Indian Journal of Comparative Literature and Translation Studies (IJCLTS) ISSN: 2321 8274, http://ijclts.wordpress.com/ October 2018, Volume 4 Number 1

EDITOR: MRINMOY PRAMANICK & MD INTAJ ALI

Image Source: https://goo.gl/images/hjpw4q

Advisory Committee

1. Prof. Avadhesh K Singh, Former Director, School of Translation Studies and Training, Indira Gandhi National Open University, New Delhi, India

2. Prof. Tutun Mukherjee,Former Professor, Centre for Comparative Literature, School of Humanities, University of Hyderabad, India

3.Nikhila H, M.A., Ph.D. (Bangalore), Associate Professor,Department Of Film Studies And Visual Communication, EFLU,Hyderabad, India

4. Tharakeshwar, V.B, Former Head & Associate Professor,Department of Translation Studies,School of Interdisciplinary Studies, EFLU,Hyderabad, India Editorial Board

Editors:

1. Mrinmoy Pramanick, Head and Assistant Professor, Comparative Indian Language and Literature, Univetrsity of Calcutta.

2. Dr. Md. Intaj Ali, Independent Researcher.

Co-Editors:

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1. Saswati Saha, Assistant Professor, Department of English, Sikkim University .India

2. Rindon Kundu, Senior Research Fellow, Department of Comparative Literature, Jadavpur University, India

3. Nisha Kutty, Centre for Comparative Literature, University of Hyderabad, India

Board of Editors:

(Board of Editors includes Editors and Co-Editors)

-Dr. Ami U Upadhyay, Professor of English, Dr. Babasaheb Ambedkar Open University, Ahamedabad, India

– Dr. Rabindranath Sarma, Associate Professor, Centre for Tribal Folk Lore, Language and Literature, Central University of Jharkhand, India

-Dr. Sushumna Kannan,PhD in Cultural Studies Centre for the Study of Culture and Society, Bangalore,Adjunct Faculty, Department of Women‘s Studies, San Diego State University

-Dr. Lopamudra Maitra Bajpai, MA, MDMC, PhD (ICHR, JRF),Assistant Professor and Visual Anthropologist , Symbiosis Institute of Media and Communication (SIMCUG), Pune

-Dr.Amitabh Vikram Dwivedi,Assistant Professor,Department of Languages & Literature,Shri Mata Vaishno Devi University, Katra, Jammu & Kashmir

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-Dr. Sipra Mukherjee , Associate Professor, Department of English, West Bengal State University, India.

-DR. Arbind Kumar Choudhary,H/D& Associate Prof. of English, Rangachahi College,Majuli, Assam

-Dr. Jayshree Singh,H/D& Senior Faculty of English B.N.P.G. Co-Ed. College (Mohanlal Sukhadia University) Udaipur, Rajasthan, India

-Dr. Mahmoud M. Gewaily, Lecturer-Lit. & Trans,Faculty of Arts,Department of English,Minia University,Egypt

-Dr. BEATRIZ Mª RODRÍGUEZ RODRÍGUEZ, Lecturer in Translation Studies, Department of Translation and Linguistics. University of Vigo

– Dr. Ujjwal Jana, Assistant Professor of English and Comparative Literature, Pondicherry University, India

-Dr. K. V. Ragupathi, Assistant Professor, English, Central University of Tamilnadu, India

- Dr. Neha Arora, Assistant Professor of English, Central University of Rajasthan, India

- Mr. Amit Soni, Assistant Professor, Department of Tribal Arts, Indira Gandhi National Tribal University, Amarkantak, M.P., India AND Vice- President, Museums Association of India (MAI)

- Mr. Kalyan Das, Assistant Professor of English, Presidency University, Kolkata, India

- Mr. Rakesh Ramamoorthy, Assistant Professor, English, Mar Ivanios College, Kerala, Ind

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Editorial

This is our pleasure to publish this volume of IJCLTS after a certain time period. Due to some difficulties faced by us, we could not publish previous few issues. Hopefully, we will be able to publish this journal regularly now onwards. We would like to congratulate all the contributors, editorial board members, advisory committee members and reviewers for their contribution and patience. We expect more support and cooperation from the academic community in India and abroad. The papers which are submitted to us over this period will be reviewed gradually and authors will be intimated accordingly. Thank you.

-Editors

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Contents

A. Articles  A Devotee‘s Seasonal Viraha: A Cultural Inquiry into the Selected Songs of

Medieval Indian Bhakti Saints under the Lens of Barhmasa Tradition

Barnashree Khasnobis Page No. 9

 RE-READING SATINATH BHADURI‘S DHORAI CHARIT MANAS FROM DALIT

PERSPECTIVE

Debabrata Karmakar Page No. 27

 The idea of Anti-hero in Upamanyu Chatterjee‘s English August: An Indian Story

Md.Firoj Ahmmed1, Dr. Munira T.2 Page No. 45

 Historicizing and Theorizing Autobiography with reference to India Wins Freedom. Md Hasanujjaman Page No. 54

 Transcreating in a Multiple Intelligences classroom: A new dimension in Translation Studies Pronema Bagchi Page No. 72

 Home, Homelessness and Acculturation: Diasporic Experience in Jhumpa

Lahiri‘s The Namesake

SHAHNAZ BEGUM Page No. 85

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 The Making of World Literature in Odia: A Study of Biswasahitya Granthamala

Sonali Ganguly Page No. 108

B. Translation

 Translation from Hindi into English of select poems from Sudama Pandey ‗Dhoomil‘‘s collection Kal Sunana Mujhe

Pooja Sancheti Page No. 143

 Translation of Shankha Ghosh‘s article Atmotriptir baire (‗Beyond Self- satisfaction‘)1 from his book Kobitar Muhurta (1987)

Soumava Maiti Page No. 147

 The Story Translated from the Urdu ―Kis Ki Kahani‖ by Gulzar. By Sumbul Nasim Page No. 159

C. Interview

Lakshmandas: A Young Performing Baul

Interviewed by Aju Mukhopadhyay Page No. 164

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D. Book Review

 Cultural mediation in the translation of The God of Small Things to Brazilian Portuguese. Sandra Keli Florentino Veríssimo dos Santos Page No. 169

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A Devotee‟s Seasonal Viraha: A Cultural Inquiry

into the Selected Songs of Medieval Indian Bhakti

Saints under the Lens of Barhmasa Tradition

Barnashree Khasnobis

She is pursuing PhD from the department of Humanities and Social Sciences at Guru Gobind Singh Indraprastha University, New Delhi. She is researching on bandish compositions of Khayal gayiki of Hindustani Classical Music. She takes interest on medieval Indian culture, Indian poetry and literary theories. E-mail: [email protected]

Abstract: In the corpus of songs by bhakti saints of medieval India, rain has

been represented as a situation which raises sentiments of viraha in the

devotees (bhaktas) for their beloved god. Their devotional sentiments get

intensified during the rainy season as they transform themselves into a

virahini who is a female lover suffering from the pain of separation (viraha)

from her beloved and anxiously waiting for her lover‘s physical company.

Interestingly, this shift is also observed in male devotees revealing their

androgynous character while expressing devotion for their lover-god, Krishna.

The tradition of barahmasa folk songs articulate a virahini‘s sentiments which

seem to create a cultural convention of expressing woes of love in the months

of rain as an ideal season for the experience and expression of viraha. Such Volume 4, Number 1, October, 2018, (IJCLTS) ISSN: 2321-8274, 9 http://ijclts.wordpress.com/

representation has continued through textual traditions which made the

months of rain as the ideal time for harnessing erotic desires.

This paper presents a cultural analysis of the compositions of medieval Indian bhakti saints by reflecting on the oral tradition of barahamasa folk songs which have created a discursive trend of portraying love from the stand-point of a virahini in monsoon. The methodology of this paper is a comparative analysis of barahmasa folk songs with songs composed by medieval Indian bhakti saints to explain the creative adoption of barahmasa folk tradition by them. The discussion also leads to an evaluation of the social causes which made this season ideal for representing sentiments of viraha.

Keywords: Virahini, Barahmasa, Viraha-Barahmasa, Medieval Indian

Bhakti Saints.

The existence of life processes is governed by nature. The pattern of nature

executes change in the existence of different species and impact on their

behaviour. The changes follow a pattern with changing seasons and the

entire nature acts in correspondence with the seasonal changes. It gives way

to ―a patterned harmony‖ (Neville 147) which shapes the cultural existence of

mankind. Humans have continued to remain a spectator of this cyclical order

of nature. Their observation of nature has led to the construction of certain

cultural consciousness through the ―ecological organization of nature‖

(Callicott 64). The social beings culturally organized changes of nature into

seasonal phases which governed their cultural existence such as food habits,

rituals and festivals, dressing pattern and also emotions. The Barahmasa folk

Volume 4, Number 1, October, 2018, (IJCLTS) ISSN: 2321-8274, 10 http://ijclts.wordpress.com/ songs of India narrate lifestyle of village women pertaining to twelve months of a year. Festivals or ritualistic ceremonies, harvesting of crops and weather conditions are some basic themes of barahmasa songs and separation from husband throughout a year is a central theme functioning in the description of lifestyle related to every month.

The tradition of Barahmasa is continuing through centuries. There are certain ancient Indian classics which were composed portraying human lifestyle and women‘s emotions of viraha throughout a year. For example, the ancient Indian classic, Ritusamharam by Kalidasa, presents narrations of human emotions and their passionate activities, especially of women in love during the chief six seasons – summer (grishma varnam), monsoon (pravrida varnam), autumn (sharada varnam), mid-winter (hemanta varnam), winter

(shishira varnam) and spring (vasanta varnam) in six cantos. Kalidasa‘s selection of the main seasonal phases to describe amorous women and their activities illustrate a deeper significance. Through small verses, the poet describes the inherent connection of seasons and human beings. For instance, the spring arouses physical desires among women when Kamadeva, the god of love is enthusiastic and on the other hand in the summer‘s scorching heat the lustful women are busy espousing heat from their bodies.

In the summer season ―The sun shines terribly hot but welcome is the moon...The evenings are pleasant./However, Kamadeva is inactive./It is summer time again, my love‖ (Tandon 65).

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Out of all the seasons, Kalidasa chose spring and monsoon to portray heightened passion in women for their lovers. ―During vasanta,/When

Kamadeva works his magic,/Restless grow the intoxicating eyes of women‖

(Tandon 150). Spring is the season when nature is brimming with new blossoms and regeneration of lives. The phase of monsoon is also that time of the year when nature thrives after the dry and arid summer. In this work, rain and thunder storms are depicted as time periods heightening physical passion in women. The following verse is an instance of lustful women in the time of rain from Ritusamharam:

Behold! The women in love

Steathily tiptoe to meet their lovers,

Even in pitch dark,

Made more so by overhanging clouds

That thunder loud and oft.

