It's Cat Story Day!- "Toontochaudhurioni and the Naughty Cat" by Upendrakishore Raychaudhuri (উপেন্দ্রকিশোর রায়চৌধুরী )

"Toontochaudhurioni and the Naughty Cat" by Upendrakishore Raychaudhuri (উপেন্দ্রকিশোর রায়চৌধুরী -1910, 4 pages, translated by Indrani Chakraborty)

A Cat Story from the Father of

Sukumar Ray and Grandfather of Satyajit Ray

A Great Bangladesh Author

Upendrakishore Raychaudhuri (1863 to 1915-Mymensingh, Bangladesh) is probably more known now for being the father of a famous writer, Sukunar Ray (who shortened his last name) and the grandfather of the very highly regarded film director and author, Satyajit Ray.   (I will, I hope, post on short stories by both of them soon.)  

Upendrakishore Raychaudhuri had a lot of accomplishments in his life.     Hid family was friends with the Tagore family and he worked with them to revitalise and preserve Bengali folklore.   He was an accomplished painter and musical composer. He was also an expert in land deeds and became very affluent through this expertise.  He helped people to establish title to their land in accord with old deeds and the rules of the British laws.   He greatly updated the printing process in South Asia.    He also wrote a number of short works of fictions and poems.    He is held in  esteem behind only Rabindranath Tagore as a Bengali Language poet.   He also wrote a very nice cat story!

"Toontochaudhurioni and the Naughty Cat" is very close to a parable.    A bird has built a nest that the household cat can see from the window.   It now has baby birds that look like a great lunch to the cat.    The cat hatched a plan.   For several days he would salute the mother bird in the most respectful fashion fitting an elder mother.   Here is what happens next:

"And then, Toontooni’s babies grew up a bit; they sported nice little wings. They didn’t keep their eyes shut anymore. So, Toontooni called out to them and said, ‘My little ones, can you fly?’ The chicks said, ‘Yes, mom, we can.’

Toontooni said, ‘Great, then why don’t you try and fly to the palm tree there?’ The little birds flew right away and sat on the branch of the palm tree. Toontooni smiled and said, ‘Now I know what to do with that horrible cat.’
And before long, the cat was there. She asked, ‘What’s up, O Toontooni?’
Toontooni put up her feet, threw a kick in the air and said, ‘Off you go, you mean, wretched Pussy!’ And then she took off in a jiffy and disappeared.
The naughty cat bared her teeth, climbed up the tree, but she could neither catch the toontooni nor eat her chicks. She got pricked by the thorns of the tree and came home bruised and battered."

This story is just a simple tale  about a mother protecting her children from a predator.   I enjoyed reading it and it could be a 2000 year old work.

It can be read HERE

Mel u

Prosper Merimee: Two Stories from France in the 1830s From the Creator of Carmer

"Meteo Falcone"  (1830,  5 pages)
"Tamango" (1831, 15 pages)

Two Early 19th Century French Short Stories

by Prosper Merimee

Creator of Carmen, Intimate of an Empress

One big to me benefit of my love for short stories (which began about 15 months ago-before then I was part of the vast majority of readers who disdained them as some how unworthy of my attention)  is that I am discovering a lot of new to me writers.    I am a strong believer in "the great conversation" between authors.  ( I first learned of this idea  when I read the first edition of Clifton Fadiman's The Life Tine Reading Plan, at a pretty young age.)    Not long ago I first became aware of Issac Babel in Frank O'Connor's book The Lonely Voice:A Study of the Short Story.    This morning I was doing  a bit of research on Babel and I came across a list of writers that he advised a friend were the "must" reads of all time.   There was one writer on the list I had never heard off, Prosper Merimee (1803-1870-Paris).

