As a Novel, 'Padma Nadir Majhi'

 
(I wrote these notes while studying in Class XI. This question was quite 'important' for us. I still remember spending hours at the Chittagong Public Library, patiently going through at least 20-25 reference books with immense patience and effort to prepare notes for each question. At that time, just to impress 'Kopila Madam,' our Bengali teacher at Chittagong College, I had also prepared notes on Kopila's character. The question never appeared in the exam; still! That one is no longer in my collection. This one remains because I used to make my students memorize it during Bengali classes when I taught. I don't know if this novel is still taught today.)
Assess the artistic merit/success/appropriateness of the novel 'Padma Nadir Majhi.'
Or, how successful is 'Padma Nadir Majhi' as a novel?
Answer:
In paying tribute to the literary grace of the novels by Manik Bandyopadhyay, "the poet of the silent minds of the unknown," the distinguished literary critic Sri Sukumar Bandyopadhyay writes in his work 'Bangasahitye Upanyaser Dhara': "The multifaceted variety and astounding originality that Manik Bandyopadhyay has shown in short stories and novels has earned him a place of honor among modern novelists, despite his strange unreality and excessive bias toward sexual themes." Manik Bandyopadhyay did not allow his life consciousness to be afflicted by the humanistic values of social representation; in his world, there is no stratum where socially accepted opposites like 'rich-poor,' 'high-low,' 'healthy-sick' collapse under the pressure of any ideological ideal. Stories centered on occupational life had already begun to be written in Bengali novels some time ago. Manik Bandyopadhyay's 'Padma Nadir Majhi' and Manoj Basu's 'Jaljangal' and 'Ban Kete Basati' are eventful, peril-laden histories of just such occupational lives. In 'Padma Nadir Majhi,' it is particularly the thrilling fishing expeditions of the fishermen, the whirlpool-filled river currents, the unexpected snares of death, and their perpetual struggle against cruel forces that has stirred the novelist's curious powers of observation.
Debendravijay Basu, in his essay 'Noveler Shilpa ba Kabitva,' expresses the opinion: "Just as a painter imitates real events to draw their representation, just as a sculptor can carve a piece of stone and transform it into a lifelike human being, so too can a true artist in the literary world imitate nature and draw authentic portraits of character." Indeed, this imitation of nature is the soul of art. The greatest poet-artist creates a new world that is eternal, universal, and accessible to all. This new world he creates must be in complete imitation of the real world. Good or bad, right or wrong, virtue or vice—he will see nothing, will portray whatever he finds in the world. He cannot consider the good or bad of the portrayal. Not only that, he will not be satisfied with seeing only the surface of the external world, only behavior. He must enter into the root cause of the world—into its fundamental truth—into the deepest places of the inner world. What is generally not visible, what is revealed only to the poet's inner eye through divine power, must be shown to the general public. How enchantingly a skilled artist shows us those deeper hidden emotions of our minds that are revealed in momentary external gestures! Whatever is true may contain good and bad, virtue and vice—'Padma Nadir Majhi' is a successful artistic creation that presents truth impartially from within all this.
According to literary critic Sri Srikumar Bandyopadhyay, among Manik Bandyopadhyay's novels, 'Padma Nadir Majhi' has achieved the greatest popularity. One reason for this is certainly the novel's novelty—the attractive power of the daring and somewhat extraordinary lifestyle of the Padma River boatmen. The second reason is the excellent use of the natural and unpretentious colloquial language of East Bengal. But the novel's greatest quality lies in its subtle and precise sense of proportion in depicting the completely lower-class rural life, and the proper delineation of the petty conflicts and mild enthusiasms of narrow human instincts within its confined scope. The renowned poet and critic Nirendranath Chakrabarty, noting this particular aspect of the novel in his criticism, remarked: "He wanted to see the people of the lower strata, but that alone does not make him unique. He is unique because among writers, he alone perhaps went down to the lower strata to see."