The stabs of lightening guide their path. (Tandon 89)

Contrary to the behavioural pattern of men and women in the summer, the spring and the rain awaken desires of physical intimacy and project the entire nature extremely active in the process of germination of life. The dalliance of love is not only projected through men and women but through

Volume 4, Number 1, October, 2018, (IJCLTS) ISSN: 2321-8274, 12 http://ijclts.wordpress.com/ birds and animals, flora and fauna too. The dalliance of the peacocks, thirsty chataka birds begging for water/rain, women‘s adornment with garlands of fresh buds of monsoonal flowers, are metaphors used by the poet to depict surging passion in women in months of rain. Kalidasa‘s ‗Meghdootam‘ presents a record of separation of Yaksha (a divinity of lower rank) from his wife. During his exile, he requests a rain-filled cloud to be a messenger for him to convey his love to his wife. From these brief instances of texts, it can be perceived that in Indian context, rain is always seen as an agent triggering emotions of love and longing among lovers as expressed by Indian poets.

Indian texts like the poems of Gathasaptasati, is a collection of ancient

Indian poetry, compiled by Satavahana king by 2nd century CE, composed in

Prakrit, associated the time of rain with absence of the lover or husband and lustful women waiting for their lovers‘ return. Prakrit is categorised under

Middle Indo-Aryan languages of 3rd century B.C. to 4th century C.E. ―The monsoon about to break,/ Travellers hasten towards home,/ Shortening, dividing, gulping/ The miles‖ (Mehrotra 54) makes it clear that the husbands are generally travellers of distant lands in pursuit of business and they stay eager to return to their wives in the time of monsoon declaring their physical distance from their wives. ―Thunderclouds in the sky,/ Paths overgrown, streams in flood,/ And you, innocent one, in the window,/ Expecting him‖(Mehrotra 57), another poem from the same work, describes a woman‘s anticipation and dreams of her lover‘s return in the phase of rain.

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So far, it can be comprehended that sentiments of viraha are articulated in a profound manner during the phase of monsoon in the corpus of ancient India literature. The theme of viraha dominates the genre of

Barahmasa folk songs. The folk songs of Northern India in various regional languages fall in the genre of Barahmasa and mostly in the segment of

Viraha-Barahmasa.

On the theme of the pain of separation (viraha) endured by a young

wife pining for the return of her beloved all through the twelve months

of the year. In such songs, the description of nature is intimately and

creatively joined to the expression of the heroine‘s sorrow. Such songs

communicate women‘s feelings while their husbands or lovers are

away. In their songs, the four months of the rainy season are given

more importance than the other months of the year: the season of love

and intimacy par excellence being also the most painful trial for the

loving wife separated from her mate. (Vaudeville Preface x)

Barahmasa folk poetry‘s theme of viraha appealed more to the village folks and the context of portraying peasant lifecycle in a year started including description of viraha and female emotions, gradually. The viraha theme gained popularity among the masses due to its aesthetic appeal and scope for creative expression.

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Chaumasa or Chaturmasya is modelled out of the genre of Barahmasa, detailing the emotions of viraha during monsoon. ―These may be considered as ‗scaled down models‘ of the main type. By far the most widespread is caumasa (caumasai, comasi), which lists the four months of the rainy season, from the month of Asadha to the month of Asvina, occasionally from the month of Sravana to the month of Kartika‖ (Vaudeville 1). Vaudeville reveals that Chaumasa or Chaturmasya, a rain song on the theme of viraha can be seen present in Hala‘s Sattasai in Prakrit and two instances from this work have been discussed above. The context of Chaumasa is similar to the viraha- barahmasa as Vaudeville mentions that ―a husband‘s seasonal wanderings are the inevitable background to the chaumasa and the viraha –barahmasa‖

(Vaudeville 32).

Vaudeville observes that Barahmasa of test or trial is ―concerned with a trial, generally a temptation, imposed on a young wife separated from her husband‖ (Vaudeville 13). Women separated from their husbands throughout a year look forward to fulfil their physical pleasures as well as household necessities which become difficult for them to accomplish. There are certain social causes due to which the village women eagerly anticipate for their husband‘s return in the period of rain. In India, the time of monsoon can bring adversities to people through floods and wild storms, destruction of houses and loss of lives are some major circumstances of heavy rainfall in

India. About songs of viraha-barahmasa, Vaudeville observes –

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These rain songs on the viraha theme, always female, must have

materialized spontaneously in a society where the man is absent from

the village for a large part of the year, and only the woman leads a

settled life. In a pastoral, trading or warrior society, the rainy season

which brings the men back home is the time that the women bless and

long for. Ashadha, month of clouds, heralding the rain, is the month of

return and reunion. It is also the time when the roof of the house is

repaired to withstand the coming rains‖ (Vaudeville 33).

Taking the discussion ahead to reflect on the question that why the bhakti saints of medieval India selected the ambience of rain as a situation to experience and communicate viraha so often in their verses. The following compositions of barahmasa songs surrounding the time of rain are listed below to understand the cultural tradition of expressing viraha in the months of monsoon:

In the month of Shravan rain falls in torrents,

Lying on my couch, I can‘t find an instant of sleep:

O Lord, how long shall I be tormented by the flower-arrows of Love?

O Badayi, make me meet my Kanha just now! (Vaudeville 50)

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This above composition has been taken from Radha-Chaumasa, composed in old Bengali which presents Radha‘s loneliness and passionate mind for

Krishna in the four months of monsoon in India (Ashadh, Shravan, Bhadra,

Ashvin). Shravan (July-August) is the time when heavy rain sets in India. This verse speaks of that time of heavy rainfall when village women need their husbands‘ physical company as their passion rises. It depicts a relation between rain and emotional longing – as the intensity of rain increases, longing or viraha in female lovers increase.

Charlotte Vaudeville‘s book, ‗Barahmasa in Indian Literatures‘, presents

Rajimati-Barahmasa, composed in the style of Barahmasa songs in old

Rajasthani. Starting with Kartitik and ending with Ashvin, this work narrates a woman‘s viraha throughout a year. Her viraha rises more in the months of rain as she demonstrates her fear from the wildness of monsoon. For example:

In Ashadha, masses of clouds have come back,

Water murmur in the rivulets, all the dust is gone –

yet even in this month of Ashadha, he did not come back!

Oh my mother! Clouds gallop like mad elephants,

They come running as if love-crazy!

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What is he doing, that knight-errant, in that place over there?

(Vaudeville 58)

It explicitly communicates the woman‘s anxiety for her husband‘s return due to the accumulating wildness of monsoon. It metaphorically presents the dark and heavy clouds of monsoon as ‗mad elephants‘ to articulate her frightful heart from the sight of the outside environment. It also suggests that the arrival of the heavy clouds indicate the emergence of intense love as wild as the monsoon clouds.

Another verse from the same work, describes a scenic detail of the environment.

In Bhadra, the rain falls hard and thick,

Lowlands and highlands, all are under water –

as if the Ocean itself had capsided!

Dark are the nights, with flashes of lightning,

the clouds bend down as if to meet the earth –

But my Lord sees nothing: he does not turn back, the fool! (Vaudeville

58-59)

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From these instances it can be comprehended that the folk poetry or folk songs composed in barahmasa tradition represented strong sentiments of viraha among women folks pertaining to the months of monsoon. Barahmasa songs are all about viraha of a woman throughout a year, but the virahin‘s pain of separation from her lover accelerates when monsoon arrives and starts its play.

―In Shravan, clouds are pouring down:/ all the fields are flooded – but

I am drying in the fire of Virah!‖ (Vaudeville 65), presents a direct analogy with rain and sentiments of viraha. From this poem, it can be seen that rain has given way to erotic desires inside a woman. It is taken from Nagamati-

Barahmasa, composed by Muhammad Jayasi in old Avadhi and translated by

Charlotte Vaudeville in English.

With Ashadha begins the Chaturmasa.

Fasting on the Ekadashi day, they worship Hari and Hara

and attain to great merit.

But I need not observe such rigorous vows

for separation from him is by itself a penance.

Why should he not come, oh my friend? (Vaudeville 82)

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The above song connotes that the woman in viraha has no interest in taking part in the ritualistic ceremonies as she is away from all physical pleasures.

Barahmasa songs depict the lifestyle of village women but during the months of monsoon, they experience sadness and loneliness due to viraha from their lovers. The tradition of narrating viraha sentiments in the rainy season penetrated deeply inside the Indian culture through the creation of folk songs and also portrayal of viraha emotions by devotees of Krishna/Hari.

From the examples of ancient Indian classics and folk poetry, it is clear that monsoon is perceived as a cogent period for regeneration that gives scope for life processes to carry forward abundantly. From the detailed discussion on viraha barahmasa or chaumasa genre of folk songs, it is now known that the months of rain are perfect time to portray feelings of separation when different species rejoice with their partners. The devotional songs by bhakti saints speak of viraha associating their sentiments with the season of monsoon or the moment of rainfall. The medieval Indian bhakti saints expressed their devotion towards god from the perspective of a friend

(sakhya-bhav), a slave (dasya-bhav), a nurturer nurturing god as a parent

(vatsalya-bhav) and a lover (madhurya-bhav). Most of them preferred the medium of madhurya-bhav of devotion as a way to achieve mystical experiences. They chose the path of a lover to feel a personal attachment with their god. By becoming god‘s lover, they have experienced pain of separation from god. Their experience of viraha in love with god is another way of articulating sentiments of a deeper form of devotion. Volume 4, Number 1, October, 2018, (IJCLTS) ISSN: 2321-8274, 20 http://ijclts.wordpress.com/

The theme of viraha is profound in compositions of Meerabai (1555-

1603), a devotee of Krishna who articulates her pangs of separation from her lover-god as a virahini. Her beloved god‘s absence in the time of rain is conveyed through ―Suni ho, main Hari awan ki awaj/ Dadur mor papeeha bole, koyal madhure saaj‖ (Neelotpal 32). In this composition, calls of frogs

(dadur), peacocks (mor), papeeha or koyal (Indian cuckoo) signal that it is the time of rain. Amidst the calls of these species which stay active in rain,

Meerabai awaits for her lover‘s arrival suggesting his physical absence. In

Indian contexts, the imagery of a singing cuckoo bird is commonly treated as a medium to express emotions of love. Some couplets of Meerabai explicitly communicate her sorrows of separation from Krishna at the time of rain, such as,

Matwaro badar aaye re, Hari ko saneso kabahu na laaye re.