Of course I Googled him right away.   His biggest literary achievement is his novella, Carmen, on which Bizet based his opera.   He also was the first to translate Turgenev into French and through this had a huge indirect influence on French Literature.    He came from an affluent family, his father was a well known painter, his grandfather a powerful attorney.   Merimee was a very social person and was a good friend and collaborator with George Sand.    His most important personal connection was the Countess of Montijo.    She became the role model for Carmen.    With Merimee on the sidelines as an advisor, her daughter married the Emperor Napoleon III and he became a friend and intimate of the court.   He was appointed to  a very high government office.   His life is really very interesting.

He also wrote a number of short stories.    He was one of the first  French practitioners of this form, I think.   (The best article I found on him was HERE and there is also the usual Wikipedia article.)    He influenced Flaubert and de Maupassant and his creation of Carmen helped create the romantic notion of Gypsies.

"Mateo Falcone"  (no translator credit is given in the web page on which I read it)
is Merimee's most famous short story.    It is set on the Island of Corsica,  not by coincidence the birth place of Napoleon.    The story plays into the idea that the natives of Corsica are rugged, self reliant, all somehow related to each other nearly  and given to violence at a small offense.   As the story opens a man, shot in the leg, is running from the police toward the country home of his cousin, Mateo Falcone.   Only Falcone's teenage son is there and he agrees to let the man hide in a haystack.    The police approach (spoiler alert) and after some discussion back and forth the boy betrays the man's location for a fancy watch.   His father arrives just as the men are getting ready to carry the captive away.   At first Mateo is glad the man has been captured as he is a known thief.     Then the captive tells him that his son betrayed him for a watch.    Mateo is deeply shamed by this as it violates all the clan style values of his culture.    In an ending that strongly echos a scene out of the old testament,  Mateo leads his son off into the woods, prays with him, then shoots him.    The final scene with Mateo and his wife, the boy's mother, is very sad and very deep.   In five pages Merimee creates a complete world for us.   Those who know O'Connor's ideas will see this story as totally fitting his theories.

"Tamango" is a fascinating very well rendered story about an evil subject, the slave  trade.    The transatlantic transportation of slaves was already illegal in many countries at this time so working on a slaver was a legal risk, leaving aside any moral concerns.    Our lead character has no such concerns.   He sets out as first mate on a slaver ship (there were special ships designed for the slave trade) from the Port of Naples.    He even makes some modifications to the ship and its methods to increase the amount of people they can deliver.   One of the most powerful parts of the story occurs when the ship's captain negotiates with an African tribal chief to buy a large number of slaves he has captured.   It was chilling to see the pure callousness of the transaction, on both ends.    During the process one of the chief's wives, who is noted as especially beautiful  (the women slaves were judged for their beauty as part of their price) so when she annoys the chief he throws her in for free.    Once she gets on ship, she is kept in the cabin of the captain and greatly offends all of the other captives by wearing French clothing.   I do not want to tell more of the plot of this story.    (It was made into a movie starring Dorothy Dandridge.)      I found this a really worth reading story and learned some interesting to me bits of information about the slave trade.

I think as of now I am not really equipped culturally to say how influential Merimee was but I think it is quite high, probably higher than I understand.    I am quite sure it reached Japan before 1920.

These and others of his works, can be read at The Project Gutenberg.   I hope to read more of his short stories and Carmen.   




These stories are worth your time.

Mel u

"New Doll" by Rabindranath Tagore- A Link to a Great Source of South Asian Short Stories

"New Doll"  by Rabindranath Tagore (1922, 5 pages, translated by Bhaswath Ghosh)

A New Translation of a Tagore Story Plus a

Link to an Excellent Source of Bengali Short Stories

There are a number of very good online literary magazines that publish quality South Asian Short Stories.     One I like a lot is Parabash, which focuses on Bengali literature and culture.    Some of the stories are in Bengali and some of them are translations of short stories that you cannot find anywhere else, including 19th century short stories that represent the very start of the short story in India.   The background of each author is explained in detail.    Geographically the authors are from India and Bangladesh.      Prior to the Partition of India, there was simply Bengali literature.     The towering giant of Bengali literature is Rabindranath Tagore (1861 to 1941-there is background information on Tagore in my prior posts for interested readers) who was the first Asian Nobel Prize winner and whose songs are the national anthems of both India and Bangladesh.   

