REVIEW: It Rained All Night

REVIEW

It Rained All Night 
Buddhadeva Bose
Translator: Clinton B Seely
Penguin Books-India
Rs 150
Pp 144
ISBN: 9780143067511
Paperback

Blurb
‘It’s over—it happened—there’s nothing more to say. I, Maloti Mukherji, someone’s wife, and someone’s mother—I did it.  Did it with Jayanto.  Jayanto wanted me, and I him … How did it happen?  Easy.  In fact I don’t know why it didn’t happen before—I’m surprised at my self-restraint, at Jayanto’s patience.’

 Banned when it was first published in the Bengali in 1967 on charges of obscenity, It Rained All Night went on to become a best-seller.

Maloti, an attractive middle-class Bengali girl, marries the bookish college lecturer Nayonangshu only to find him insecure, sexually timid and unable to satisfy her. She discovers passion in the arms of the confident, earthy journalist Jayanto whose love provides her solace from the demands of her wifely duties. Maloti and Jayanto’s growing intimacy does not go unnoticed by Nayonangshu, but his pride restrains him from reaching out to his wife.

Reviews
For non-Bengali India, here's Buddhadeva Bose's controversial work Sify
Buddhadeva Bose, one of the most versatile Bengali writers of the 20th century, was convicted on Dec 19, 1970, for alleged obscenity in his book by the additional chief presidency magistrate of Kolkata just four years before his death.

The trial - which included 70 days of hearing - lasted a year and a half. The 63-year-old writer was made to stand inside a wire cage and the copies of his book, It Rained All Night (Raat Bhor Brishti) were seized and burnt. The police did not even spare the manuscript. Bose was refused leave to appeal. His book was banned. However, the conviction was later overturned by the high court.

For the vast legions of English language readers outside Bengal and the Bengali GenNext brought up on a staple diet of contemporary Indo-Anglian and western literature, It Rained All Night - the English translation of Bose's controversial Bengali novel - by American scholar Clinton B. Seely is a window to the golden years of Bengali new-wave literary movement of the 20th century that charted a freewheeling course defying the repressive political regime of the 1960s and 1970s.

The anatomy of a marriage Deccan Herald
Infidelity, when taken up in literature, is the stuff of lyricism. Beautiful lines take wing, the unspeakable is voiced, the dialogue is all evocative repartee. There is a charge from the book, whether the adultery is platonic, pedantic, poetic or, most gratifying of all, pornographic.

Buddhadeva Bose’s It Rained All Night has all the ingredients of a good scandal even without taking into account its controversial contents — it was charged with obscenity and banned when first published in Bengali in 1967. All for justifying a married woman’s passion for another man, a man not allotted to her legally.
The married woman’s need for love — just love, pure and simple — is a matter of debate still. She is pushed into marriage by her well-meaning family or ‘arranges’ to fall for the best option available at that point in time. Suddenly, there she is packing tiffins for whining offspring, hunting down socks for spouse and ageing, ageing all the time. Enter, the playboy. The over-the-hill lass begins to bloom, she is engaged in stimulating chats about something other than fish curries and stain removers.

An unforgettable tale of desire, adultery and jealousy Calcutta Tube

Buddhadeva Bose, one of the most versatile Bengali writers of the 20th century, was convicted on December 19, 1970, for alleged obscenity in his book by the additional chief presidency magistrate of Kolkata just four years before his death.

The trial – which included 70 days of hearing – lasted a year and a half. The 63-year-old writer was made to stand inside a wire cage and the copies of his book, It Rained All Night (Raat Bhor Brishti) were seized and burnt. The police did not even spare the manuscript. Bose was refused leave to appeal. His book was banned.However, the conviction was later overturned by the high court.

For the vast legions of English language readers outside Bengal and the Bengali GenNext brought up on a staple diet of contemporary Indo-Anglian and western literature, ‘It Rained All Night’ – the English translation of Bose’s controversial Bengali novel – by American scholar Clinton B. Seely is a window to the golden years of Bengali new-wave literary movement ofthe 20th century that charted a freewheeling course defying the repressive political regime of the 1960s and 1970s. 


Timeout Delhi

It Rained All Night opens with the climax: Maloti gleefully and guiltlessly admits to having had sex with her husband’s friend. No dramatic confrontations follow. In Buddhadeva Bose’s novel, rain, which has been the romantic backdrop to many love stories, makes Maloti’s infidelity possible. It is also an expression of her husband’s sadness and it cuts the couple off from the rest of the world, leaving them surrounded by their own misery and bitterness. Maloti and her husband Noyonangshu are polite to one another, despite the cancerous angst in their relationship. They accuse one another savagely but only in their most secret thoughts.

Perhaps the most powerful aspect of It Rained All Night, originally published in Bengali in 1967, is its sensitive portrayal of a middle class couple’s married life. Bose attacked an institution that seemed stifling in his times and attempted to expose the middle class need for façades of propriety. Even though his writing was deeply-rooted in the sixties, the story could easily be set in a contemporary home.