Dadar mor papaiya bole, koyal sabad sunaye re.

Gakaari andhiyari bijli chamke, birahin, ati darpaaye re.

Gaje baje pawan madhuriya, meha ati jhar laaye re.

Kari naag birah ati jaari, Meera mann hari bhaye re. (Neelotpal 96)

The above lines explain that the arrival of thick monsoon clouds has not brought any news from her beloved god, Hari. Meerabai presents a

Volume 4, Number 1, October, 2018, (IJCLTS) ISSN: 2321-8274, 21 http://ijclts.wordpress.com/ paradoxical picture by comparing the gleeful species enjoying the time of rain with her loneliness and sadness. She laments for her beloved Krishna at the time of rain by stating her status of a virahini or birahini. Her devotion to her beloved is so intense that she transforms herself into a virahini anticipating union with her lover-god. Her behaviour in viraha is almost similar with the perpetual virahini Radha, the childhood lover of Krishna, always represented as waiting for Krishna‘s physical company. Meerabai represents herself as a virahini not only in monsoon but also at the time of spring. But her sentiments as a Krishna devotee accentuates to a point when she longs for her lord‘s physical company in the time of rain, suggesting surging erotic desires. An observation has been made earlier that the time of rain incites physical passion in female lovers separated from their husbands or partners as represented in ancient Indian texts and in the tradition of viraha- barahmasa/Chaumasa. Meerabai‘s sentiments of devotion surpasses to that category of passionate emotions when she transgresses herself into a virahini in the time of rain to appropriately articulate her longing for Krishna.

Rahim or Rahiman (1556-1627), another medieval bhakti saint gave importance to the phase of rain to communicate his devotional sentiments as a virahini. For instance, ―Sawan awan kahige, Syaam sujaan./ Ajahu na aaye sajni, tarfat praan‖ (Vagdev 121). These lines mention that Syaam, another name for Krishna (along with Kanha, Gopal, Shyam/Syaam), had promised his return during monsoon (Sawan) but he remained absent which causes his lover, Rahim‘s heart to ache. The situation of a female lover, waiting for his Volume 4, Number 1, October, 2018, (IJCLTS) ISSN: 2321-8274, 22 http://ijclts.wordpress.com/ lover‘s return in the season of rain is a common backdrop to express viraha in barahmasa folk songs or in chaumasa tradition of songs. The situation of a female lover or a virahini waiting for her lover has become a metaphor for depicting pain of separation through textual traditions. This conventional mode of expression has been adopted by Rahim to express his acute devotional sentiments.

Surdaas is another male devotee of Krishna or Hari belonging to 17th century, who composed verses expressing similar emotional content as a virahini. For example, ―Hari! pardes bahut din laaye./ Kaari ghata dekhi badar ki, nain neer bhari aaye‖ (Vagdev 107), communicates that Surdaas‘ beloved god, Hari, is in a foreign land since days and the sight of rain-filled clouds bring tears to his eyes. Once again, it can be observed that rain or the ambience of monsoon is portrayed as a time period of experiencing viraha or turning oneself into a virahini of Krishna.

Rahim‘s and Surdaas‘ transformation from a devotee into a virahini suggests two things, (a) they deliberately transform themselves as a woman lover to articulate Radha-bhav for Krishna as it has been mentioned earlier that Radha is conventionally considered as the most favourite and ideal lover of Krishna and (b) in Indian texts and contexts, viraha emotions have been represented through a woman‘s voice, longing for physical union. This is why, the male devotees of Krishna articulate their intensified devotional sentiments from the position of a female lover, or a virahini pining for love throughout a

Volume 4, Number 1, October, 2018, (IJCLTS) ISSN: 2321-8274, 23 http://ijclts.wordpress.com/ year and especially, in the months of monsoon when nature can become aggressive and destructive.

Krishna bhaktas like Rahim and Surdaas considered themselves as brides or female lovers of Krishna. It is certain that their compositions pertaining to the theme of viraha convey their androgynous side while communicating love for their god but it becomes essential for a male and a female devotee of Krishna to experience love for him positioning themselves as Radha, the ideal virahini for Krishna or experiencing love for their god from the perspective of brides of vrindavan/ gopis with whom Krishna performed raas. Raas or ras lila is believed to be an eternal dance in circles performed by

Krishna with gopis or brides of Vrindavan. Krishna pays attention to every performing woman in the dance which enables them to attain mystical experiences beside the divine. Be it Radha, gopis or the brides, they all felt viraha because Krishna was never continually physically present with them.

That is why Krishna bhaktas associate themselves as virahinis and their manner of expressing viraha, especially at the time of rain hint that they followed the conventional style of viraha-barahmasa or chaturmasa for communicating somatic desires for their god as a lover.

Conclusion

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It is not that the Krishna bhaktas communicated their feelings of viraha only

during rain or monsoon. But the months of rain or the moment of rain is

perceived by them as an appropriate natural condition to represent their

intensified viraha sentiments. It is important to know that the bhakti saints of

medieval India gave priority to folk languages to reach out to the masses

conveniently. Apart from the influence of Barahmasa literatures on them, it

can be said that folk culture inspired their manner of communication.

Barahmasa folk songs expressing viraha at the time of rain or monsoon have

inspired the bhakti saints to articulate emotions of viraha, choosing the

ambience of rain or monsoon, continuing the cultural convention of perceiving

rain as an ideal environment to realize and describe viraha.

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Traditions of Thoght: Essays in Environmental Philosophy. Ed. J. Baird

Callicott and Roger T. James. Delhi: Sri Satguru Publications, 1991. 51-64.

Mehrotra, Krishna Arvind. The Absent Traveller: Prakrit Love Poetry from the

Gathasaptasati of Satavahana Hala. Haryana: Penguin Random House India

Pvt. Ltd, 2008.

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Neelotpal. ed. Meera Padavali. New Delhi: Granth Akademi, 2015.

Neville, Robert C. ―Units of Change – Units of Value.‖ Nature in Asian Traditions of

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T. James. Delhi: Sri Satguru Publications, 1991. 145-149.

Tandon, Rajendra. trans. Kalidasa Ritusamharam: The Garland of Seasons. New

Delhi: Rupa & Co, 2008.

Vagdev. ed. Sur Padavali. New Delhi: Granth Akademi, 2011.

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Vaudeville, Charlotte. Barahmasa in Indian Literatures. Delhi: Motilal Banarsaidas,

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RE-READING SATINATH BHADURI‟S DHORAI CHARIT MANAS FROM DALIT

PERSPECTIVE

Debabrata Karmakar

Designation: Ph.D. Research Scholar

Department of English

Seacom Skills University, Birbhum, West Bengal.

Email Id: [email protected]

ABSTRACT: After the establishment of the Bangla Dalit Sahitya Sanstha in 1992, the Bengali Dalit writers1 have consciously attempted to shake at the roots of the popular Bengali myth of ―Bhadralok2‖ to explore the importance of caste in Bengal. Before the attempts made by these Bengali Dalit writers a few upper-caste Bengali writers endeavoured to capture ―caste-struggle‖ in Bengali literature through their literary works. Satinath Bhaduri is one of such writers. Though his Dhorai Charit Manas is often categorized as a ‗political novel‘, in this novel Satinath Bhaduri attempted to capture the caste-struggle in Indian society. In the novel, he delineates the predicament of lower-caste people belonging to Tatma and Dhangar castes of Jiraniya district in Bihar. The novel records the gradual development of a Tatma protagonist Dhorai from his childhood years to his adulthood. It also reveals the

1 Bengali Dalit Literature emerged after the establishment of Bangla Dalit Sahitya Sanstha in 1992 after the immediate reaction against the suicide committed by a postgraduate Dalit student in Vidyasagar University, Chuni Kotal, on 16th August, 1992 for her continuous caste-based harassment and humiliation done by one of her university professors. Manohar Mouli Biswas, Jatin Bala, Achinta Biswas, Kalyani Thakur and so on are the well-known Bengali Dalit writers. 2 “Bhadralok” refers to the middle-class educated gentlemen of Bengal. Volume 4, Number 1, October, 2018, (IJCLTS) ISSN: 2321-8274, 27 http://ijclts.wordpress.com/ caste struggle faced by different sub-caste groups within the hierarchical caste- structure of the Hindu society, the oppression of the lower-castes by the upper-caste people and Dhorai‘s attempt of ‗Sankskritization‘ in order to uplift his lower-caste to a higher level in the Hindu society. The novel also points out the rise of a subaltern consciousness at the advent of Gandhi led National Movement, ―the mythopoeic imagination3‖ of the subaltern about the occult and mysterious power of Mahatma Gandhi and the disappointment of the subaltern class regarding Indian Freedom Movement. This paper also examines an upper-caste writer‘s authenticity of the Dalit voice and experience while questioning a non-Dalit writer‘s ability to represent Dalit experience minutely through his literary production.

Keywords: Dalit, Dalit literature, Sankskritization, the mythopoeic imagination, Ideological State Apparatuses, Sympahy-Empathy.