Tagore shorter fiction are often on the border between the parable and the short story.    A few days ago I was happy to get a notice from Parabash that they had just posted a special edition devoted to Tagore which included a brand new translation of one of his stories, "The New Doll".    

As "The New Doll" opens we meet an eighty year old man who makes dolls for royal princesses.    We are at the annual doll festival held in the royal court yard where all of the doll makers of the region always defer to the eighty year old man.   This year a new craftsmen has entered the event.   To the older man he seems to lack discipline.   

"However, new times meant new demands. Today’s princesses say, “We want these dolls.”

The followers of old times said, “Arre! What bad taste!”
This only increased the obstinacy of the younger lot.

Crowds didn’t flock the old man’s stall this year. His dolls sat inside the basket and kept gazing wistfully like people waiting for a boat to reach the other shore.
A year passed by, then two; everyone forgot the old man’s name. Kishanlal became the master craftsman at the royal doll fair."

The old man can no longer make a living from his dolls so his daughter and son-in-law invite him to live with them where he will keeps wandering cows out of their garden.    He has a sixteen year old granddaughter he loves with all his heart.   One day the girl asks him to make her a doll.   He reluctantly agrees to make her one after he tells her he is no longer considered the master doll maker.   He begins to get into making dolls again when his daughter, whom he is very much afraid off, tells him he is neglecting his duties in the garden at that his granddaughter at 16 is too old for dolls (girls were entered into arranged marriages at less than 16).

The granddaughter shocks her mother by selling the doll for a gold rupee.   Now the daughter has a bit of respect for the doll maker.   She tells her daughter if she can sell 16 dolls it will be enough to buy her daughter a gold necklace to wear at her wedding.   To the old man she is just a little child and he cannot conceive her getting married.   One by one the granddaughter is able to sell the dolls.   She presents her shocked mother with 16 rupees to buy her a wedding necklace.   The mother tells her all that is missing now is the groom.    The granddaughter says she has the groom.   It seems when she went to the doll fair for the first time she was told the doll would not sell because it was too old fashioned.    She was leaving the festival in tears when the man who had replaced her grandfather as master doll maker to the royal family saw her and told her he would fix her dolls up in the modern style so they could be sold.   The girl and the man fell in love and now he is being presented to the old doll maker.

"The old man asked, “Where is he?”
“There, under the Piyal tree,” replied the granddaughter.
The groom-to-be entered the room; the old man said, “Arre! This is Kishanlal!”
Kishanlal touched the old man’s feet and said, “Yes, I am Kishanlal.”
The old man embraced him tight and said, “My dear, one day you had snatched my hand's doll, now you are taking away the doll of my life.
The granddaughter put her arms around the old man’s neck and whispered to him, “Dada, with you in tow.”

"The New Doll' is a simple touching story about the love of an old man and his granddaughter.


Mel u

"Idylle" by Guy de Maupassant-I need Some Help on this story!

"Idylle" by Guy de Maupassant (1881, 4 pages)

I need some help on this one!

woman breastfeeds a stranger on a train
how should we see this story

"Idylle" is open to several interpretations.   The facts of the story are fairly simple.    A man is riding on a train in the same compartment of a corpulent young woman (this was an acceptable even desirable body style in the times) with quite large breasts.     The man can see that the woman is lactating as her milk is flowing out and staining her clothes.    We are told the man is hungry and cannot help but stare at the large breasts of the woman.   We are told that the man is a carpenter by trade.   The woman is embarrassed by her condition and says unless her breasts are drained three times a day she will have considerable pain.   (We do not know if the woman is nursing her own child or is a wet nurse.)   The man is described for us as thin, dark, and carrying his carpenter tools.   


In the train compartment with them are an Italian farmer and his wife.   As the train enters a tunnel they open a large basket and have a feast.    As the pass through the tunnel the woman opens her blouse and lets her "huge" breasts out saying she can no longer stand the pain.   The man offers to relief her.


