Author: Girishchandra Ghosh
Translator(s)/ Editors(s): Sayantan Dasgupta
Publisher: Sahitya Akademi
Year: 2008
Language: English
Pages: 65
ISBN/UPC (if available): 9788126026562
Description
This play is avowedly based on L'Amour Medecin, but only as far as the initial storyline goes. Temporally, the political systems of seventieth century Paris and nineteenth century Calcutta were far from similar. France was still being ruled by the monarchy, Bengal was a British subjugated colony. The only similarities perhaps could be found in some crude and accrued social behavioral practices of the two eras.
But a reader of the drama or a spectator of the play on the stage can perhaps never miss to notice the force and the strength of the dramatic vocabulary used by Girishchandra. Bawdy insinuations and grossly indecent verbal attitudes contribute profusely to the making of an atmosphere that is unsavory, if not obnoxious. It seems, the playwright is out to create a kind of repugnance among the readers and /or audience, so that they may be roused to fight against the avaricious practice of dowry.
Jyaisa-Ka-Tyaisa puts forth a farce modeled on the famous French playwright Moliere’s L’Amour Medecin. Incorporating extensively Bengali colloquial terms and phrases, Jyaisa-Ka-Tyaisa (Tit for Tat) reflects a wonderful blending of the dramatic from across national boundaries and cultures.
ABOUT THE TRANSLATOR:
Sayantan Dasgupta teaches at the Department of Comparative Literature, Jadavpur University, and is the Coordinator of the Centre for Translation of Indian Literatures there. He has edited two volumes of translations in English, co-edited an anthology of South Asian stories in Bengali translation and is the author of Indian English Literature : A Study in Historiography and Shyam Selvadurai : Text and Contests
Contents
Acknowledgments
Foreword
Tit for tat – the Play
Notes