translation | Jaya's blog

Vivek Shanbhag’s “Ghachar Ghochar”, translated by Srinath Perur

It’s true what they say — it’s notwe who control money, it’s the money that controls us.

…

And let’s face it: there’s a vast difference in the moral underpinnings of a business family and the household of a salaried teacher.

Vivek Shanbhag’s new novella, Ghachar Ghochar, (HarperCollins India) translated from Kannada by Srinath Perur is about a middle class family that decides to start a spice business. The family prospers financially primarily due to the hard work of the young uncle. The narrator is sitting in a coffee shop reflecting, commenting and analysing his life. It is not exactly an interior monologue but it leaves you feeling as if it is. It is a vignette of a middle class life with some very perceptive comments embedded in the text such as “The woman had not abused. She had not come here to pick a fight. We were thrown off balance by her love for one of us, and so we tore into her with such vengeance that she collapsed to the ground, sobbing. Amma and Malati called her a beggar, a whore, and it was clear from the disbelief on her face that she had never been spoken to in this manner. … On that day I became convinced that it is the words of women that deeply wound other women.” (p.15-16)

It is the only translation from an Indian regional language that was included in the Granta edition on India edited by Ian Jack published in 2015. With the publication of this book debates about translation have opened up once more. Purists claim that they are not happy with the it. Those who are familiar with the complexity of Vivek Shanbhag’s writing in Kannada say that the ending of the English version is too tame. I cannot comment since I am unable to read the text in Kannada but I do know that I am very glad that this story was made available in English by Srinath Perur. If it helps reactivate a debate on whether the English translation is true to the original text or is it catering to a new audience by capitulating to their tastes for world literature or is the ending in the English text a weakened version of the original then so be it. These conversations are necessary and a requirement for a healthy debate about the quality of literature. All said and done, this is finely etched novella should be essential reading.

Update ( 24 March 2016):

Recently the author read this blog post and sent me this email. I am posting an extract here with permission:

Dear Jaya,

I read your blog post. I edited and added a few pars to the Kannada version before it was translated into English. And this revised version is yet to be published in Kannada.
Not a sentence from the original was edited by the (Harper) editors, except one for providing more clarity. There were some small edits to make the reading better in English but not to alter the meaning of a sentence. So the English version is not really “tame” as compared to the original on which it was based. But I must admit that no Kannada reader has access to the new version it as it is yet to be published.

Warmly,

Vivek

Vivek Shanbhag Ghachar Ghochar ( translated from Kannada by Srinath Perur) Harper Perennial, HarperCollins Publishers, NOIDA, India, 2015. Hb. pp. 115. Rs 399.

January 2016

Literati: “Ink on the Brink”

17 10 , 2015 No Comments

(My monthly column, Literati, in the Hindu Literary Review was published online ( 17 October 2015) and will be in print ( 18 October 2015). Here is the http://www.thehindu.com/books/literary-review/jaya-bhattacharji-rose-on-india-coping-with-book-bans/article7770216.ece. I am also c&p the text below. )

It remains to be seen how India, despite its business potential, copes with cultural policing, muzzling of free speech, and book bans

According to Nielsen’s The India Book Market Report 2015, released at Frankfurt Book Fair on October 14, the print book market in India is worth Rs. 261bn (£2.5bn), making it the sixth largest in the world, and the second largest of the English language markets. U.K. publishers’ revenues, including e-books, home and exports, are worth £3.3bn. India is the second most populous country in the world, with 1.28 billion people. The literacy rate is rising rapidly, from 65 per cent in 2001 to 74 per cent in 2011; it is predicted to reach 90 per cent in 2020. One quarter of young people define themselves as book readers, comprising by themselves a larger group than the population of the U.K. which is 65 million.

It explains why, for some time now, publishers worldwide are keen to explore strategic partnerships with their Indian counterparts in English and regional languages. According to a 2010-12 report Rebalancing the Economy from the House of Commons, Parliament of Great Britain, “40 per cent of U.K. publishing revenues are derived from exports”. Though the statistic is three years old, it will hold validity in 2015 since the links between British publishers and India are amongst the oldest given the colonial past.

