Revisiting Abak Jalpan (A Strange Drink of Water) #EveryConversationMatters

"Water, water everywhere, nor any drop to drink"

This immortal line by Coleridge's The Rime of the Ancient Mariner is a constant reminder to be kind and empathetic to others. Here, the reference to drinking water is given as the most sought-after thing when the mariner is stranded amidst seawater but cannot drink any. It is his retribution for his cruel act.

The importance of water in our lives is unparalleled. Like Coleridge, many other poets and authors have taken up the subject of water to highlight the nature of human beings, placing them relevantly as an allegory, both in tragedy and comedy. 

In Bengali literature, another work where the reference to water has been used as a satirical representation of miscommunication is Sukumar Ray's play Abak Jalpan (A Strange Drink of Water). This was the first play most kids of our time had read in Bengali. It has been a perfect example of a sarcastic piece of literature hidden under an innocent play for children. 

About the Author: 

Sukumar Ray is one of children's literature's most noted authors and poets. He belongs to the eminent Ray family, his father being Upendra Kishore Roy Chowdhury, a distinguished columnist, author and reformer. Sukumar Ray's son, Satyajit Ray, was among India's most celebrated filmmakers. In his short lifespan of 36 years, he has marked a niche of gibberish writing in children's literature that is irreplaceable. His notable works are Abol Tabol and Ha Ja Ba Ra La. These books are known for their extremely funny writing, pure kiddish humour, and the absolutely hilarious illustrations by Ray.  Although meant for kids for pure, often nonsensical humour and fun, most of his work is a sharp stab at the emerging faux "Babu culture" of the Bengalis of the pre-independence era. His work has often been compared with Lewis Carrol.

About the Play: Abak Jolpan

Abak Jolpan was first published as a short story in 1914. It found its place in Ray's famous book, Abol Tabol, later in 1923, as a play. 

The play starts with a villager who enters a town on a hot summer day. He is very thirsty and looks for drinking water. He asks many people, whomever he meets on his way, but all he gets is unwanted advice, unnecessary banter, waste of energy and time. What happens in the end? Whether the man receives a glass of drinking water is what follows. 

The Sarcasm

Bengal's Renaissance age witnessed the rise of educated Bengalis, who adopted the liberal Western culture to reform the society burdened with oppressive and orthodox rituals. They were educated, truly liberal thinkers with the intention of the betterment of society and its people. The advent of the 19th century saw the emergence of a new type of people in Bengal. They were half-educated and considered themselves out of league with common people. Their behaviour was mostly arrogant and prideful. They made enough money by pleasing the British Government. These people were the faux-learned "Babus" of Kolkata. Many eminent pieces of literature and art from those times often made jokes on them and used them in parodies. Sukumar Ray's deep observational literature under the gibberish and usually nonsensical humour also referred to these faux Babus. 

In Abak Jalpan, how a funny incident about miscommunication over drinking water becomes a matter of great suffering for a person is the objective of this play. 

Here, we can bring out two distinct satirical elements. 

1. Ray has shown that some people do not listen to others, make their own assumptions out of whatever knowledge they have, and unnecessarily try to impose that on others. They are people who lack empathy and take pride in only whatever they know. For them, basic courtesy and genuine thoughtfulness do not mean anything. That is why they try to give unnecessary and irrelevant information about water instead of simply giving water to a thirsty man. 

2. Parallelly, it can also bring out the side in us that tends to take a complex meaning out of a simple thing that suits us the most at that time. So a simple thing like "Jol" (Water) becomes "Jolpai" (Olive) for a fruit seller, a subject of grammatical analysis for a learned elderly man and a chemical breakdown theory for a scientist. The actual problem remains unsolved. 

The climax of the play also shows how the thirsty villager, now smarter enough to realize that where simplicity and honesty don't work, he has to take trickery's help to get what he wants. 

"This post is a part of ‘H2OhSnap Blog Hop’ hosted by Manali Desai and Sukaina Majeed under #EveryConversationMatters"