I usually pick up translations with a great sense of nervousness. At worst, an awkward translation makes you feel terribly sorry for all the gold that might be buried in the dross. A good translation can, on the other hand, literally draw new vistas for you, using the brilliant and yet subtle brush strokes of an entirely new language. Translations from Indian languages to English tend to be awkward sometimes not just because of poor technique or lack of ability. When you’re translating from an Indian language to English, you’re not just switching between grammars, you’re also bridging the differing world-views that are encoded within them.
Bama’s stories – thanks in part to her translator N Ravi Shankar – survive the process delightfully, with her clear, incisive prose shining through. Her stories are at once subversive, rebellious, joyful and terribly sad. So while in Annachi you laugh with the labourer who shocks his landlord by referring to him as ‘brother’, you’re also chilled by the compensation offered to a dead labourer’s family by his hypocritical landlord in Rich Girl.
Bama is a perceptive, subtle writer, in full control of her craft. You never know where her narrative will take you and what issues it will discuss on its way. The points of view in the stories change kaleidoscopically, though the narrator is always there, a faceless, teasing observer. Women, men, children, and the aged tell their tales with determination and honesty.
As with all really talented regional writers, Bama employs an amazing economy of prose. Not a word is out of place, not a detail is insignificant. Gender, caste, individual dynamics – many issues come into play here. But the overarching tone is one of affectionate, earthy humour. The eponymous Harum-scarum Saar, relies on a pithy line of banter at the end to offer a biting comment on the power equation between employer and employee.
Ponnuthayi, about a sassy, forthright woman, says as much about gender equality as it does about an individual’s right to dignity and happiness. As the stories in the anthology progress, the writing just gets better, the translation tauter. At the zenith are two stories – Freedom and An Old Man and a Buffalo – which are fresh and almost lyrical. There is a paragraph in An Old Man… where the man addresses his buffalo so fondly that it is in fact the most poetic prose I’ve read in a long time.
Any quibbles? I wish the cover were better designed, with a little more attention to detail. And I know it’s old-fashioned, but I find myself wishing there was a glossary I could go to at the end so that I could get an even better sense of the language involved.
In an introduction to an anthology of Indian writing, Rushdie once wrote something to the effect that apart from Indian writing in English, there is very little writing happening in Indian literature that is truly modern. Bama’s stories – apart from those of many other regional writers – are a sign that modern Indian writing is robustly alive and strongly rooted in regional languages. Calm down, Salman, Indian literature is in capable hands.
Published by Women Unlimited
1 comment:
Good post.
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