"The young man, confused, stammered: "But ... Madame ... ... I could relieve you."

She replied in a broken voice: "Yes, if you want. You will do me good service. I can not hold out, I can not."

He knelt in front of her, and she leaned toward him, carrying to his mouth in the gesture of a nurse, the dark tip of her breast. In the movement she made by taking her two hands to bring it towards this man, a drop of milk appeared at the top. He began to drink it eagerly, seizing that heavy breast in his mouth like a fruit. And he began to suckle in a greedy and regular way.

He had passed both his arms around the waist of the woman that he was holding to approach her, and he drank with slow sips with a movement of the neck, similar as the children one.

Suddenly she said: "That's enough for this one, take the other one now."

And he took the other with docility.

She had placed her hands on the back of the young man, and she was breathing forcefully now, happily, enjoying the breath of flowers mixed with blasts of air movement being thrown into the cars."

The question then becomes is the woman to be see as a Mary Magdalene type of woman feeding a Christ like figure with the flesh of her body in a kind of reversed Eucharist.    Is it a metaphor for the treatment and condition of the poor in France?

Is there a sexual element in this story?    The man's description seems to put him in the role of both child and sexual supplicate.    Interestingly, when I Googled this story,  I could find it translated only  on a web page that seems to be devoted to those who have a fetish for lactating women. Perhaps it is translated into English with another title but given that I could find about 300 of his other stories translated into English I wondered if this story is considered by some too sexual or near pornographic to place online.  

Guy de Maupassant (1850 to 1893-France-there is some background information on  him in my prior five posts on him) wrote about 300 short stories.   I have isolated (I think) about 10 of his most highly regarded stories and hope to post on them.   I think one of the best chapters in Frank O'Connor's The Lonely Voice-A Study of the Short Story is on de Maupassant and I will be initially concentrating on the stories he endorses as well as a few from book blogs I respect greatly.    I will also be taking a closer look at this chapter in O'Connor's book.   

I do not know if I am up for reading all 300 or so of his stories.   I have already read some I did not feel motivated to post on.   

Not long ago I read Issac Babel's short story "Guy de Maupassant", a very good work.   Babel said if he were asked to do an anthology of world's best short stories half of them would be by Anton Chekhov and half by Guy de Maupassant.

What is your favorite de Maupassant story or short novel?

You can read the story in English HERE-just keep in mind the web page is close to R-Rated-it is also available online in French

Mel u

Junichiro Tanizaki: 谷崎 潤一郎 Two Short Stories about Professors

"The Little Kingdom" (1918, 32 pages)
"Professor Rado" (1925, 36 pages)

Two Very Different Professors

by Junichiro Tanizaki
谷崎 潤一郎 

The Reading Life Japanese Literature Project

My Posts on Junichiro Tanizaki


The Japanese Literature Five Reading Challenge

I really like Junichiro Tanizaki an awfully lot.   Prior to today I have posted on 12 of his novels.    He is on all lists of best Japanese novelists and the venerable Harold Bloom includes his The Makioka Sisters  in his list of canon status works.   Juninchiro Tanizaki  (1886 to 1965-Tokyo, Japan-there is some background information on him in my prior posts) is also a lot of fun to read.    I think I have now read all of his translated novels and novellas and I am now happy to be starting on his short stories (I have texts of ten of his Short stories).  

Both "The Little Kingdom" and "Professor Rado"  are about teachers.    (Both stories were translated by Paul McCarthy.)    Both of the stories are well done and worth reading but I do not think they are quite up to the standards of his best work.

One think I have not found in my readings in the pre-WWII Japanese literature is a lot of interest in the lives of the poor, who would have been the vast majority of the citizens.    "The Little Kingdom" is the first work of Tanizaki where he focuses directly on people struggling on a day to day basis to survive.    The professor in this story has relocated from Tokyo to a smaller town in the provinces in the hopes that his expenses will be lower.  He supports his wife, seven children and his mother.    He teaches 5th grade boys  and is a highly regarded professional.   The scenes inside the class room are very well done.   Tanizaki does a great job of bringing the class room to life with his depiction of the personalities of  the boys and the professor.   There is an interesting development toward the middle of the story. I will leave the rest of the story untold.   I found this to be a good, though not great, short story.

