The essence of these stories is mostly metaphysical. Joy and sorrow are shown shed of their definitive natures, lost of their power to elate or depress. Protagonists undergo a self-renewal that gives them an inner poise — a fluidity of being like that of a running stream that is beyond words.
What this means in terms relevant here is that the fact of these stories being translations loses significance.
Take the story “Please, Dear God”. Ramachandran, an agnostic, is driven to praying frenziedly for the life of his wife, who is lying unconscious in the ICU. The presence of death is strong and overpowering all round him as patients die. He sees them wrapped in white, impervious sheets that mock the tears and lamentations of their relatives.
His wife is saved. He should be beside himself with joy. He is. In a compelling imagery, he is shown disgorging “reams and reams of cloth that had a blindingly cruel whiteness”. “The shrouds float up, whispering secret messages in Ramachandran’s ears”. They are messages of both congratulation and caution. The congratulations sweep over him first. He sits “…exulting for a moment in his triumph”.
But the very next moment the cautionary substances of the messages rise, sweep over him, leaving him “totally humbled and subdued by the triumph”. What these cautionary substances are is not made explicit. But they don’t have to be. A non-dualistic sensibility and cast of mind timbres the narrative voice all through the story, which makes these cautionary substances culturally cognisable. When the unstated truth shines stubbornly through the diversions made by the story line, it puts the whole story outside the standard categorisations of target language and source language made in translation theories. We are not impatient to go back to the Tamil original –the author’s own — and see what it sounds like there. We can postpone that exercise.
The deeper truths are stated in a more tangible form in the story “Ejamaanar”. The particular deeper truth here is of communication that transcends gender, rising between men and women. The teenaged girl Shiela wakes to this liberating togetherness, when she sees the free banter and absolute bonhomie prevailing between her 80-year-old grandmother and her peer, Sambasivan. Is this, the girl wonders, the secret of her grandmother’s composure, her unfailing humour, her relaxed handling of her teeming household, the formal head (the “ejamaanar”, or husband) of which is an impractical day dreamer? It is, Shiela is convinced, as she watches the careworn faces of the other women from rigid, husband-centred households coming to her grandmother for solace and practical advice.
It is a tremendous step forward that the girl made in the process of growing up. And this mega event is objectified with an economy of words that you cannot overlook. Six short lines of dialogue between her and her grandmother are all that are the tools, of which two are the immediately operative ones. Here are the two lines, presented with a little paraphrasing. The un-paraphrased text is given within brackets: “I wish (I only wanted to say that) these women had had (these women didn’t get) a Sambasivan Mama in their life” said Shiela. “Good night, precious. Some day you too search for a Sambasivan for yourself”. The two lines stand out, thinning the sound and voice of the subsidiary lines. The compression holds you. Despite the totality of it – and also because of it! – you reach for the Tamil original to see how it is expressed there. And you see in it only what you expected. The umbilical connections between thought and feeling, between expression and tonal registers, confront you straightaway. And you wake all over again to the un-translatability inherent in translations.
The example of just a two-word phrase would do. The grandmother’s reaction to Shiela’s saying “I wish these women had had a Sambasivan…” is “Adi Pokkiri!” Both the words are exclamatory; and exclamatory terms are high on the list of un-translatable words drawn up in current translation theories. “Adi” is a genderised term, for an equivalent make-up of which English is not equipped. The Hindi term “ari” comes close to it. “Pokkiri” is a term of affectionate rebuke. “Rascal” or “Scallywag” are near equivalents, but lack the built-in gendered suffix of the Tamil term. “Naughty girl”, the phrase used in English, is one dimensional in comparison.
But you overlook the lack of dimension. Thought and conviction ring so strong in the narrative voice that they neutralise the need for verbal vividness and proof of verbal craft.
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The question is, if you cannot call these stories translations, can you see them as original writing? You can, provided you don’t subconsciously upgrade the translation, and call it superior to the original. There is a genre of writing in English long established as Indian-English or Indo-English writing. More than language, this genre denotes a cultural traffic and transference from one sphere to the other. It is not English writing; the hyphen is important.
Kannan’s translations are original writing in this important, hyphenated sense.
NANDANVAN AND OTHER STORIES
Author, translator: Lakshmi Kannan
Publisher: Orient Blackswan
280 pages; Rs 325
