The writer who burned his stories

Sarika Sharma

By the time his son returned home, Swadesh Deepak had burnt down many of his stories. It was early 2006 and the peak of his illness. Deepak suffered from bipolar disorder. Later that year, he left home to never return.

What were those stories, no one knows and no one will ever know, but today there is Bagugoshe to give us a taste of his writing. Eleven years after he went missing, Juggernaut is out with an anthology of his unpublished stories. All these stories were written after his long hospitalisation for the illness in 2005 and were compiled by Deepak’s friend, poet Soumitra Mohan.

Antim Aprakashit Kahaniyan. The last of his unpublished works, reads the title, but looks like Deepak isn’t done yet. For, there is another of his works that might see the light of the day. Maybe that’s why it survived that fit of rage that winter day in 2006.

Among the stories that Deepak was set to put on fire was also his last play called Judgement. Sukant, his son, vividly remembers the day. “When I reached, he was burning some of his short stories in the lawn. Frankly, I was too stunned to react at first, but when I realised what he was doing, I pushed him away before he burnt Judgement too. He seemed quite disappointed that Judgement was saved... At least three-four short stories were burnt,” he tells.

Judgement would be Deepak’s last play, an incomplete work. This one too, like Sabse Udaas Kavita, is anti-establishment. Would Sukant like to complete it... “I am not sure if I am competent enough to complete it. But even if I was to get it published, I would do it in its incomplete form,” he says.

However, there is something the readers can look forward to — an English translation of his outstanding work Maine Mandu Nahi Dekha. Jerry Pinto, the writer whose own mother battled mental illness, is translating it.

Pinto wanted Sukant, a journalist, to translate it, but the latter denied. “I strongly believe that someone like him, who is also an excellent poet, not to mention a major author, would do justice to a fractured collage of emotions that Maine Mandu Nahin Dekha is.” The book will be published by Speaking Tiger.

Speaking Tiger is also coming out with translations of all his plays and several short stories. Nirupama Dutt is translating the plays while Sukant is working on selected short stories.

For now, there is Bagugoshe and other stories to stir you to the core, tell you uncomfortable truths, merge myth and reality. Just like the opening story from this new anthology where the protagonist’s mother waits for her son to bring her bagugoshe. For her, they are almost there. But they never are. You can almost taste them, but not quite. Just like Swadesh Deepak, who left to never return and now teases us with these stories....