Vinod Kumar Shukla’s novel provides a glimpse of life in rural India. The author speaks to Darpan Mago about relationship issues and hardships faced by villagers
Derahin is a beautiful wife of a small shop owner in a village. She enjoys listening to radio because there is nothing else to fill the void in her life. She doesn’t know about technology and cannot operate the radio set. Despite all this, her repeated efforts to make it function are an acute call for ending the emptiness in her life. She leaves her husband (Jivrakhan) to live with another man who seems to offer her greater satisfaction. love and satisfaction in marriage are two essential components. Modern society might now have become more open to live-in relationships and divorce, but interestingly, some of these ideas are already accepted in few Indian villages. If one isn’t satisfied in a marriage, either of the partners is free to move on.
Similar situations are presented in Vinod Kumar Shukla’s translated novel, Once It Flowers (Khilega toh dekheinge). It deals with plethora of emotions that village people go through while they fight to make ends meet. Shukla presents a poetic story that often keeps shifting from reality to dreamland and vice versa. This novel is a simple story of a village and told in a writing style weaved with immense imagination. “While I am writing, I don’t know when something real transpires and when the dream takes over. I believe in the truth of imagination. I can imagine how sweet happiness is and I derive happiness from what I have just imagined. I want to save my capacity to dream in the world of stark reality. Imagination offers freedom and depending upon one’s mindset, a world full of bountiful happiness is easy to perceive on imaginary lines. There isn’t much happiness in stark reality. Fantasy gives us courage to fight with reality,” says Shukla. This novel was written when the author was in Nirala Srijanpeeth in Bhopal. “While at Nirala Srijanpeeth, my health was deteriorating and I had trouble eating or drinking. This novel turned to story of hardships and even after completion, there are many things which are left unsaid. According to me, an author writes about only one thing in his lifetime and all his works are incomplete. This is one such novel which I feel is incomplete yet finished,” adds Shukla.
Once it Flowers depicts happenings in the lives of villagers. Hardships include people fighting for basics like food and water. The book majorly revolves around the character of Guruji, a school teacher. He with his family lives in the same school he teaches in. His life is turned upside down when a storm in the village blows the roof off the school building. After the storm, Guruji and his family take refuge in an abandoned police station nearby. The school teacher is now forced to live in jail cell made for lawbreakers. “Guruji’s son always falls ill if he doesn’t eat. With the scarcity of food grains, Guruji can be seen engaged in teaching endurance to the boy. This is how life in village is. Parents teach their children to get used to suffering. This is precisely the nerve of the story,” says Shukla.
Satti Khanna, a professor at the Duke University in United States has translated this novel from Hindi to English.