But what happens when a market like India with huge business potential mutates into a territory synonymous with cultural policing, muzzling of free speech, book bans and intolerance of ideas? Does it still remain an attractive market to invest in? Increasing number of writers from various Indian languages are returning their Sahitya Akademi awards and Punjabi writer Dalip Kaur Tiwana returned her Padma Shri in protest against the assassination of rationalist scholars like Kalburgi. For some writers, this form of intellectual censorship is linked to the horrific lynching incident in Dadri. Noted Hindi writer, 90-year-old Krishna Sobti, said while returning her award that India did not need any more “Dadri or Babri”.

***

I have contributed an article on the theme of Independence in Indian Children’s Literature for the inaugural issue of
The Read Quarterly. It is a journal on children’s literature, founded by Sarah Odedina and Kate Manning; the Kickstarter campaign has been endorsed by Neil Gaiman. Some of the other contributors include Nury Vittachi, Eoin Colfer, Gita Wolf (Tara Books) and Daniel Hahn. My article maps the literary inheritance of independence/partition of subcontinent. Much of it is inadvertently focused on hagiographies written to suit a specific ideological position, reinforcing communal points of view that took root in British India. Fortunately, there are noticeable positive shifts in contemporary fiction, but as Romila Thapar, the eminent historian, wrote to me, “The goal of the national movement was such that communities came together for a cause and set aside what separated them. It is these moments that need to be remembered in the present times.”

Cultural pluralism, democracy and secularism, the defining traits of India, are now under severe threat. Two collections of short stories published this past month address the complexities of Indian culture and ethos being intimidated by communal forces. Deeply disturbing but essential reading is the Pigeons of the Domes: Stories on Communalism edited by Rakhshanda Jalil (Niyogi Books). It was put together with the sole intention of “tracing the secular thread in the fabric of modern India, a thread that goes back many centuries.” It consists of stories by Gulzar, Ajeet Caur, Asghar Wajahat, Deepak Budki and Keki Daruwalla.

‘They Eat Meat!’ is the opening story in Sahitya Akademi Yuva Puraskar, 2015 winner, Hansda Sowvendra Shekhar’s new short story collection The Adivasi Will Not Dance. In ‘They Eat Meat!’ Panmuni and Biram Soren go to live in Gujarat, and are surprised to learn that they would have to stop eating non-vegetarian food to be accepted as citizens. According to the author, “The impetus behind the short story was the experience a Santhal family had in Vadodara during 2000-02. …the things I have mentioned are all as they were told to me by this family. I just changed the names. I wasn’t there in Gujarat in 2002 when the riots happened, but I was curious to know what happened, the insider-outsider equation, the pure-impure thing, the veg-non-veg thing, and so I wanted to write this story….This story first appeared in the literary magazine from Kathmandu, La.Lit. Prawin Adhkari and Rabi Thapa, the editors, published it in August 2014 with the title, ‘DON’T MIX WITH THEM, THEY EAT MEAT!’…It read more like an eyewitness report (in the third person) than a fiction based on facts. For the Speaking Tiger version, my editors and I took the report-like feel out and turned it into more story-like. … In the La.Lit version, imagination was minimum; in the Speaking Tiger version, there is more imagination.”

This fine line between fact and fiction is well summed up in the astounding debut novel, Tram 83 by performance artist and poet, Fiston Mwanza Mujila, translated from the French by Roland Glasser, published by Deep Vellum Publishing. Lucien, the protagonist, while reflecting upon his work, asks: “Is there a limit to the imagination of a writer who takes real facts and uses them to construct a world where truth and fiction coexist?” It is not surprising that Indian writers are protesting intellectual censorship by returning state awards.

17 October 2015

Press Release: The Read Quarterly

09 10 , 2015 No Comments

Neil Gaiman Kickstarter video and Eoin Colfer original fiction help launch The Read Quarterly.

The Read Quarterly (TRQ, www.thereadquarterly.com), the magazine launching in January 2016 to discuss the culture of children’s literature, has today revealed its first issue cover and has announced that the magazine will contain an original four-part Eoin Colfer story, Holy Mary, to be published through the first year. The Read Quarterly will be a forum in which global children’s literature can be discussed and debated. Created by children’s literature enthusiasts, each with a wealth of experience in the publishing industry, Sarah Odedina and Kate Manning, this quarterly magazine will provide an environment in which both writers and readers can share their enthusiasm, introduce new ideas and challenge old ones.

TRQ have also announced details of how to support the first issue of the magazine via Kickstarter and have revealed that Neil Gaiman has been instrumental in setting up that campaign, even recording a video for them to help push the crowd funding.

