Once Upon a Time (A Kashmiri Novel by Bansi Nirdosh)

by Qaisar Bashir

2017132 pages

About the book

“For the sake of Dastageer saeb, let me go. My father must be thinking about me. His eyes must have tired looking at the door. For his sake, let me see him only once. I’ll return. I won’t go anywhere. Not even to my village.” Setin Bandipora and Srinagar during theDogra regime, the novel, Once Upon a Time , narrating the tale of brotherhood, love, peace in villages and the deception, fraud and porn culture in some regions of Srinagar simultaneously, is the story of a young peasant girl,Nageena,who visits Srinagar furtively to see her father. Her fatheris under treatment in Mission Hospital. After being disallowed to meet him, she spends a night in a nearby shrine and meets a man who takes her his home,thatfinally turns out to be a prostitution house. She, however, tries oftentimes to escape, butfails. She is sold. Lastly, she conceives a child and marries the man she was sold to.

Opinions
“…Succeeded in creating an alternative text for VandihomeNirdoushe’s little novel, Akh Dour... the translation is perfect and pleasant to read…” Shafi Shauq
“… an immensely rich piece of writing, village to Srinagar... Journey of a girl. ‘I couldn’t put the book down or it had me routing for the heroine.’ This is marvellously sad re-wandering novel. And an experience of incomparable richness.”
Sarojini Sahoo
“Languages and literatures have always been refusing to be transcreated. Only the writers equipped with required capabilities have been venturing to transcreate languages and literatures. Qaisar Bashir, a young man from Kashmir, at very tender age has done the impossible. He has successfully transcreated a Kashmiri novel: Akh Dour (Once Upon a Time) by Bansi Nirdoush and has marvellously recreated environment of the original novel through which characters of the novel grow to fruition. His greatest achievement is that while transcreating no injury has been done to the soul of the novel, no dissection has taken place. There are no bruises on the characters. Instead they vibrate from the beginning up to the end.
Finger prints on diction and style of the transcreated work are that of the translator making his individuality significant.
Ismail Aashna
“… The translator does his best to make it a simple read and retain the flavour of Kashmiri sensibility in a foreign tongue.”
Dr Maroof Shah