"Professor Rabo" is a very different story.    As I read it I was pretty close to shocked by its depiction of a sexual fetish.   I admit I laughed out loud at some of the scenes.   Professor Rabo is a distinguished scholar and a  cultural magazine has sent  over a writer to interview him.    The reporter cannot get the professor to open up about anything.   He does notice something odd.   The 15 year old chambermaid has a sort of arrogant attitude for her station in life.  (The ages of some of the women in the works of Tanizaki and others give us trouble now.   In the times these works were written I think laws and attitudes were different.   Teen age girls were often sold by their parents as combination maids/concubines.)   The reporter comes for a second interview and hears some noises from the professor's study.   The door has been left open a bit and he sees the professor laying face down on his desk with his pants pulled down, the chambermaid is sitting on him and has a riding crop and beats him with it and sticks her hand in his mouth.    It is not explicit but the professor seems to have an orgasm during this experience.     The reporter is shocked.   He really wants to write an expose on this but his editor tells him he cannot.    One day the reporter sees the professor at a show that features a number of women in outfits that reveal their legs.   The reporter goes back to the professors house.   The professor asks the reporter to get him information on one of the women that he really is taken by.   The woman never seems to speak and always keeps her feet covered.   Now things get real strange, the professor begins to get data on the woman that makes him think she has leprosy, which is depicted as deforming the feet.   He assumes that is why the woman covers her feet at all times.    (spoiler alert.)  To telegraph things a bit, the reporter loses track of the professor until he hears he has married.   He goes back to his house.   He meets the chamber maid and she has lost her haughty demeanor.    Once again he hears some sounds from the study and peers through the door.   The woman's feet are deformed by leprosy and the professor has her big toe in his mouth and is also talking to the woman in baby talk.   When she responds she either has a bad speech defect or is meant to be a mentally challenged person.

Both of these stories were included in the Harper Collins Flamingo press edition of    A Cat, a Man, and Two Women.  

Mel u

Japanese Historical Novels

Getting Started in Japanese Literature-Part 2
Five Wonderful Historical Novels

by Japanese Authors

Tiny Library has started an interesting new meme, Wonderful Wednesdays.

 "Wonderful Wednesdays is a meme about spotlighting and recommending some of our most loved books, even if we haven't read them recently.  Each week will have a different genre or theme".

This weeks theme is historical fiction.     

The Reading Life Japanese Literature Project

Getting Started in Japanese Literature-WWII Novels


Historical novels are tremendously popular.    Historical novels can allow us to enter in the lives of people from the past in a way that nonfiction cannot.  (I will define a historical novel as one set at least 25 years in the past.)   

In support of the Japanese Literature 5 Challenge (June 1, 2011 to Jan. 31, 2012) hosted by Dolce Bellazza I want to spotlight today five historical novels by Japanese authors I really enjoyed.    You only have to read one Japanese work to complete the challenge.   I hope a lot of the readers of my blog will sign up so I can learn from your posts!



The Waiting Years by Fumiko Enchi (1905 to 1986-Tokyo)  took eight years to write.   She  set it in the late 19th century in the household of a Samurai who is a mid-level government official.  One day about ten years into the marriage the husband tells his wife to go to an agency and hire a maid who would also be his concubine.    Of course his wife is not happy with this but having a concubine is a status symbol that a man of her husband's station in life is supposed to have so she suppresses her anger and jealousy and finds a maid that will also be a concubine.   The girl was basically sold a as near slave by her parents.    The Waiting Years covers forty years in the marriage.    We see all sorts of developments and we see the maid and the wife sort of bond when the man takes another women.   It is a very good look at what it was like to be the wife of a Samurai in the late 19th century.   It has lots of small details that bring everything to life for us. 