Sarah Odedina, one of the founders of the magazine, said “We have had such fantastic support since we announced The Read Quarterly. We are excited by the Kickstarter campaign as we feel that its energy suits our magazine so perfectly. Support has already been flooding in from such luminaries as authors including Malorie Blackman and Neil Gaiman, publishers Neal Porter and Louis Baum and bookseller Melissa Cox. We look forward to growing our magazine to reflect the energy and drive that is so characteristic of the children’s literary scene around the world”.

To support the Kickstarter please go to www.kickstarter.com/projects/748565480/the-read-quarterly. Pledges for the project start at £20 and you will receive not only Odedina and Manning’s undying gratitude and the joy of supporting the project from the start, but also exclusive prints, bags and original artwork. From publication, the magazine will be stocked in bookshops and there is also a subscription service from issue two onwards.

If you are interested in stocking the magazine, please contact Kate Manning at kate@thereadquarterly.com.

An annual subscription costs £40. For more details please contact subscribe@thereadquarterly.com

For media enquires, please contact:

Kate Manning kate@thereadquarterly.com

List of some of the contents of Issue 1

So,we’re about to announce the details of how you can get behind issue 1 and it’s only fair we let you know what’s in the magazine we hope you want to support.

Here’s some of the content list for issue 1 of TRQ. We’re really excited about the wide range of articles and the amazing spread of contributors from around the world, and we hope you like them too. Admittedly, we get a sneak preview of what the articles are about, but hopefully the article titles are tantalising enough.

We have…

‘Hunting for the Birds: A Designer’s Memories of Childhood Reading’ by Stuart Bache, UK

‘Cinderella and a World Audience’ by Nury Vittachi, Hong Kong

‘The Last Taboo: What Interactive Prints Says About the Digital Revolution’ by Elizabeth Bird, USA

‘The Artisan Publisher: Tara Books, Chennai, India’ by Gita Wolf, India

‘A New Arabic Publishing Model’ by Kalimat Publishers, UAE

‘Children and the Magic of Bookshops’ by Jen Campbell, UK

‘From Institution to Market: Publishing for the African Child’ by Ainehi Edoro, Nigeria/USA

‘The Theme of Independence in Children’s Literature in India’ by Jaya Bhattacharji Rose, India

‘The New Internationalists: The Changing Scene of Illustrated Books Published in the UK’ by Martin Salisbury, UK

‘A Singaporean Interpretation of Classic Children’s Stories’ by Myra Garces-Bacsal, Singapore

‘American Nonsense and the Work of Carl Sandburg and Dave and Toph Eggers’ by Michael Heyman, USA

‘The Work of Beatrix Potter and the Loss of Innocence‘ by Eleanor Taylor, UK

‘A Look at Translation’ by Daniel Hahn, UK

And that’s not all, we also have…

Original fiction (well, the the first of four parts) by Eoin Colfer, illustrated by Adrienne Geoghegan, Ireland

Original poetry by Toni Stuart, South Africa

A comic strip explaining what Gary Northfield (UK) really hates drawing

An illustrator profile on Catarina Sobral (Portugal) who has illustrated our amazing first issue cover

AND

A Literary Crossword by Tristan Hanks, UK

9 October 2015

Perumal Murugan’s statement on being awarded the Samanvay Literature Prize

06 10 , 2015 No Comments

Kannan Sundaram, Publisher, Kalachuvadu posted the following message from writer Perumal Murugan this morning ( 6 Oct 2015) on his Facebook page. This is regarding the Samanvay Literature Prize conferred upon Perumal Murugan for his novel Madhorubhagan ( One Part Woman) .

சமன்வய் விருது : பெருமாள் முருகன் அறிக்கை :