Main Paper

Introduction:

Who are the Dalits? Bama, a well-known Dalit writer describes ―Dalits‖ in the following words:

In India, there is a multiplicity of endogamous and mutually exclusive caste and sub-caste groups. They are hierarchically structured, in a graded inequality, based on ritual purity. Dalits are the most economically oppressed, culturally ostracized and politically marginalised people in modern India. (Bama 97)

3 Sahid Amin in his work “Gandhi as Mahatma” used the word “mythopoeic Imagination” of the peasants of U.P. regarding Gandhi’s occult and mystical power during Indian Freedom Movement in 1920s. Volume 4, Number 1, October, 2018, (IJCLTS) ISSN: 2321-8274, 28 http://ijclts.wordpress.com/

The etymological meaning of the word Dalit is ―broken to pieces‘, ―trampled down‖, ―crushed‖ or ―suppressed‖. Dalit means ‗grounded down‘, or ‗broken to pieces‘ in both Marathi and Hindi (Anupama Rao 1). The word ‗Dalit‘ has its root in Sanskrit where the root ‗Dal‘ means ‗to split, crack, open‘. From socio-economic perspectives, the term ‗Dalit‘ refers to the lower caste people who bear the stigma of untouchability imposed upon them by the upper-caste people in order to reproduce the production of labour.‖ (Karmakar ―A Brief History…‖69). The labour is ―reproduced by the ideological state apparatuses4 by the privileged class (here upper-caste) from the ancient time in Indian society.‖ (Karmakar ―A Brief History…‖ 69). A subtle discrimination between the Subaltern and Dalit can be made on the point that all people belonging to the Subaltern category cannot be termed as Dalits but all Dalits, undoubtedly, are Subaltern in the Indian context, for all subaltern-s cannot be oppressed on caste basis and therefore they cannot be Dalits. On the other hand, all Dalits belong to the Subaltern category because they are economically deprived, culturally castigated and ex-communicated socially by the privileged class (upper-caste in this context) on the basis of caste-discrimination. An upper-caste Subaltern can be economically deprived but he/she cannot be socially ex-communicated like a Dalit. Therefore, a Subaltern may not always be a Dalit but a Dalit can always be categorized as a Subaltern. It is interesting to point out that a Subaltern can oppress a Dalit, though both of them are involved in a class struggle against the capitalist or Bourgeois. A literary instance may be taken from Arundhati Roy‘s The God of Small Things where Velutha, a Paravan, an untouchable of Kerala is despised by his upper-caste co-workers in a pickle factory. Both the upper-caste

4 According to a famous French Marxist Louis Althusser , the state has no meaning except as a function of State Power (Repressive State Apparatus or RSA) but a state functions both by its Repressive State Apparatus such as the government, the police, the Army, the Courts, the Prisons etc. and by its Ideological State Apparatuses (ISAs) such as the Religious ISA, the Educational ISA, the Family ISA, the Legal ISA, the Cultural ISA, the Communications ISA and so on.

Volume 4, Number 1, October, 2018, (IJCLTS) ISSN: 2321-8274, 29 http://ijclts.wordpress.com/ co-workers and Velutha, an untouchable, belong to the Subaltern class but a Subaltern despises a Dalit on the basis of caste issue.

However, there were controversies among the scholars, in identifying the person who first used the term ―Dalit‖. Anupama Rao claimed, ―B. R. Ambedkar first used the term in 1928 or so, in his newspaper Bahiskrit Bharat (Rao 11)‖, but Dr. Darshini Dadawala writes:

The famous 19th century social reformer and protagonist of the interests of Dalits in Maharashtra Jyotiba Phule first used this term in the context of the exploitation of the people who were conventionally called ―Shudra‖ and outcaste Hindus. (Dadawala 12)

From the above citations it is quite clear that there was a doubt among the scholars about the first usage of the term but it is quite clear from the citation of Dr. Darshini Dadawala that Dalits are the successors of ―Shudra‖ or outcaste Hindus. However, the word ―Dalit‖ acquired popularity when the group ―Dalit Panthers‖ in Maharashtra began using the term in 1970s during the social movement to identify the untouchables or Dalits who were socially, economically and culturally oppressed by the upper caste people for centuries. The term ‗Dalit literature‘ was first used in 1958 at the first ever Dalit literature conference held in Bombay (Joothan xii).

Discussion/ Analysis of the paper (Main Body):

Satinath Bhaduri (1906-65) is widely known for two of his novels in Bengali literature Jagari (1945) and Dhorai Charit Manas (1949-51). The first part of Dhorai Charit Manas was published in April 1949 and the second part of that novel was published in 1951. Satinath Bhadur, in his well-discussed novel Dhorai Charit Manas, portrays the life, culture and oppression of the people from the Tatma and Dhangar castes from the Jiraniya district in Bihar, providing an opportunity to discuss it from the subaltern perspective and more specifically the Dalit perspective

Volume 4, Number 1, October, 2018, (IJCLTS) ISSN: 2321-8274, 30 http://ijclts.wordpress.com/ through this paper. The novel is divided into two parts. The first part has three sections –―Adi Kand‖ (The Episode of Ancient Times), ―Panchayat Kand‖ (The Episode of the Panchayat) and ―Ramiya Kand‖ (The Ramiya Episode). Like the first part, the second part has three sections –―Sagiya Kand‖ (The Sagiya Episode), ―Lanka Kand‖ (The Lanka Episode) and ―Nirasha Kand‖ (The Episode of Despair). The six sections of the two parts are beautifully woven by the protagonist Dhorai‘s life struggle from his childhood to his middle age. The novelist takes the concept of his title from poet Tulsidas‘s version of the Ramayana, Shree Ramcharitmanas, for Dhorai Charit Manas is full of the stories of Dhorai just like Ramcharitmanas which describes different stories from the life of Rama.

The novel centers on the protagonist of the novel Dhoari who belongs to a lower- caste of Jiraniya in Bihar –the Tatmas. In the very beginning of ―Adi Kanda‖ of the novel, the history of the caste-profession of the Tatmas is described by the narrator in the very next page:

I think the Tatmas are weavers by caste. When they first came, only one of them had a sort of broken-down loom for weaving their transparent gamchas. They had come here in a body from Roshra village in Darbhanga, driven by the bidding of their stomachs… (2)

But they were not accepted by the local inhabitants of Haveli province as weavers. They also did not know how to cultivate and they demanded no land except for land they needed to build their homes on. At that time Phukan Mandal, a big cultivator or jotdar, had an earnest desire to become a landlord. So, he gave the Tatmas a plot of land which has been afterwards named as Tatmatuli. Gradually the lower-caste Tatmas had become well-diggers and thatchers from weavers under certain circumstances at Tatmatuli.

Tatmas had a great rivalry with Dhangartuli‘s Dhangars who are well-built, healthy, dark and tidy lower-caste people. The novelist makes reference to the fact that ―ancestors of the Dhangar were actually the Oraon‖ (5) who are the aboriginal

Volume 4, Number 1, October, 2018, (IJCLTS) ISSN: 2321-8274, 31 http://ijclts.wordpress.com/ people of India and had a well-built, strong physical stature but the narrator did not know how they had settled in Dhangartuli in Dharampur Pargana after travelling a long distance from Shantal Parganas. The novelist also describes that the competition and conflict between Tatmas and Dhangars are age old: ―The Dhangars call the Tatmas dirty beasts. The Tatmas call the Dhangars Burbak Kiristan, Stupid Christians!‖ (5) The Dhangars are called stupid Christians because some Dhangar households had converted to Christianity and most of the ―Dhangars work as gardeners in the houses of the Sahebs…‖(5).On the other hand, the Tatmas are called ―dirty‖ because their women ususally bathe only once a year at the Chaat festival. The narrator also remarks that the Tatmas and Dhangars often fought over small things, but being physically weak the Tatmas fled when the Dhangars became furious.

The paper begins with a renowned Dalit woman writer Bama‘s comment that India has a multiplicity of caste and sub-caste groups and there is a very subtle hierarchy in each caste –even in the lower castes. As it is evident in Tarashankar Bandopadhyay‘s novel Tale of the Hansuli Turn that there are two sub-castes in Kahar district –Atpoure Kahar and Palanquin-bearer (Behara) Kaharas and its constant rivalry, in this novel the typical nature of Hindu society is also prominent. Both the Dhangars and Tatmas belonged to the lower-castes in Hindu society but both the lower-castes regarded themselves superior to each other. Moreover, like the Behara Kahars in Tale of the Hansuli Turn, the Tatmas also despised the lower- caste Dom, Mushar who exist at the bottom of Hindu society: ―Perhaps the girl [Ramiya] wants to please Dhorai because she says, ―Quite nice, your tola. Very nice, no Musalman, no lower-caste Dom, no Mushar…‖ (109); or if the ―dogs die, you have to get the untouchable [Dom] to dispose of the corpse…‖ (98).

Just as the Tatmas despised the people living at the bottom of caste-structure in Hindu society, the upper-caste people also disliked the Tatmas which is described by the narrator in different parts of the novel. High-born goldsmith Bhopal in the first section of the novel, ―Adi Kand‖, after getting infuriated against Dhorai‘s

Volume 4, Number 1, October, 2018, (IJCLTS) ISSN: 2321-8274, 32 http://ijclts.wordpress.com/ mother, roars –―… Jaahil aurat! Low-born, stupid female! Won‘t understand a word I say, just seven annas [are] not enough…‖ (19) The high-caste Bengali people like Chattis babu invited the lower-caste people on Dushera but they did not have access to the place where the idol was kept and they were threatened to be beaten by Babubhaiya‘s widow sister if they would try to come near the idol:

This time on Dushera, they allowed Tatma, Dhangar, Dushad, Chamar, everyone into the room where the murat, the idol of Bhagwati was kept… only when Chattis babu‘s old mother was offering prayers, Chattis babu‘s widowed sister stood guard with a thick huge branch of the drumstick tree… (148)

In ―Sagiya Kand‖ the novelist implies that the epic of India, The Ramayana has a poisonous root of caste-oppression, when Dhorai laments for not abiding the instruction prescribed in The Ramayana that acts as an agent of Ideological State Apparatus of Religion and Education that constructed the cultural hegemony. The epic advocates for maintaining the interest of the privileged class, gender and castes in a patriarchal class-biased society:

… The Ramayan has instructed that, ‗dhol, ganwar, shudra, pashu, drums, bumpkins, untouchables, beasts and women, must be kept in check with a stick, always…‘ (166)

In that episode, when Dhorai had come to village Bishkandha, the people of the village considered the Tatmas much lower than their caste Kushbahachatri: ―The signs are clear –the Tantrimachatri jaat are much lower than the Kushbahachatri.‖ (170) Again Bilta, Dhoari‘s friend in Bishkandha village, is afraid that Chaukidar will inform the Daroga Saheb and about the Congress activities, so he abuses watchman-chaukidar aiming at his caste identity: ―… And there‘s that, saala low- born son of the unclean Hari caste, the watchman Chaukidaar, who goes to the daroga saheb and tells him everything…‖ (174). Abusing someone based on caste- identity is perhaps in vogue amongst the rural people in pre-independence era where people being infuriated hurled foul language to the people residing in the

Volume 4, Number 1, October, 2018, (IJCLTS) ISSN: 2321-8274, 33 http://ijclts.wordpress.com/ lower-strata of caste hierarchy. This abusing on lives of caste-identity is again evident when Dhorai abuses Gidhar Mondal for keeping up a lower-caste mistress:

Am a musaharni, a low-caste female labourer on his field that he can abuse me and I shall smile and fondle him in reply? Have I taken a loan from him and not repaid it? That cow-eater! (188)

