I never set out to lose x number of pounds, only to move and sweat and to keep moving and sweating. To surrender the vanities of laziness and self-loathing, which I'd long since mastered, and to meet the challenge of motion. I've lost ninety pounds so far-Jesus, I hope you're not toting that much tonnage-but my goal from the start was both simpler and harder than merely shedding fat. THIS STORY ISN'T REALLY ABOUT LOSing weight, not to me. I felt better already, but not that much and not for long. I took a couple of Darvocet, grabbed the phone, and ordered a large pizza. It was a hot day and a slow haul up the stairs to our second-floor apartment. I'm not bragging-any shlub can start off twenty pounds overweight and sit around gaining a pound or two a month for five years until he winds up in my shorts-but my first reaction felt a little like awe. Three-one-one, baby: That ain't that fat that's real fat. I got on the scale in his exam room before he waltzed in: 311.
The pain of breathing was so intense that I went to the doctor for some X rays and pain pills. Then, last summer, I hurt myself while coughing, pulled something in my rib cage. My knees would hurt when I got in and out of the car, and I had become a cranky bastard even on a good day, and I kept wolfing down big mounds of food, most of it pretty damned good, and buying larger and larger clothes, but, hell, I wasn't that fat.
I knew I was getting fat, but not that fat. I HAD ALWAYS BEEN A BULL, A thick-built, large-muscled man like my daddy, six feet tall and around two hundred pounds, slow afoot, a power hitter. He grew up in Kolkata and lives in New Delhi. His translations have also been published in the UK, US, Europe and Asia through further translation. His translation of Chowringhee was shortlisted for The Independent Foreign Fiction Prize (2009). He has also won the Muse India Award for his translation for When the Time is Right (2012).
He has won the Crossword Translation Award for Sankar’s Chowringhee (2007) and Anita Agnihotri’s Seventeen (2001). He has selected and translated the bestselling The Greatest Bengali Stories Ever Told. Over forty of his translations have been published so far. Written by brilliant mainstream as well as pulp fiction writers from India and Bangladesh, including Premendra Mitra, Satyajit Ray, Muhammed Zafar Iqbal, Gobindolal Bandyopadhyay and the redoubtable Swapan Kumar, the stories in The Moving Shadow: Electrifying Bengali Pulp Fiction give the reader a dazzling introduction to noir from the land of the bhodrolok.ĪRUNAVA SINHA translates classic, modern and contemporary Bengali fiction and non-fiction into English. These are the finest examples of a long tradition of pulp fiction that has always lurked in dark corners within the hallowed precincts of Bengali literature. All these and more are to be found in these eight novellas and stories featuring spies, criminals, ghosts, black-magic practitioners and, of course, femmes fatales.