மாதொருபாகன் நாவலுக்கு வழங்கப்பட்டுள்ள இவ்விருது நெடும்
இலக்கியப் பாரம்பரியம் கொண்ட செம்மொழி ஆகிய தமிழுக்குக் கிடைத்திருக்கும்
நவீன அங்கீகாரம் ஆகும். துரதிர்ஷ்டம் நிறைந்திருக்கும் இச்சூழலில் என்
தாய்மொழி அடைந்திருக்கும் இப்பேறு அதன் வரலாற்றில் துருத்தும் மருவாக
அல்ல, ஒளிரும் மணியாக அமையும் என்று நம்புகிறேன். இவ்விருதுக்குக்
காரணமான அனைவருக்கும் மனமார்ந்த நன்றிகள். இயற்கையின் இயல்புக்கு மாறாகப்
பெருமாள்முருகனின் நிழலாக மட்டுமே தங்கி உலவும் நான் பெருமைமிகு தருணமாக
இதை உணர்கிறேன். இவ்விருதை எல்லாம் வல்ல இறையாகிய மாதொருபாகனின் பாதக்
கமலங்களுக்குச் சமர்ப்பணம் செய்கிறேன்.
அன்புடன்,
பெ.முருகன்

A.R.Venkatachalapthy has translated the statement into English. This is what it says:

“The Samanvay Award for Madhorubhagan is a modern recognition given to Tamil, a classical language with a long and unbroken literary tradition. This recognition, bestowed on my language at an unfortunate moment, will, I hope, be a shining gem rather than an unsightly wart. I wholeheartedly thank everyone who made this possible. Constrained by force of circumstance to act as the shadow of Perumal Murugan, I feel honoured by this award. I dedicate the Samanvay Award to the lotus feet of the almighty lord Madhorubhagan.”

– P. Murugan, 27 Sep. 2015

6 Oct 2015

Michel Bussi, “After the Crash”

01 09 , 2015 No Comments

Interesting little book. It is a translation. A thriller. Detailed as you would expect mystery stories to be. Bulk of the action takes place in 48 hours, although the air crash and mixed-up identities around which the story revolves took place eighteen years earlier. It employs the literary technique of interspersing journal entries with the plot moving in real time as well. So it is not always the flashback technique in a straightforward narrative but text that appears at the right moment — just when the character reading the journal and reader of After the Crash begin to have questions, they are neatly supplied by the journal. Many readers and critics of After the Crash are putting Michel Bussi in the same league as Steig Larsson and Joel Dicker. The comparison is inevitable since all three authors have written gripping thrillers, each unique in its treatment of plot, style and storytelling and curiously enough, the books are translations that seem to have transcended all cultural barriers and caught the imagination of readers worldwide. Michel Bussi too is a man worth reading.

Michel Bussi After the Crash ( Translated from the French by Sam Taylor) Weidenfeld & Nicolson, Hachette, Great Britain, 2015. Pb. pp.390 Rs 399

1 September 2015

On travel writing and translations

06 05 , 2015 No Comments

In recent months I have read two books of travel writing translated from Urdu and Bengali respectively. They were first written a century apart but the English translations were made available six months of each other. The two books are:

1. Yusuf Khan Kambalposh Between Worlds: The Travels of Yusuf Khan Kambalposh, translated and edited by Mushirul Hasan and Nishat Zaidi, published by Oxford University Press ( 2014). Original title: Tarikh-i-Yusufi (1837-38), first published by Naval Kishore Press ( 1898)

2. Syed Mujtaba Ali In a land far from home: A Bengali in Afghanistan translated by Nazes Afroz, published by Speaking Tiger ( 2015). Original title: Deshe Bidishe, first published in 1948

There is something fascinating about accessing the past through contemporary literature. Making translations of such texts available to a modern audience is a commendable effort since many such texts are tucked away in personal collections, archives, and libraries. Selecting an “appropriate” text for a 21-century reader is dependant on a variety of factors — not just on the book’s own merit. It is probably relevance of the text being translated. For instance, Between Worlds, is about thirty-three-year-old Yusuf Khan Kambalposh who decides to visit England. He had no patronage, was not dependent on anyone for financial support or for social contracts but made the journey on his own. He was in London to see Queen Victoria being coronated. All though he often wrote in Persian, this travelogue was written in Urdu, a fascinating choice given the time it was written in. But it also shows the impact the Delhi Vernacular Translation Society ( 1843) had in popularising the language among the masses of readers in North India. Most translations were made available in Urdu. It is also a significant travelogue since it is a rare perspective offered by an Indian and not necessarily from a Colonial perspective. It is also about Victorian England at a time when modern literature about Queen Victoria is gaining importance.