The high-caste people like Babusaheb and Bacchan Singh considered the lower-caste poor Koyeris as servile creatures. In ―Sagiya Kand‖ under Dhorai‘s leadership and due to the impact of the Gandhian movement when Koyeris muster courage to protest against the landlord‘s exploitation, Babusaheb thought: ―Those people whose ancestors spent generations washing utensils in Rajput households now threaten Babusaheb.(200)‖The upper-caste ego was hurt when the subaltern consciousness was raised by the Gandhian movement:

…those low people have been raised beyond their limits by Ladlibabu and his kind. The nuniyas now roam around wearing caps, not bothering to uncover their heads in deference to people worthy of respect. (202)

The sudden awakening of subaltern consciousness is caused by a mass hysteria about Gandhi in India. ―Numerous myths about Gandhi‘s divinity spread among the poor, illiterate mass of India.‖ (Karmakar ―Gandhi as Mahatma…‖ 132) Referring to a subaltern historian Sahid Amin‘s essay ―Gandhi as Mahatma‖, Veena R. Howard in her work Gandhi‘s Ascetic Activism: Renunciation and Social Action writes:

Myths about Gandhi‘s divinity were not confirmed to individuals but became part of the mass consciousness. The local press played an important role in provoking the mass response by disseminating stories about ―Gandhi‘s occult power‖. (207)

Sahid Amin in his essay ―Gandhi as Mahatma‖ quoted four miracles published in ―Pioneer‖ in 1921:

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In the ―Swadesh‖, a paper published in Gorakhpur, four miracles were quoted last month as being popularly attributable to Mr. Gandhi. Smoke was seen coming from wells and when water was drunk, it had the fragrance of Keora (Pandarus Odaratissimus)… a copy of the Holy Quoran was found in a room which had not been opened for a year, an Ahir who refused alms to a Sadhu begging in Mahatma Gandhi‘s name, had his gur and two buffaloes destroyed by fire, who defied Mr. Gandhi‘s authority, went mad and was cured three days afterwards by thinvocation to the saintly name! ...In all these instances the mythopoeic imagination of the childlike peasants at work… (291-92)

This ―mythopoeic imagination‖ works perfectly both on the rumours and stories related to the power of Mahatma and to the stories enumerating the consequences of opposing Gandhi‘s teaching and ideals. The ―mythopoeic imagination‖ of the poor illiterate mass of India regarding the rumours and stories related to Gandhi‘s supernatural power is also portrayed by the novelists who wrote during the Gandhian movement. In Dhorai Charit Manas, Rabiya, an illiterate Tatma, was screaming like a lunatic in one morning to claim that on the skin of the Vilayati (foreign) pumpkin in his courtyard an outline or image of Mahatma Gandhi is seen:

… [On] the skin of the vilayati pumpkin is a ‗murat, an outline‘ of Ganhi baoa [Mahatma Gandhi]. Etched with white on the green pumpkin- skin outside. You can see something like a moustache around the mouth. No two ways about it… (33)

Later ―the pumpkin‖ was ―worshipped at the than with betel leaf, nut and mossales.‖ (34). Again in the ―Panchyat Kand‖, the illiterate people of Dhangartuli and Tatmatuli believed that Gandhiji would come to Jiraniya for a meeting by breaking the locks and walls of the prison by chanting a single mantra and set ―himself free‖ (74).

A similar picture of ―mythopoeic imagination‖ of the superstitious mass of India is portrayed in Mulk Raj Anand‘s novel Untouchable, where Bakha, the

Volume 4, Number 1, October, 2018, (IJCLTS) ISSN: 2321-8274, 35 http://ijclts.wordpress.com/ protagonist of the novel, recalled all the stories and myths he had heard of Gandhi when he attended a meeting of Gandhi at Golbagh:

… People said that he [Gandhi] was a saint, that he was an avatar (incarnation) of the gods Vishnu and Krishna. Only recently he had heard that a spider had woven a web in the house of the Lal Sahib (Viceroy) at Dili (Delhi), making a portrait of the sage [Gandhi], and writing his name under it in English.… (Anand128)

Bakha has also heard a story of Gandhi‘s occult power from a peasant who said that one day Gandhi slept in a temple with his feet towards the shrine of God. When the priests of the temple protested against it, Gandhi replied that God was everywhere in the temple and asked the priests to turn his feet where God was not present. ―…Upon this the priests turned his feet in the direction opposite to the one where the image of the God was, and lo! The shrine of God moved in the direction of his feet…‖ (Anand 130)

In fact, elite Congressmen like Ladlibabu in Dhorai Charit Manas ―tried to raise mass collective consciousness…by projecting Gandhi as an avatar, a God or a saint (Karmakar ―Gandhi as Mahatma…‖136).‖ In Raja Rao‘s Kanthapura, Moorthy, the protagonist of the novel, being an active member of Gandhi-led Congress tried to raise massive collective consciousness before Gandhi‘s Dandi-March campaign by his words:

Oh no, Mahatma need not go so far as the sea. Like Harishchandra before he finished his vow, the gods will come down and dissolve his vow, and the Britishers will leave India, and we shall be free, and we shall pay ‗less taxes, and there will be no policemen…‘ (Raja Rao171)

Sometimes ―caste politics‖ played a crucial role determining the national politics against the colonial rule. The Congress volunteers encouraged the lower- caste people to be involved in the national politics that would give them redemption

Volume 4, Number 1, October, 2018, (IJCLTS) ISSN: 2321-8274, 36 http://ijclts.wordpress.com/ from both class and caste struggle, but in reality most of the Congress leaders belonged to the upper-castes and the privileged class and took the roles of colonial rulers just before independence and also in the post-colonial period. Edward W. Said writes in Culture and Imperialism regarding the matter:

… The national bourgeoisies and their specialized élites, of which Fanon speaks so ominously, in effect tended to replace the colonial force with a new class-based and ultimately exploitive one, which replicated the colonial structures in new terms… (269).

Garbhu Paonidaar, a Koyeri, points out the very fact in Dhorai Charit Manas:

…It‘s Mahatmaji‘s Kangriss[Congress] only in name. The Rajputs and Bhumidar their grip… Ladlibabu! ... The kangriss won the election with our help the last time. That‘s why this time we have decided, Kurmachatri, Kushvahachatri and Jaduvanshhiyachatri [Kurmi,Koyeri and Gowala are milk producers castes], these three castes will stand against the Rajputs and the Bhumihars. We have formed a tri-caste alliance, Triveni Sangha. (252)

Like the writer of the novel, Dhorai also realized the hypocrisy, lack of truthfulness of the Congress leaders and disintegration of their principles and ideals at the end of the novel. Under the impact of the World Wars, he also realized the meaninglessness and purposelessness of life which is nothing but an illusion or Moha according to Hindu Shastras, but this realization came in his middle-age when his immature mind had been transformed into a matured one.

Finding his caste identity as a lower one, Dhorai tried to lift himself and his caste people from lower-caste to upper-caste by wearing a sacred thread, for he realizes that being an upper-caste the Tatmas will definitely enjoy a privilege in a caste-biased society, if not immediately but within one or two generations. As the Tatmas are vegetarian, they can easily adopt a Brahmanic way of life by adopting vegetarianism and teetotalism and make themselves distinguished from their enemy-

Volume 4, Number 1, October, 2018, (IJCLTS) ISSN: 2321-8274, 37 http://ijclts.wordpress.com/ caste, the non-vegetarian Dhangars. This upward movement of the lower castes in caste hierarchy or social mobility is described by M. N. Srinivas in his research work Religion and Society Amongst the Coorgs of South India as ―Sanskritisation‖:

The caste system is far from a rigid system in which the position of each component caste is fixed for all time. Movement has always been possible, andespecially in the middle regions of caste hierarchy. A Caste was able, in ageneration or two, to rise to a higher position in the hierarchy by adopting vegetarianism and teetotalism, and by Sankritising its ritual and pantheon. In short, it took over, as far as possible, the customs, rites and beliefs of the Brahmins, and adoption of the Brahminic way of life by a low caste seems to have been frequent, though theoretically forbidden. This process has been called ‗Sanskritisation‘… (32)

Besides Baoka Baoa, Dhorai was also respected by the Tatmas, thus, he probably felt superior to the lower-caste Tatmas like a Brahmana priest and also tried to raise his caste people to the higher strata of a caste-ridden society. Dhorai‘s attempt of ‗Sanskritisation‘ may also be analyzed as an outcome of his emotional detachment with his caste-people –he was never included in the Tatma society but also never excluded from their society. His mother deserted him in his early childhood and he was begging with Baoka Baoa which estranges him with the Tatmas‘ life and culture. Moreover, he was more comfortable with non-vegetarian Dhangars. Violating the Tatma‘s social convention of not digging earth, Dhorai went with the Dhangars to work on Pakki (pitch road). The Punch (the Panchayat) of the Tatmas also took their vengeance on Dhorai by separating him with his loving wife Ramiya. Ramiya was also a girl from the western side of Bihar and not a woman of his own caste. In fact, Dhorai disliked the women of his own caste:

… Earlier he was a little unenthusiastic about women-people; in fact, they put him off –they don‘t know what they say, those dirty jhotaha [Tatma women], they smile and spread themselves when they see men… (107)

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Again in part two of the novel, Dhorai has become a resident of another village Bishkandha and after his joining in Kantridal in ―Lanka Kand‖ he has acquired a national identity instead of carrying a Tatma identity. Satinath Bhaduri, perhaps, was unwilling to confine Dhorai to his Tatma identity and made him rather ―national‖ in order to uplift the novel from the status of ―locale‖ or ―provincial‘ to ―national‖ one by raising the subaltern consciousness of Dhorai of Tatamatuli and Koyeris of Koyeritola. In fact, Satinath Bhaduri has tried to portray a more realistic picture of the contemporary society within the form of provincial novel.

