Parallel worlds: Of animals and humans

The Silence of the Hyena

Stories and a novella

Author: Syed Muhammad Ashraf

Translated from the Urdu by: M Asaduddin and Musharraf Ali Farooqi

Publisher: Aleph Book Company

Year of publishing: 2020

Pages: 218

ISBN: 978-93-8983620-2

Price: 599/-

Where the animal and human worlds meet!

Thanks are due to The Purple Pencil Project and Aleph Book Company.

This collection – originally written in Urdu - consists of 8 short stories and a novella. 2 translators have brought these stories to English. One of them the novella, which consists of almost half the pages of the book, and the other translator, the short stories.

There is no mention of either time or location in most of the stories. However, they give a feel of being located - further from cities and nearer to forests - in a world as it occurred some years ago. A world that was not in a rush, where hunting birds was acceptable and where 300/- meant a significant sum of money. Interestingly, excepting one, which came out about a decade later, each of the stories, was initially published during the 1990’s.

2 stories in the collection have no humans. 'The Vultures' and 'Death of an Antelope'. Let us talk about the later - a ‘coming of age’ tale about a herd of antelopes. The story talks about the antelopes, their behaviour and how change of leadership – in the herd - takes place. The descriptions are engaging - ‘The sardar had swayed in place for a few moments, then wheeled around and, dragging his blood-soaked entrails over the dust, made for the river. He had waded in deeper and deeper and eventually drowned. The vultures flying overhead had cawed, eager to feast’. There are no predators to spice up the story. There is no need either, for the story captivates the reader.

3 of the 4 stories the reader comes across, if s/he read them in serial order, talk of the hyena. As does the title of the book. One wonders why, in works of fiction, the hyena seldom comes across as a cheerful and positive natured species! Dharmendra and Divya Khandal too write of this in their book Unexplored Ranthambore, in the chapter on hyenas, ‘There are a lot of stories among villagers in India about the hyena being a vehicle of witches, but the animal is respected in some cultures and is also the national animal of Lebanon’.

‘And then laughed the Hyena’, one of the short stories, is also a part of another collection of stories brought out by Aleph Book Company during the previous year; Animal Stories. Rohan Dahotre, the illustrator, is also common to both books. This book’s cover too is eye-catching. For coming out with 2 collections – fiction - on animals in space of as many years the team at Aleph Book Company warrants appreciation. More illustrations as also additional information on the authors, translators and stories though could have added value to the book.

This may not be a book where one-liners, clever use of words leave you in stunned appreciation. But, this surely is a book where the words create a vivid imagery within few pages. The reader can almost see the hyena, humans and other animals in action. The stories, the manner in which they end, leave the readers in silence. A silence the readers will appreciate.

The stories here are less about bonding between humans and animals. The animals here primarily play their roles as metaphors to the human world. They also touch the human characters somewhere deep inside – like only animals can. These stories connect deeply with the readers. One wonders though why the human – animal stories, in this book (and also otherwise) are seldom happy stories? Why is it common for them to be sad and devoid of fun moments?