The Flower Mat by Suguro Yamamoto also centers around the wife of a Samurai, this time in rural Japan around 1760.    The Samurai occupies a huge place in Japanese literature, everything from cartoons to great literature centers on the myth and reality of the Samurai.   Sometimes we forget that even legendary heroes have wives.  At this time in Japanese history many Samurai were becoming business men and government officials, leaving the warrior ways for ceremonial days.  In the world of The Flower Mat everyone's place in life is determined based on the status of the family into which they were born.   The Flower Mat is one of my favorite Japanese novels.   It is a work of very subtle intelligence that highly respects the intelligence of its readers.    If you can read only one Japanese historical novel this year, I suggest you start with this one.   

The River Kai by Sawako Ariyoshi begins in 1900 and shows us the lives of three generations of women in the same family.   The novel begins just as the Russian Japanese war is ending and takes up through the post WWII years.   It  is set in Osaka and makes use of a lot of historical detail.   The great events of the time are not in the foreground but we can see how history shaped the lives of the characters,   Ariyoshi is a very highly regarded post WWII author.    She has studied traditional theater and preforming arts.   


The Doctor's Wife, also by Sawako Ariyoshi deals with a real historical figure, the first doctor in Japan to perform breast surgery under anesthetics.    This work tells us a lot about how medical practices were conducted in 19th century Japan.   It also does a great job of showing how the doctor's wife was supposed to run the business aspect of the practice leaving the husband free to help his patients.   In this novel we also see how the wife and her mother in law hate each other and are life long rivals. This is a very worth reading book.


Silence by Shushaku Endo  is a greatly admired work.   Endo is a Catholic, something quite uncommon in Japan and he writes with real passion about the first Christian missionaries that were allowed in Japan in the 17th century.    In Japan in the 17th century it was illegal to be a Christian.   Silence shows us the terrible tortures the missionaries endured at the hands of the Japanese authorities.   Silence by the brilliant use  of small details shows us a lot about life in 17th century Japan.

I am not a scholar or an academic, just a general reader.   I make no claims of expertise at all.   I am simply trying to share my experience with Japanese literature a bit.   It is now a life time passion of my reading life.


As always I greatly appreciate all reading suggestions.


Mel u 

R K Narayan-"Under the Banyan Tree" and Four Other Stories from The Astrologer's Day and Other Tales

"Under the Banyan Tree"  (1947, 8 pages)
"Engine Trouble"  (1947, 9 pages)
"Avoid all Avoidable Talk (1947, 8 pages)
"Crime and Punishment"  (1947, 9 pages)
"Fruition at Forty"   (1947, 8 pages)

The Reading Life R. K. Narayan Porject


Indian Literature on The Reading Life

The Closing Stories in

The Astrologer's Day and Other Tales

by R. K. Narayan

Many terrible things happened in South Asia in 1947.   Millions died as a result of the Partition of India.    You would never really know this from reading the short stories of R. K. Narayan (1906 to 2001-India)   set in an imaginary small town in India, Malgudi.    Aside from a few references to motor cars and trains, these stories might have been set in 1047.

I have already done several posts on the 30 stories in this collection.   He was the first Indian author to have achieved a large audience world wide for works written in English.   (There is additional background information on him in my prior posts.)

He is considered one of the geniuses of the short story.   I know a lot of my readers are very into Narayan and I hope more will have the pleasure of discovering his work.     His stories were almost all first published in a magazine format for readers whose first language was not English.    

I liked everyone of these stories a lot.    I found once I started reading them it was hard to stop.    The stories in the collection can be read  as stand alone works but they take on more power read as a group.    Narayan gives us a real feel for life in pre-Partition India.    There is a complex moral theme to these stories and I admit I am still pondering it so I will not say more on it now.

All of the stories can be read online HERE or you can download it to a reading device.    

I will soon be posting on some of his longer works of fiction and other short stories.   

This does conclude my posts on The Astrologer's Day and Other Tales.   I enjoyed it tremendously and recommend it to all without reservation.

Mel u