Satinath Bhaduri has used the artificial form of Shree Ramcharitmanas in this novel, but the incidents are loosely woven relating to Dhorai‘s life. He has infused many aspects of contemporary society into Dhorai‘s life struggle –the lifestyle and culture of the Dhangars and the Tatmas, oppression of the upper-caste zamindars and moneylenders, Panchayati Raj (the rule of the Panchayat); the socio-economic effect of the Second World War, Gandhi led Indian Freedom Movement, the activities of the Congress volunteers and so on. In spite of depicting Dhorai‘s psychological crisis, Satinath Bhaduri made him involved in the Congress activities in the ―Lanka Kand‖ that allows the readers to call it as a political novel like his other novel Jagari. Why does the novelist deviate from Dhorai‘s psychological crisis and his birthplace Tatmatuli and its surrounding area? Satinath Bhaduri probably knows the lifestyle, culture and language of the Tatmas and the Dhangars very well but being a high- caste Bengali writer he experiences an emotional detachment with them. As an educated upper-caste gentleman or ―Bhadralok‖, he could not identify himself with the lower-caste culture. He criticizes the upper-caste oppression but at the same time, he could not estrange himself from his upper-caste consciousness. Regarding this point of view, the English translator of the novel, Ipshita Chanda comments:

… It is a cluster of lives lived within a number of communities intertwined to make up the fabric of locality, a locality in which the writer is both an outsider and an insider. (Preface to Dhorai Charit Manas xii)

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Being a frequent ―insider‖ and ―outsider‖ he could not identify himself with the lower-castes people of that locality and experienced as kind of emotional estrangement with the lower-caste culture; consequently, he had ―sympathy‖ for the Tatmas, the Dhangars and other lower-castes of that region, but did not have ―empathy‖ for them, which corroborate a well-known Bengali Dalit writer, Manohar Mouli Biswas theory of ―sympathy-empathy‖:

… I shall borrow two English terms –sympathy and empathy. There are several works in Bangla literature that deal with the life and sufferings of the dalits. We can name the pioneers in the field – Manik Bandyopadhyay, Sarat Chandra Chattopadhyay, Bibhutibhushan Bandyopadhyay, Tarashankar Bandyopadhyay, Satinath Bhaduri, Prafulla Roy, Mahasweta Devi. However, these writers were not born in the Dalit community, nor did they grow up in the midst. They have seen these people close up and felt their deprivations and sorrows in their hearts…. Their pens exude sympathy which evokes pity, love and a sharing. When the dalits resisted this approach, they wielded the pen themselves to write their own stories which was designated as dalit literature. Dalit literature is created by the dalits and not by others. It is not based on sympathy but survives on empathy… (45)

Conclusion:

In order to examine the text through Manohar Mouli Biswas‘s proposition, a critical analysis of Satinath Bhaduri‘s representation of Tatma culture is needed, and for that analysis some extracts from Dhorai Charit Manas are taken as examples or samples for observation. In Dhorai Charit Manas, Satinath Bhaduri portrays the Tatma women and their social norms andcultural traits in an unfavourable light to some extent:

…The women [of Tatmatuli], however, are of a different kind… The woman who is smoking tobacco under the single-thatch roof laden with yellow ‗dhondal‘ flowers doesn‘t put down her hookah, nor does she try to adjust the handkerchief sized clothes she wears to cover her body better… (4)

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Like Karali‘s mother in The Tale of Hansuli Turn, Dhorai‘s mother Budhni in Dhorai Charit Manas remarries and leaves Dhoari when he is in his childhood:

… Budhni also thinks, if I must take someone money, may as well marry someone while I‘m still young. She was eligible age-wise, and it wasn‘t as if she didn‘t have the desire to once more wear sindur, the vermillion that marks out a married woman… (14)

Although Satinath Bhaduri represents the decision of Budhni‘s remarriage and deserting her only son Dhorai not as a blemish because of her wretched financial condition: ―Baoka baoa did not blame Budhni –neither did the neighbours. What else could the poor woman do?‖ (14) yet the novelist‘s interpretation is tinged with the colour of upper-caste cultural superiority with a patriarchal mindset. He implies that any upper-caste widow never remarries deserting her only child in order to gain social security and marital bliss, like Dhorai‘s mother Budhni. By using the word ―desire‖, he perhaps hints at the bodily desire of the lower-caste women like Budhni who can desert their children in order to lead a secured, sexually satisfied and happy married life; whereas the upper-caste woman‘s refined or high culture prevent them from deserting their children in order to satisfy their physical desire or to obtain financial security. Satinath Bhaduri also point out that the lower-caste men even allow their wives to be exploited by the upper-caste landlords or moneylenders in exchange of money; they do not mind their wives‘ moral laxity in lieu of easy money:

… If a woman of Tatmatuli catches the glad eye of some Babu after marriage, the husbands don‘t mind over much. This allows the woman to wear clean saris, oil their hair, even if the ‗purukh‘ [male] doesn‘t go out to earn daily… (117)

The novelist also refers to bawdy jokes and obscene songs regarding bridegroom‘s mother as a Dalit cultural trait, which is inconceivable in ―Bhadralok‖ culture: Stop all your witchery, Samdhin [Dhorai‘s mother], Now tell us who the boy‘s father is The

Volume 4, Number 1, October, 2018, (IJCLTS) ISSN: 2321-8274, 41 http://ijclts.wordpress.com/ liveried orderly or the loin-clothed ascetic? Or was the same other lover Why don‘t you tell,Why don‘t you whisper to us Why do you hesitate? (131)

The paper can be concluded with the reference that being sympathetic is having concern and pity but not identification with the community portrayed in a literary work. Once this identification is reached then the sympathy can change to empathy but this is not possible in the case of Satinath Bhaduri because his material and social conditions do not match with that of a Dalit because by definition a Dalit is deprived and marginalized and an emancipation from such a condition does not give an authentic Dalit experience and thereby not an empathetic representation of Dalit life.

Works Cited

Althusser, Louis. ―Ideology and Ideological State Appartuses‖. Lenin And Philosophy And Other Esaays. Trans. Ben Brewster. New York: Monthly Review Press, 1971.127-186. Print.

Amin, Sahid. ―Gandhi as Mahatma: Gorakhpur District, Eastern UP, 1921-2‖.Selected Subaltern Studies.Ed. Ranajit Guha and Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak. New York and Oxford: OUP, 1988. 288-350. Print.

Anand, Mulk Raj. Untouchable. New Delhi: Penguin Books Ltd., 2001. Print.

Bama and M.Vijayalakshmi. ―Dalit Literature‖. Indian Literature. 43. 5 (193) (Sep- Oct, 1999): 97- 98.http:/www.jstor.org/stable/23342648.Web. 19 Oct. 2016.

Bandyopadhyay, Tarashankar.The Tale of Hansuli Turn.Trans. Bane Consibee Baer. New York: Columbia University Press, 2011. Print.

Bhaduri, Satinath. Dhorai Charit Manas.Trans. Ipshita Chanda. New Delhi: Sahitya Akademi, 2013,Print.

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… The Vigil (Jagari). Trans. Lila Ray. Bombay: Asia Publishing House,1963. Print.

Biswas, Manohar Mouli. An Interpretation of Dalit Literature Aesthetic Theory and Movements: Through the Lens of Ambedkarism. Kolkata: Chaturtha Dunia, 2017.Print.

Dadawala, Dr. Darshini. ―Dalit Literature –Concept, Origin and Features.‖11-14. IJELLH. IV. II.Feb. 2016. www.ijellh.com.Web. 15 May 2017.

Howard, Veena R. Gandhi‘s Ascetic Activism: Renunciation and Social Action. New York: SUNY Press,2013.Print.

Karmakar, Debabrata. ―A Brief History of Dalits in Bengal: The Post Independence Period (1947-2011)‘.Explorations: Literary and Cultural. Ed. Aparna Singh. Kolkata: Paschimbanga Anchalik Itihas O Loksanskriti Charcha Kendra,2018. 69- 75.Print.

... ―Gandhi as Mahatma in the Gandhian Novels of R.K.Narayan, Mulk Raj Anand and Raja Rao‖.Contemporary Research in India.3.4.December, 2013. 132-136. Print.

Rao, Anupama. ―Who is the Dalit? The Emergence of a New Political Subject‖. Claiming Power from Below: Dalits and Subaltern Question in India. Eds. Manu Bhagavan and Anne Feldhaus. London: OUP,11-27.Print.

Rao, Raja. Kanthapura. New Delhi: OUP,2009. Print.

Roy, Arundhati. The God of Small Things. New Delhi: Penguin Books India,2002. Print.

Said, Edward. Culture and Imperialism. London: Vintage Books, 1994. Print.

Srinivas, M.N. Religion and Society amongst the Croogs of South India. Oxford: Clarendon Press,1952. Print.

Tulsidas, Goswami. Shree Ramcharitmanas. Gorakhpur: Gita Press,2015. Print. Volume 4, Number 1, October, 2018, (IJCLTS) ISSN: 2321-8274, 43 http://ijclts.wordpress.com/

Valmiki, Omprakash. Joothan. Trans. Arun Prabha Mukherjee. Kolkata: Samya, 2014.Print.

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The idea of Anti-hero in Upamanyu Chatterjee‟s English August: An Indian Story

Md.Firoj Ahmmed1, Dr. Munira T.2

Doctoral fellow, Associate Professor

Department of English, AMU, Aligarh-202002

[email protected], [email protected]

Abstract

Upamanyu Chatterjee is a contemporary Indian novelist who has written six novels and two short stories. English August: An Indian story is the first novel by Upamanyu Chatterjee which was published in 1988.It was also adapted into a film. As the novel opens, Agastya Sen has been posted to the small provincial town of Madna as an administrative officer where he is caught up in a spiral of restlessness, depression, alienation, cultural dislocation which he was unsuited to. It is hard for him to defer to the culture, customs, traditional values and moralities laid down by the community. The paper looks at how Agastya acts out the role of an anti-heroic character in Upamanyu Chatterjee‘s English August: An Indian story.

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Key words: Anti-hero, Anti-establishment, indecisiveness, moral degeneration, restlessness, spiritual dryness, self-deprecation.

As a contemporary Indian novelist, Upamanyu Chatterjee‘s role to set out the zeitgeist of 1980s Indian society is praiseworthy. Amongst his contemporaries, he is distinctly known for his anti-heroic protagonists to point out the socio-cultural and political condition of 1980s India with verve and vitality. To examine the ground of rising novels in 1980s, a critic comments that ―politics-national and international-is their most important theme, and the displaced, marginal modern man their favourite protagonist (Kirpal xvi).‖ The assessment of critic is fit for the novel English, August and its anti-heroic protagonist Agastya. It is obvious that antiheroes are reflected in the post-1950 novels, such as Kingsley Amis‘s Lucky Jim (1954) and John Braine‘s Room at the top. Upamanyu Chatterjee is not exceptional in this case. In English, August, the protagonist Agastya is a typical anti-hero.

