Kabul With Preamble, The 1927-29 travelogue A saga in prose -Sayed Mujtaba Ali Translated by Sasabindu Chaudhuri

In English DESHE BIDESHE is renamed as ‘Kabul with Preamble’. The ‘Preamble’ is the travel from Kolkata, i.e. from Haorah (or Howrah) Station to the border of the then India and Afghanistan. One would start breathing Kabul air as soon as he crossed the border, at least at that period. The way the writer paints the whole panorama with words, it looms like a picture before the eyes with a strong captivating attraction. Only in Chapter 14 he has tried to teach us the historical background of Afghanistan. But Syed Mujtaba Ali made even the teaching lessons quite interesting for us.Bachchay Saccao is the Taliban of 1929 and he writes about him in DESHE BIDESHE.
DESHE BIDESHE was written only with the Bengali readers in his mind and as such there are jugglery of words, which will convey to Bengalis a special meaning. Sometimes there are only hints that
convey a wider meaning. In those places I have introduced some word or words, before or after that hint directly, to make those hints clearer to the English readers from Namrup to Nagercoil. Those extra
word or words are always given in italics and in brackets along with two letters – tr- to denote, those are the additions by the translator.Syed Mujtaba Ali was a master of many languages and he often used foreign words in his writings with the hope that an educated Bengali would understand those Sanskrit, Arabic, Persian or English words. Where he had any doubt, he has given the meaning in Bengali in a bracket. I have kept those foreign words, i.e. non-Bengali words,
even those, in English, as it is, but used bold letters in my translation and I have translated the meanings in brackets as in the original and naturally without the letters -tr. In the original no italics or bold letters have been used.