The Horror of Loneliness: The One-Legged as a Psychological Thriller

My review of the book titled ‘The One Legged’, which has made it to the shortlist of the JCB Prize for Literature in 2024. It is one of the three translated fiction to make it to the top five novels on the shortlist.

Akin to the elegance of Gothic literature, Sakyajit Bhattacharya’s Ekanore, translated from Bengali into English by Rituparna Mukherjee, is a tale that enraptures the reader with a gripping narrative, hanging by a thread, as it flows with every chapter, every line, its eerie silences, and its spooky pauses.

A fiction delving deep into the pulsating loneliness and negligence experienced by a nearly nine-year-old Tunu is equally riveting and un-putdownable as a psychological thriller by anybody of any age, whether reading in its original, or translated version titled The One Legged.

From the onset, the chronicle sets the mood to be sinister, filled with unknown mysteries, and yet-to-be-unraveled truths. A child’s desire for attention manifests in his fantasies, creating a somber temperament amid nature, and the dreadful folklore surrounding him.

Tunu’s fantasies are extended to the folklore of the one-legged monster that lives atop the palm tree. Throughout the novella, the one-legged devilish appearance sprawls over, creating the presence of a supernatural being. Nonetheless, the cerebral journey of the forlorn child precedes the ghastly, only to be revealed at the end of the story.

The tightly bound narrative is a juxtaposition of time and space, intermingling two tales occurring in separate time zones, the past and the present respectively, only coming together to make sense toward the novella's climax.

Overall, the novella speaks of the internal journey of an almost nine-year-old, Tunu, who feels neglected by his squabbling parents and is speculated to be separated. He is entrapped in his maternal grandmother’s house, eternally waiting for his mother to fetch him, so that he can return to his homeland, Asansol. However, with his mother constantly deferring her visits, and his grandmother being preoccupied with the grief of her long-lost son, he falls prey to unreasonable fancies and thrills.

Tunu, a child wanting affection and care, is bewildered by the fancy of Ekanore, the one-legged ghost who seems to have taken her maternal uncle away years ago. His maternal grandmother, Dida, still laments the loss of her child which serves as a detriment to the fondness Tunu deserves. Yet, the child seems to be engulfed by the world of his Choto Mama (maternal uncle) whose room he frequently visits.

Tunu seems to be enthralled by the presence of the one-legged ghost said to be residing atop the palm tree by the garden of the house that he stays in. He is drawn toward the misty presence of the horror-filled countenance of Ekanore whose misgivings and descriptions unfold as the narrative proceeds.

As one reads between the lines, one feels Tunu’s longing to belong to the space around him, his passion for attention from his Dida, his kinship towards Biswa Mama, and his latent sexual affinity towards Rina Mamima, Biswa Mama’s wife.

The one-legged demonic presence spreads through the narrative as a madman with only a leg appears at the fair Tunu visits or Tunu’s limp at the end of the narrative.

Throughout the web of the plot, the uncanny presence of a one-legged monster haunts the reader, only to provide a shocker at the end when the psychological and the mythical collide in the denouement of events.

As a reader, I can only say that one must read each word of this novella to reach an end that is equally delectable and horrific. With an entirely unpredictable end, the reader cannot stop after reading 80 pages into the book, wanting to know what happens next.

I will not give away the end, not for this one. For one must savor the mystery that each chapter unfolds. But I must say that speculative fiction probing into the cavernous depths of adolescent negligence is quite rare in contemporary Bengali fiction. Even so, a psychological thriller that comingles horror and gore with as electrifying a climax as this one is seldom found in the plethora of Bengali fiction.

Reading such a novella makes me want to believe that the ambit of Bengali fiction is truly expanding and touching horizons that were unimaginable before.

Having read both the English translation and the original Bengali fiction, I must comment on the translation. Mukherjee’s translation flows quite freely within the crevices of Bhattacharya’s fiction. As is the case with most translated fiction, some of the effect is lost, especially the onomatopoeia in Bengali that essentially creates the spooky mood of the tale. However, Mukherjee’s clever vocabulary and her deft use of language compensate for the aforementioned folly.

One can safely say that the essence of Bengali traverses the confines of language and finds quite an accurate representation in English. The target readers, however, remain the ones who are well-versed in the Bengali folklore of Ekanore. Some of the connotations are deliberately attuned to the Bengali consciousness, a mindful gesture in acquainting foreign readers to the source language.

To conclude, The One-Legged is a speculative fiction that must be read by all, irrespective of age and linguistic affinities. It is a narrative that drills into the psyche of a lonely child and brings forth its manifestations in the supernatural and the cerebral skeleton of the mind, mingling together mysteriously.