With In a land far from home there is a firsthand account of a non-Afghan, a Bengali traveller, having travelled so far North, living in Afghanistan, witnessing a tumultuous period of history. It is when the reformist King Amanullah tried to steer his country towards modernity by encouraging education for girls and giving them the choice of removing the burqa. Branded a ‘kafir’, Amanullah was overthrown by the bandit leader Bacha-e-Saqao. ( An extract from the book may be read on Caravan magazine’s website: http://www.caravanmagazine.in/vantage/why-bengali-traveller-was-flummoxed-afghani-hospitality . )

Both the translated texts are worth reading from an academic point of view. They are footnoted and with plenty of prefatory material. Fascinating for the old world they reveal especially when seen through the prism of contemporary socio-political-economic conditions in these regions. Otherwise not easy to read. Somehow I found a few travelogues written by women easier to read particularly a lovely one All the Roads are Open: the Afghan journey by Annermarie Schwarzenbach (translated by Isabel Fargo Cole). She too is in Afghanistan at the time of Amanullah’s reign but her account is easier to relate to, probably because these were meant as regular dispatches to various newspapers in Germany. ( https://jayabhattacharjirose.com/blog/of-women-travellers-and-writing/ )

Having said that the anecdote about the massacre of sunbathing turtles on the high seas to be later made into a feast of kebabs in Between Worlds is just the reason why one picks up travel books. To get a random detail that is not commonly heard of but will forever remain embedded in one’s brain as a piece of trivial but astounding information.

6 May 2015

Two powerful books of fiction and farmers in India

13 04 , 2015 No Comments

For the past few years, India has witnessed a rise in the number of suicides by farmers. The primary reason is the inability to pay of the debt cycle they find themselves in. These could be due to a variety of reasons, some of which are genetically modified seeds that cannot be used for propagation in the next season, poor harvest and displacement due to the construction of dams etc.

Few people have been recording this horrific phenomenon of farmer’s suicides in India, such as award-winning journalist like P. Sainath who has been doing so systematically. He refers to himself as “Rural Reporter”. ( http://psainath.org/) As founder editor he launched a website called, “People’s Archive of Rural India: The everyday lives of everyday people” ( http://www.ruralindiaonline.org/ ) where he and his team have been posting fantastic articles from rural India. But all these articles make for fascinating ( and disturbing) reportage. For such grim issues –farmer suicides and poor compensation for land and harvest destroyed– to make its presence felt in fiction and powerfully too continues be extremely rare. But it does happen.

Sonora Jha makes the suicide of cotton farmers focus of her debut novel, Foreign ( 2013) and Na. D’Souza’s novella, Dweepa ( first published in 1970 in Prakasha, a weekly from Manipal and translated from Kannada into English by Susheela Punitha for OUP in 2013) is about the displacement of farmers in the Malnad region due to the building of the Linganamakki dam on River Sharavathi. For both writers, gestation of the fiction was grounded in their research and day jobs. As Sonora Jha said to me in an email, “It started as a research project for me. I am a social scientist by training, with a Ph.D. in Political Communication, focusing on the reporting of social movements and social protest. So, I was researching the reportage on the farmer suicides. That’s what took me to Vidarbha, to interview farming families, activists and journalists. There was the pre-Vidarbha research and the post-Vidarbha research. Apart from my interviews, I read everything I could get my hands on.” Similarly, Na D’Souza says in his introduction to the novella, “The problem of submersion of land in the cause of modernization and the ensuing displacement of local people is something that has bothered me for a long time. I worked for about twenty-five years in areas connected with the Sharavathi hydroelectric project…[in the late 1950s]….The film version of Dweepa won the President’s Gold Medal in 2006 besides many other awards.” Even Foreign was shortlisted for the prestigious Hindu Lit Prize 2013.

Both books are worth reading and gain significance given how distressingly “topical” they continue to be. Sonora Jha puts it across well when describing why she chose cotton farmers as the focus of her first novel? “I believe that the farmers’ suicides and the farmers’ crisis is a global story and is one of the biggest, most frightening stories of our time. But it isn’t gripping people’s hearts the way other stories of more immediate and glamorous disasters do. I wanted to tell the story in a way that it connected with ordinary readers. … One big purpose for me with Foreign was to get the issue of farmers’ suicides even more in the press, through the back door. Anyone who reviewed Foreign and/or interviewed me had to write about the farmers’ crisis in India. That gives me so much satisfaction.”

And now with the “rational explanations” being provided for land acquisition by the government, the nightmare for Indian farmers seems to be far, far from over.

Read these books. Discuss the issues.

