Dead Fish

Hindi literature hails Rajkamal Choudhary’s Machhali Mari Hui as a radical milestone.

Now, for the first time, it the book reaches an English-speaking audience as The Dead Fish, in Mahua Sen’s outstanding translation. What emerges is a haunting, fearless work that probes sexuality, emotional dissonance, and human frailty with startling intensity. Mahua’s deft handling of the book’s central themes coupled with her powerfully fearless narrative voice, make this book one of the best translations that I have read.

At its core, the novel revolves around Nirmal Padmavat, a successful yet deeply fractured businessperson whose personal life is a storm of contradictions. Ruthless in his dealings and volatile in his affections, Nirmal’s relationships with Shirin, Priya, and Kalyani expose not only his inner chaos but also the psychological battles of those around him. His inability to love healthily culminates in disturbing acts, most notably, his violation of Kalyani’s daughter, Priya (underscoring the corrosive effects of his fractured identity).

Rajkamal Choudhary lay the foreground for homosexuality when it was socially unspeakable. The author portrays Priya and Shirin, both queer, as emotionally complex individuals entangled in a web of longing and repression. Their presence unsettles and destabilizes Nirmal’s world, highlighting the dangers of living in denial of one’s own truth and the violence that erupts from such denial.

The metaphor of the dead fish recurs like an elegiac refrain, symbolizing emotional barrenness, entrapment, and desires that suffocate rather than liberate. This imagery, woven through Choudhary’s experimental and lyrical prose (translated in its haunting glory by Mahua), gives the novel both its title and its enduring resonance. The narrative style, which mirrors the dislocation of its characters’ inner lives, is fragmented, unconventional, and deliberately unsettling.

Comparisons to literary giants abound. Nirmal is skillfully reminiscent of Shakespeare’s Othello and Brontë’s Heathcliff. Yet, the author resists romanticizing him; instead, he strips him bare to reveal a figure both grotesque and pitiable. This ability to balance literary ambition with raw psychological truth makes The Dead Fish so remarkable.

Mahua Sen’s translation deserves special praise. Her rendering preserves Choudhary’s daring style without smoothing out its rough edges, ensuring that the intensity of the original language remains intact. Rarely does a translation feel so alive, so attuned to both the cadences of the source and the expectations of a modern readership.

More than half a century since its conception, The Dead Fish feels urgent and unsettlingly relevant. When queer identities continue to struggle for recognition, Choudhary’s novel reads not as a relic of its era but as a sharp critique of enduring prejudices and the emotional wreckage, they leave behind.

Unflinching, provocative, and deeply moving, The Dead Fish is a literary experience that lingers long after the last page. It is not just a translation of a classic; it is a reminder that literature, when honest, can disturb, liberate, and heal all at once.