The anti-hero is a dominant character in a novel who does not possess heroic qualities like a traditional or conventional hero. In addition to this, anti-hero is at the centre of the action in English, August. His motive is to deconstruct the tradition, customs and norms of the society. An anti hero is a product of the prevailing condition or milieu of an era. Generally, an anti-heroic protagonist does not have fixed set of mind and becomes muddled up between modern and tradition. He even does not stand up against social and moral abuses rather he fights against his personal problems or defects. He is so self-centred but sometimes his conflict is for a noble cause. According to Cuddon‘s Dictionary of Literary Terms, the anti-hero is a ‗non-hero‘ or antithesis of a hero of the old-fashioned kind who was capable of heroic deeds, who was dashing, strong, brave and resourceful (Cuddon 45).‖ But the anti-hero in contemporary fiction cannot be limited to a single definition.

Here the concept of the anti-hero is somewhat similar to the Derrida‘s Deconstruction. Because Deconstructionist believes that a text is not fixed with a particular meaning; moreover it produces multiple meaning. Deconstructionist flouts

Volume 4, Number 1, October, 2018, (IJCLTS) ISSN: 2321-8274, 46 http://ijclts.wordpress.com/ the traditional concept of single meaning of the structuralism theory. Similarly, Agastya undermines the traditional way of lifestyle and searches meaning of life in westernised culture and tradition.

English, August is committed to examine the antiheroic protagonist‘s morally grey and glum world. It is apparent that the term anti-hero indicates a good-hearted contumacious who protests against the society with clownish gesticulate. Chatterjee would know it from quite early on that for explicating such condition or milieu of 1980s India, Anti-heroic protagonist is quintessential in his novel. That is why, the novelist invents a fictional anti-hero Agastya in English, August to draw the spirit of 1980‘s India. Thorslev says, ―the hero gives one the broader and deeper perspectives of the spiral of the age which he represents (Thorslev 20).‖ Urbanisation and the growing industrialisation are the reasons for Agastya‘s selfishness and individualistic attitude. In a nutshell, Agastya‘s world is unheroic. He is a representative of his period of 1980s. Self-doubt, self-deprecate, undetermined, narcissistic, cowardly, spiritually dry etc. are also hallmarks of an Anti-hero. They are present in Agastya.

Upamanyu Chatterjee is insightful about the happenings in his surroundings. Basically his anti heroes are the outcome of societal and moral deterioration. He is an astute observer of predicament and sufferings of modern life. He has left no stone unturned to draw his real life experiences in his novels through the anti-hero. Salman Rushdie likes Chatterjee‘s novel for what he calls ‗the elegant social observation of Upamanyu Chatterjee‘ (Rushdie 172). Minute observations on petty things such as food, sex, mosquito etc. by Chatterjee is also to be appreciated. Unlike other contemporary writers, he prefers the anti-hero to paint the various spheres of social life, cultural life, political life and all that jazz in a subtle way. The reasons behind the Anti-heroic attitude of Agastya get transpired throughout the novel.

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Upamanyu Chatterjee‘s English, August is engulfed with Anti heroic symptoms such as alienation, angst, restlessness (ennui) etc. Among many causes, Agastya‘s English education is one of them. Notably, Agastya is born in a well off Bengali family in Calcutta. Indian educational system is swayed by western education and values. For that reason Agastya is educated in English medium school in Darjeeling. Nissim Ezekiel said that Agastya‘s Darjeeling education is a vital reason behind his alienation and dislocation. In a similar tone Gauri Viswanathan also says, ―the English education was introduced in India with an object to achieve and maintain political domination. Through cultural hegemony, by discreetly introducing western values and perception among the natives and moulding them as subjects (Viswanathan 18).‖ It is au fait to all that Agastya‘s father is an Administrative officer and mother is a Goanese Christian woman. So, it can be said that his parent‘s education also helps him to grow up in English environment. Western education, values and culture influence Agastya in such a way that he wishes to mould himself in terms of European culture and education. In this context the authorial comment of Chatterjee demonstrates frankly about Agastya that ―he wished he had been Anglo-Indian, that he had Keith or Alan for a name, that he spoke English with their accent‖ (English, August 02). Being grown up in English environment and western culture, when Agastya moved over to the backward place Madna as an administrative trainee, he could not adjust there and subsequently became alienated and dislocated from his surroundings. Actually Agastya is a victim of strange cultural discourse during his educational and cultural training. In Babu fictions : Alienation in contemporary Indian fiction, a famous Indian critic Tabish Khair told that English language and the education imparted through that language can affect in constituting a subject. He remarks, ―.....the discursively constituted subject will be alienated in a situation where discourses related to or emanating from the subject‘s positioning in the socio economic field are subordinated to discourses from other/dominant positions in the field (Khair 26).‖ Moreover, his family has a role in his anti-heroic mind-set because both his father and mother are from different religious backgrounds. His father adjures Agastya to be a Brahmin Hindu so that he could be stuck with his cultural identity. Since Agastya is grown up in metropolitan cities like Kolkata and Delhi, he is Volume 4, Number 1, October, 2018, (IJCLTS) ISSN: 2321-8274, 48 http://ijclts.wordpress.com/ far from being a practicing Brahmin Hindu. He tends to be a materialist and consumerist in the postmodern era.

As a city boy, Agastya is posted in hinterland Madna to serve the public as an Administrative trainee or officer. After being posted in Madna, he is not able to adjust with various administrative officers, local people and surroundings. It is a challenging task for a city boy like Agastya to become acclimatized with the new backward and underdeveloped place. Although Agastya puts in much effort to get into this prestigious administrative job but after getting into it he does not get satisfaction. Agastya does not take to his job and duty. He considers himself as an outsider in Madna and rest of the world too. In the administrative job, he is not able to concentrate fully. After returning from his office, Agastya leads a secret life which is filled with marijuana , masturbation and drugs .So the novelist says that ‗His secret life became much more exciting and more actual than the world outside‘ (English,August.27). Whether he is at office or at home a sense of alienation and restlessness weighs heavily upon his mind. It seems to Agastya that he is unhitched from his family, administrative world and rest of the world. Agastya tries to escape alienation, boredom and frustration but he is not able to get over those feelings. Somewhere Agastya‘s predicament and agony highlights the existential crisis of the heroes in Albert Camus, Kafka and Sartre‘s work. He is not determined enough to do his own work and duty punctually. Agastya undergoes inner turmoil in Madna which he is not able to overcome. Agastya‘s obsession with Marijuana, soft drugs, women and Masturbation to find some solace and mental comfort goes in vain. He also recalls his Delhi life to relieve himself from his tedious administrative job in Madna. There seem to be no way out of this alienation, depression, boredom and restlessness. Even reading Marcus Aurelius and Bhagavat Gita makes no sense for Agastya. Agastya finds his life purposeless like the hero of existentialist writers. He feels that he merely wastes his energy and time here without any constructive goal. Agastya perceives his life as insignificant and full of problems which constantly pester him. He is irritated by his petty problems in Madna. But, he is unable to work out his personal problems or defects because of his feebleness and indecisiveness. It

Volume 4, Number 1, October, 2018, (IJCLTS) ISSN: 2321-8274, 49 http://ijclts.wordpress.com/ is axiomatic that anti-heroes nurture pessimistic attitudes in their mind about their life and surroundings. Agastya is not exceptional in this case. Agastya does not possess enough self-confidence and firmness to take serious steps in his life. He does not understand his real state of existence .He is uncertain about his job and does not consider himself to be a deserved administrative officer .In this context Agastya says that ‗I don‘t look like a bureaucrat, what am I doing here. I should have been a photographer or a maker of ad films, something like that, shallow and urban‘ (English,August,14).In all activities Agastya finds his faults and belittle himself which certainly marks him out as an Anti-heroic protagonist. He is so jealous to see others happiness, easy going and free of care approach to their life that it obviously indicates Agastya‘s unheroic manner .It is beyond his imagination that happiness comes from the commitment to a purpose in life. Some lines from the text justifies his enviousness here, ‗He was suddenly ashamed of himself, looking at the salesman, talking about medicines for twelve hours a day, his restlessness seemed awefully frivolous .The salesman made him feel both eerie-be happy you are not him, and how dare you behave so cheaply when you have the chance not to be him (English, August. 224). In one word, he is devoid of capability to stand up against the wrongdoings rather he involves in over thinking. Agastya is engrossed in fantasy. In fact he takes everything around him pejoratively which reflects his antihero trait.

Agastya Sen is a victim of the administrative system which he comes to join in Madna. He is far from being a sentimental and idealistic character. After being relocated to Madna for his administrative job, Agastya is hacked off with corruption in bureaucracy and politics. He is surrounded by many officers such as the collector of Madna Srivastav, his predecessor Mr. Antony, the superintendent of police Kumar, other officers Bajaj and Menon in Madna who are corrupt. Agastya is incapable of coping up with them properly because of their dishonesty and corrupt manner. He observes the dehumanising effects of Indian bureaucracy silently. ‗In government, you‘ll realize this over the years, Sen, there‘s nothing such as absolute honesty, there are only degrees of dishonesty. All officers are more or less dishonest-some are like our engineers, they get away with lakhs, some are like me, who won‘t say

Volume 4, Number 1, October, 2018, (IJCLTS) ISSN: 2321-8274, 50 http://ijclts.wordpress.com/ no when someone gives them a video for the weekend, others are subtler, they won‘t pay for the daily trunk call to Hyderabad to talk to their wives and children. Only degrees of dishonesty‘ (English, August. 138).The wives of the bureacrats flaunt their husband‘s power in society especially in educational institutions to get admission in unlawful way. Aside from this, in terms of corruption and hypocrisy, political leaders are not lesser than bureaucrats. Agastya discerns corruption in political system in Madna which can demonstrate the dirty politics of India. He notices that political leaders often visit the poor people for seeking vote in election time but in reality, they do not do anything in favour of common people once election is over. Such corruption and injustice irks and pains Agastya a lot. They give false promise to the common people over the years in the name of their well being. Furthermore, his senior colleagues put down and insult his subordinates because of their supremacy in power which Agastya detest. Suppression and nonchalant manner is the attribute of the politico-bureaucratic system. Agastya witnesses these unfair things silently but he is fully incapable to garner the courage to raise his voice against such corruption and injustice. He does not excoriate those corrupt bureaucrats and political leaders directly. It is discernible here that Agastya lacks rebellious attitude against such evil practices. Generally, a protagonist or hero should not have anti heroic manners like Agastya. He must be conscious, bold and rebellious in nature. Therefore it can be said that corruption, filthy politics, bureaucracy around him are also the reasons of Agastya‘s Anti-heroic attitude or manner.