13 April 2015

Sonora Jha Foreign Random House India, India, 2013. Hb. Rs 399

Na. D’Souza Dweepa ( Island) Translated from Kannada by Susheela Punitha. Oxford University Press, New Delhi, India, 2013. Pb. pp. 100. Rs. 195

Dharamvir Bharti, ” Chander & Sudha”, translated by Poonam Saxena

21 03 , 2015 No Comments

Poonam Saxena reading “Chander & Sudha”.

When he could school his mind to stay calm, when he could endure everything with a smile, why couldn’t Sudha? He was the one who, with his every breath, had fashioned Sudha into what she was. He had, bit by bit, constructed her, polished her, embellished her. She was his work, his creation. How, then, could she exhibit his weakness? ( p.143)

…

The house shone like silk. But within every ball of bright, colourful silk there is always a little silkworm–sad, silent, holding its breath, waiting every second for its imminent death. In the middle of all the hectic activity, the preparations, the excitement, there was one person whose lifebreath seemed to be ebbing away, whose eyes were slowly losing their sheen and mischievous sparkle, whose heart was emptying itself of all joy and happiness — Sudha. ( p.161)

Dharamvir Bharti’s popular novel Gunahon ka Devta or Chander & Sudha has been translated into English by prominent journalist Poonam Saxena. It is a story set in Allahabad, Uttar Pradesh in the 1940s. Sudha is the daughter of Dr Shukla and Chander is his student. Chander spends a lot of time at his teacher’s home, practically lives in it and moves in after Sudha gets married and leaves. Chander & Sudha is a “love story” more than a romance, told ever so lovingly by the 23-year-old Dharamvir Bharti. The gentleness with which it is recounted is absorbing to read, never dull; all though the storytelling and the ending is reminiscent of Bollywood films of the 1950s. Nor does the language sound stilted even though Chander is prone to intense self-reflection and being privy to a lovestruck Romeo can get quite painful to read if not written about deftly–probably a large part of the credit for a readable story goes to the translator, Poonam Saxena.

Chander & Sudha is a novel which will probably make it to the longlist, even the shortlist, for any award instituted for translated literature in India. It is a book that tends to occupy one’s mind for a long time after it is over. Time well spent.

I am posting excerpts of an email interview conducted with Poonam Saxena earlier this week.

1 What are the sales figures of this novel in Hindi? You say it is still in print and selling well. Who is the publisher?

I don’t have any exact sales figures for the novel but I do know that it was written in 1949 and has never been out of print. I have two copies with me. One is a 20th reprint 1986 hardcover that was first published by Bharatiya Jnanpith in 1959. (I don’t know who the earlier publisher was). Then I have a paperback copy also printed by Bharatiya Jnanpith in 2014 which is the 70th reprint. Hardcover + paperback from 1949 to today — I don’t even know how many copies it must have sold, but the numbers must be huge. I do know it is widely considered to be Hindi’s biggest bestseller.

2 Was the author only 23-years-old when he wrote it? Does it not make him similar to the young authors we have today, who commercially success — Ravinder Singh, Durjoy Dutta etc?

In Hindi and Urdu writing, many authors did finish very successful works when they were very young. For example, Rajendra Yadav wrote Sara Akash at 21, Sahir Ludhianvi wrote Talkhiyan at 22.

3 What was the purpose of your translations when you began it — be true to the source text or reader friendly to a modern reader?

My translation is not literal. It is not true to the text in the sense that I haven’t translated every single line as it is written in Hindi. The idea was to be true to the characters, emotions and feelings in the book and to make it work as a novel in English. I didn’t want it to sound stilted. I kept some things in mind — for example, the book is written in 1949, so I tried to avoid casual, modern words and terms like ‘stressed’ or ‘hassled.’ (I also felt that people hardly write great love stories any more — but here was one which still touched your heart even though it was written so many years ago. It needed to be translated.

I didn’t skip over passages, I didn’t omit chunks. I retained what the writer had said – the metaphors he had used (for example, the temple, the oil lamp – these are the images he has used throughout the book when writing about Chander and Sudha’s love). There are long passages of reflection, philosophy, all of which I have retained. I have tried to keep them as true to the book but at the same time I have tried to make them work in English. Also, just to give you another small example, there is a long passage early in the book when Chander is wandering about in Beritie’s rose garden, where there is a detailed description of flowers. I could have cut that passage but I didn’t. I kept it. On the whole I tried to be true to the writer’s voice and way of expression while making it fluid when translated into English.

