Chronicle
The Observant Owl
হুতোম প্যাঁচার নকশা
Kaliprasanna Singha · 1862
Synopsis
Hutom, the watchful owl, roams Calcutta through the festivals of the year and sketches what he sees: fishwives crying their wares, housewives hurrying to the river, pickpockets, false gurus unmasked by science students, two Vaishnavas travelling from Howrah to Mughal Sarai, and above all the parvenus, like the merchant Padmalochan Dutta, who have made their fortunes through forgery, gambling and deceit and ape English manners. The book has no plot: it reads like a stroll through the city.
Context
The book appeared under the pseudonym Hutom Pyancha, in instalments dated from 1861 to 1864 according to the sources, and has never ceased to be reprinted since. It reflects the tensions of the Calcutta of the day: conversions to Christianity, the rise of Brahmoism, social reforms. Its language, drawn from the speech of the city and its surroundings, was given the name Hutomi Bengali; it is judged more accomplished than the alali prose, with no confusion between the written language and the spoken language. Bankim Chandra Chatterjee compared it in 1871 to Dickens's Sketches by Boz. Swarup Roy gave the first English translation in 2008.
Who it is for
A series of sketches without a plot, which can be read in any order. No French translation; the annotated English version helps with so many local allusions.
Prizes and reception
Regarded as a milestone of Bengali prose and as the most vivid testimony of life in Calcutta in the middle of the nineteenth century; never out of print since its publication.
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