The lifestyle of this fishing community has not been touched by the refined taste and high idealism of educated aristocracy. Though we occasionally hear of Mejbabu, the sole representative of this class, he remains behind the curtain throughout. The jealousy and rivalry, affection and sympathy, intrigue and factionalism of its inhabitants—everything revolves in a narrow orbit determined by their own nature, without external mediation. Kuber the boatman experiences the discomfort and burning pain of forbidden love; his mood fluctuates between agitated, silent resentment and slightly effervescent emotion in contraction and expansion. But with this heartache, he never performs theatrically with poetic emotion anywhere; he has absorbed this pulsation within his regular flow of work. In Kopila's primitive, uncultured mentality nest the eternal mysteries of deceptive feminine nature. For a long time, she spread her web of enchantment before Kuber and through pretended acting, ultimately became entangled in that very trap by some incomprehensible, inevitable attraction. Abandoning the comfort and prosperity of her well-to-do husband's home, she embarked on a perilous, uncertain romantic journey. Again, the rivalry that arose over the demand to marry Kuber's lame daughter Gopi ultimately burned down Kuber's house—this is like a rural version of Troy's destruction for the sake of children, the transformation of epic into folk song. If we compare Kuber's house fire with Mahim's house fire in Saratchandra's novels, we can perceive the difference in emotional levels between both. But around this extremely narrow rural life, confined within the petty basic needs of earning a livelihood, a mysterious enclosure of distant unfamiliarity has expanded. The Padma River, which serves as the life-breath circulation channel of this fishing society, has brought the desired hints of this mystery. The mysterious Hossen Miya's discovered sea-surrounded solitary Moinadwip, like a plan of the afterlife above earthly existence, has opened doors of both the fear of the unknown and limitless hope before the villagers' imagination. Like a simultaneously combined heaven-hell of Utopian dimensions, it has inevitably attracted the simple, uneducated people of the village. Like moths rushing toward flames, men and women exhausted by life's struggles and afflicted with despair have stretched eager arms to plunge into its terrifying loveliness. And though Hossen Miya's island spreads emotional inclinations of vagueness for the villagers, the village people have still been motivated by the attraction of the new, breaking the boundaries of blind superstition. This vitality is the most important thing. Bhavani Mukhopadhyay considers Giovanni Verga's classic novel 'The House by the Medlar Tree,' based on the story of farmers and boatmen of the Sicilian coast, and 'Padma Nadir Majhi' to be of the same genre (Natun Sahitya, 1363 Bengali year).
Hossen Miya is one of the author's original creations. His incomprehensible and impenetrable mysterious nature and activities; the hints of inflexible firmness and sharp foresight within his gentle, affectionate behavior; his expressions of confident, robust generosity above all calculations of profit and loss—all this has made him almost divine in the eyes of his neighbors. Just as the currents of the Padma merge into the sea, the tiny life-streams of almost every person in the village, their individual efforts and aspirations, have ultimately found shelter and completion in the bottomless depths of Hossen Miya's mind. The picture of rural society painted in the novel—petty industriousness, petty hopes and desires, petty jealousy and conflicts, petty envy and emotions—Hossen Miya and the island are like its highest peak, the sparkling point of sunlight at its summit. Altogether, it creates an amazingly coherent and perfect completeness that enchants the reader.
In this novel, the river has been established in a semi-metaphorical existence above its actual reality—its influence has destroyed the stability of domestic life, making people restless and indicating paths of indefinite journeys. Manik Bandyopadhyay's novel 'Padma Nadir Majhi' has given secondary importance to the aspect of people's struggle with the Padma's wild waves in search of livelihood, instead prioritizing the swift irregular rhythm of its movements and the small conflicts and dissatisfactions of domestic life. The famous American novelist Ernest Hemingway's 'The Old Man and the Sea' has revealed through the fishing expedition at sea a metaphor of the indomitable determination of the human soul tortured by fate and its undiminished glory even in defeat. In the novel 'Padma Nadir Majhi' too, the Padma has brought some restless nomadic inspiration to the bloodstreams of the inhabitants of both banks, encouraging their inclination toward indefinite journeys, cutting through domestic attachments. In every aspect of this novel, Manik Bandyopadhyay "did not have to set up the novel's stage in any safe chapter of the past, or in a curiosity-arousing foreign environment; he searched for artistic material throughout his life in the present, immediate and contemporary, and the part he gave artistic form to is most familiar to the illiterate and impoverished common people. This is where his distinctiveness and success lie." (--Buddhadeb Basu, Kabita, Poush 1363 Bengali year)