or through the depiction of the island of Moynadeep which has been trapped in the process of civilization.
Manik Bandopadhyay chooses to write in the language of the rural which makes us feel closer to the lives of these people. In the hands of Bandopadhyay, these characters are brought alive and he makes them each a living-breathing human being trapped in the complexities that surround human life.The readers along with Padma-nadi stand as a witness and testament to the hardships that infiltrate their lives. The river is empathetic to these voices and transforms them in the course of the story.
It is not a tale with a linear progression of a plot but rather presents us with glimpses of each characters life which are interwoven with one another. There are moments of love, anger, curiosity that are strewn here and there in the text. A particular description where Mala, Kuber's wife tells a fairy tale to her children and Kuber pretends to sleep but is actually engrossed in the tale makes up for a very tender moment in the novel. Kuber's illicit love for Kapila,his sister-in-law also poses a challenge to the modern predicament and foregrounds Kapila's agency in the novel. Padma-Nadir Majhi is a unique work of modern Indian literature and makes the path for other literary works that form the literary canon of the period. The book is not only to be devoured in a lazy winter afternoon but it touches upon your literary senses providing you with a sense of Indian aesthetics. Once you turn the last page over, you feel a sense of completion ,,of life coming to a full circle.
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