4 Why did you change the title of the novel from Gunahon Ka Devta to Chander and Sudha? What would you have translated Gunahon ka Devta as? Isn’t the title in Hindi far more apt than the one chosen by you for the English translation?

The Hindi title is absolutely beautiful. Gunahon Ka Devta is an incomparable title. But when you translate it in a literal way, it becomes ‘Lord of Sins’ or ‘God of Sins’, which doesn’t sound right at all. My editor and I went through about 20 titles and somehow none sounded okay. We finally settled on Chander & Sudha because really the book is also a great love story. I guess there was some inspiration from titles like Romeo & Juliet which are based on the two lead characters’ names.

5 How old were you when you first read this novel and fell in love with it?

I first read the novel in my twenties and fell in love with it.

6 The article you wrote in Scroll ( 15 March 2015, http://scroll.in/article/713676/why-a-66-year-old-hindi-love-story-needed-to-be-translated-into-english ) was adapted from the afterword published in the book, was it not?

Yes it was. They wanted the piece quickly, literally overnight. They were okay with an extract from the Afterword too, but I adapted it and sent it. The Afterword as it is gives out the whole story, so obviously I didn’t want that.

Dharamvir Bharti Chander & Sudha ( Translated by Poonam Saxena) Viking, Penguin Group, Gurgaon, India, 2015. Hb. pp. 330. Rs. 499

21 March 2015

Jip and Janneke – two kids from Holland

09 03 , 2015 No Comments

I received a beautiful book in the post last week. The moment I opened the parcel, my five-year-old daughter took the book away from me and said triumphantly, “This is mine!” Sarah was charmed by the beautiful illustrations and insisted I read the story out aloud immediately. So I did. Jip and Janneke – Two kids from Holland is about two children introducing Holland to an international audience.

Supported by the embassy of the Netherlands, the book has been made available in India by A&A Book Trust. They are pleased to offer Jip and Janneke – Two kids from Holland by Fiep Westendorp, in English or Hindi, to NGOs promoting literacy through libraries, schools and centers for underprivileged children.

Jip and Janneke (pronounced Yip and Yannaka) are the Netherland’s most famous kids. From 1952 right up to now, generations of Dutch children have grown up with them. Parents read these stories to their children, just as these were read to them by their parents when they were young.

In this hardbound book full of colour plates, Fiep Westendorp’s illustrations – among the most beautiful that she ever made – are the starting point of a journey through the Netherlands in which Jip and Janneke show children from other countries a number of typical events in the lives of Dutch children.

NGOs promoting literacy amongst children are invited to express their interest in this pictorial introduction to the Netherlands by writing to A&A Book Trust at aabooktrust@gmail.com

9 March 2015

Ali Akbar Natiq, “What will you give for this beauty?”

09 02 , 2015 No Comments

What will you give for this beauty? is Ali Akbar Natiq’s debut collection of short stories. It is set in the Punjab countryside with tales about ordinary people, ordinary lives, with preoccupations of marriage, love, impact of Partition, feuds, religious differences and discontent, gossip, courtesans, storytellers, liars and cheats etc. Yet how everyone overcomes odds to survive.

Ali Akbar Natiq began working as a mason, specializing in domes and minarets, to contribute to the family income while he read widely in Urdu and Arabic. Somehow the flavour of Urdu short stories seeps through this particular collection. Its description of the common people, of commonplace occurrences, an exaggerated and embellished style of storytelling with unexpected twists to the story. Through it all there is a constant recognition and respect that this is God’s world we inhabit. It is never clearly spelled out but exists. It is evident in the book title, which seems to be a play on the innumerable references in the Quran and the Old Testament where it is constantly reiterated that this world’s splendour has been created by God, its beauty exists everywhere even when God seems to provide one only with sorrow, ashes and despair. The stories have been translated mostly by Ali Madeeh Hashmi, but also by Awais Aftab and Mohammed Hanif.

What will you give for this beauty? is a fine collection.

Ali Akbar Natiq What Will You Give for this Beauty? Translated by Ali Madeeh Hashmi. Hamish Hamilton, an imprint of Penguin Books, India, 2015. Hb. pp. 215. Rs. 399.

translation Posts