Agastya‘s spiritual desiccation and lack of moral values are the other factors for his becoming an anti-heroic protagonist. Agastya visits Adivasi area Gorapur and observes the water crisis there. He manages to provide water tankers immediately but he is not able to sympathise with them. It is hard to believe that Agastya helps them but cannot put himself in their position to feel their wretched condition. It is because of his materialistic tendency and consumerist nature towards life. In another case, he goes to ashram to see the welfare works by Baba Ramanna where he works selflessly for the people who suffer from leprosy. But Agastya is totally

Volume 4, Number 1, October, 2018, (IJCLTS) ISSN: 2321-8274, 51 http://ijclts.wordpress.com/ impervious and impassive to such great works of Baba Ramanna. He is immersed in his self interest and own need only. Agastya looks for food only in Madna which justifies his self interest and self obsession ‗was awed by the thought of months in which every meal would taste like this (English, August 06)‘.He is not able to transform his torment into transcendental experience. The reason behind it is that Agastya does not accept what reality is. Every time he tries to escape from reality. His escapist attitude makes him sceptic. Agastya lacks the knowledge of spiritualism to find peace and happiness by transfiguring his torture into bliss. His narcissistic attitude cuts off his relationship with the outside world. By Anti heroic protagonist Agastya, novelist imparts message to all that today‘s English educated Indian urban youth, inundated in careerism suffers from breakdown of communication and relationship with his society. He always pines for joy and freedom from his monotonous life in this material world. Agastya says, ‗I don‘t want challenge or responsibility or anything, all I want is to be happy (English, August 147).‘His craving for earthly happiness showcases his spiritual sterility because if a person is not spiritual, automatically he or she tends to a materialistic life. One important thing found in the novel is that Agastya is dissatisfied and destabilized in his life entirely. His pessimistic attitude towards his life also reverberates his spiritual dryness. Agastya knows that his English education, intellectual training makes him anglicised but at the deeper level he is taught Indian values and morality in his Hindu family. But he is unable to handle two things at a time. It is manifested vividly that Agastya is prone to follow his western education and intellectual training rather than the ethos and values of his own country India. Agastya wants to lead his life in simple way without restlessness. He is not ambitious at all. ‗He wanted to say, look, I don‘t want heaven, or any of the ephemeral ,the power or the glory, I just want this, this moment, this sunlight ,the car in the garage, that music system in my room. These groom material things, I could make these last forever. If I have any grand desires, they are only grist for lazy fantasy-Vienna and Hong Kong and kink in Bangkok. This narrow placid world, here and now, is enough, where success means watching the rajnigandhas you planted bloom. I am not ambitious for ecstasy, you will ask me to think of the future, but the decade to come pales before this second, the span of my Volume 4, Number 1, October, 2018, (IJCLTS) ISSN: 2321-8274, 52 http://ijclts.wordpress.com/ life is less important than its quality. I want to sit here in the mild sun and try and not think, try and escape the iniquity of the restlessness of my mind‘ (English, August, 147).These lines are repercussions of his ambitionlessness in his life. The ambitionlessness also designates his spiritual sterility because generally a person can‘t be ambitionless. Each and every person is born in this world with some specific purpose and ambition. As an urban Indian youth and Agastya‘s rootlessness proves that he is far away from being a spiritual person. Though Agastya has become immoral due to influence of the western education and intellectual training but somewhere at a deeper level he is sad; as Upamanyu Chatterjee says in an online chat that ‗My protagonist is God-fearing and family loving . He hates himself for casting dirty looks at a friend‘s wife, mother etc.‘

As a social realist Upamanyu Chatterjee becomes successful to represent the spirit of his decade of 1980s.The anti-heroic postmodern urban youths are distinguished in his novel because of their own style and self-deprecatory nature. They are apt to bring forth the chaos, confusion and immorality of the period but they don‘t take any steps to wipe out these problems. Moreover, they become entailed of it. Such Anti- heroic characters are quite matched with the zeitgeist of the 1980.In this regard, novelist‘s portrayal of Anti-heroic protagonist Agastya in English, August: an Indian story is well-matched and commendable.

Works cited

Chatterjee, Upamanyu. English August: an Indian story. Faber and Faber, 1988.

Khadse, Vijay Madhukar. Agastya sen: The antihero of Upamanyu Chatterjee. Ashvamegh journal vol. iii issue-xxiv, 2017.

Khair, Tabish. Babu Fictions: Alienation in Contemporary Indian English Novels. Oxford University Press, 2001.

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Viswanathan, Gauri. The beginnings of English Literary Study in British India. Oxford Literary Review, 1988.

Kripal, Viney. The New Indian Novel in English: A study of the 1980s.Allied Publishers, 1990.

Thorslev, P.L. The Byronic Hero: The Types and Prototypes. University of Minnesota Press, 1962.

Historicizing and Theorizing Autobiography with reference to India Wins Freedom.

Md Hasanujjaman

He is currently working as an Assistant Professor of English at Gushkara Mahavidyalaya, Gushkara, Burdwan, West Bengal. He has completed his M.Phil and Masters` degree from the Dept. of English, the University of Hyderabad. His journey as a full-time researcher began with his M.Phil dissertation on ―Maulana Azad‘s Autobiography India Wins Freedom and the Questions of Modernity‖. His areas of interest include folktales and Baul narratives, Prison narratives, Caste and Dalit literature, Translation Studies and Postcolonial India.

Email: [email protected]

Abstract: The title of paper is ―Historicising and Theorizing Autobiography

with Special Reference to Maulana Abul Kalam Azad's Autobiography, ‗India

Wins Freedom‘‖. The paper deals with the historicising and theorizing of a

newly emerged form of writing in Europe. The historicising of autobiography

goes back to the era of European literary enlightenment when autobiography

Volume 4, Number 1, October, 2018, (IJCLTS) ISSN: 2321-8274, 54 http://ijclts.wordpress.com/

became a popular mode of self expression. In due course of time, it travelled

across the world and became predominant. Beginning with Saint Augustine's

Confessions to Rousseau's Confessions and John Bunyan and many others

have contributed to the development of this genre. The autobiography is

gradually defined as a vehicle for social change and documentation of

national struggle. It created lot of avenues for the writers to explore their

lives and to make it a testimony. The Indians found a new hope of exploring

their life struggles and enlist their names in history. As part of exploring

national life, Azad pre-eminently employed his well known autobiography to

create his public personae and to express his vision of modern India.

Introduction

The paper deals with issue of ―Historicising and Theorizing Autobiography with Special Reference to Maulana Abul Kalam Azad's Autobiography, ‗India Wins

Freedom‘. The autobiography as a modern form of writing originated in

Enlightenment Europe and journeyed to India through the process of colonialism.

The Indian tradition of writing modern autobiography began in the colonial era. As colonial rule started in India, the European modernity brought remarkable changes in various fields such as industry, transport, and healthcare. In the same way, modern transformations in education, and the import of the autobiographical narrative mode created a new passion in India to write modern life narratives. This passion inspired many Indian writers and public figures in the late nineteenth and

Volume 4, Number 1, October, 2018, (IJCLTS) ISSN: 2321-8274, 55 http://ijclts.wordpress.com/ early twentieth century. For the first time, the writers and public personalities opened up the stories of their lives to the reading public through the new literary genre of autobiography. By the early twentieth century, many autobiographies composed by Indian writers in different languages began to emerge. The writers and public figures, like Maulana Azad, wrote their life stories to give an account of the historical events and their participation in them. With the advent of modern practice of writing autobiography and being influenced by the modern principles, Maulana

Azad embarked on the project of writing an autobiography. Maulana Azad in his well known autobiography has created his modern outlook and testimony of the achievement of Indian Independence.

The Origin of Autobiography in Modern Europe: The Notion of Public Good and Strategies of Reading

The broad definition of autobiography is a life story narrated by a person himself. In Greek, autobiography is defined as ―self-life-writing‖. In the literal sense,

‗auto‘ signifies ‗self‘, ‗bios‘ indicates ‗life‘, and ‗graphe‘ means ‗writing, and therefore the literal definition of autobiography is ‗self-life-writing‘. It depicts the identity of the author who discursively locates himself in the society and the age to which he belongs. Sidonie Smith and Julia Watson in their book Reading Autobiography: A

Guide for Interpreting Life Narratives have included autobiography in a larger category, that is, ―life narrative‖ (3). Autobiography and other forms of life writing acquired wide popularity during the Enlightenment, and came to occupy an important space in the discursive world of Europe. The genre offered an opportunity

Volume 4, Number 1, October, 2018, (IJCLTS) ISSN: 2321-8274, 56 http://ijclts.wordpress.com/ to construct and celebrate the autonomous individual and the universal significance of his life story. It gave an opportunity to asses and present the meaning and significance of one`s life. Descriptions of an individual‘s life rested on a crucial distinction between private and public spheres. This distinction was central to

Enlightenment modernity. The autobiography opened up opportunities to assess an individual‘s private and spiritual life as well as his public achievements. Smith and

Watson write:

Autobiography, now the most commonly used term for such life writing,

thus described writing being produced at a particular historical juncture,

the early modern period in the West with its concept of the self-interested

individual intent on assessing the status of the soul or the meaning of

public achievement. By the eighteenth century notions of self-interest,

self-consciousness, and self-knowledge informed the figure of the

‗Enlightened individual‘ described by philosophers and social and political

theorists. And ‗autobiographies‘ as studies in self-interest were sought by

a growing reading public with access to affordable printed books. (Smith

and Watson 2)

As a narrative of self interest, autobiography flourished in Enlightenment Europe. It created opportunities to assess both the status of one‘s soul as well as the meaning of one‘s public achievements. In course of time, its popularity among the reading public grew rapidly because of its easy availability in the print market.

Given its popularity as a narrative of self-interest, the autobiography became an important mode and genre in European literature. As a mode of writing, it found Volume 4, Number 1, October, 2018, (IJCLTS) ISSN: 2321-8274, 57 http://ijclts.wordpress.com/ its way into poetry, fiction, drama, travelogue etc. For example, it is widely known that William Wordsworth wrote his poem The Prelude as an autobiographical narrative which describes the evolution of the author's inner life. Another example is

John Bunyan who wrote the autobiographical novel called Grace Abounding where he describes his spiritual development. This expansion of the autobiographical mode, in literary as well as in the non-literary domains, such as history, largely contributed to the popularity and relevance of the genre of autobiography itself (Raj Kumar 16).

Not surprisingly, the term ‗autobiography‘ acquired currency in the eighteenth century (Smith and Watson 2). However, even though the term ‗autobiography‘ came into origin and usage in the eighteenth century, it does not mean that the writing of autobiography started only in the eighteenth century. Rather, the practice of writing autobiography, though may not be in the same autobiographical form as the modern one, has a definite history which goes back to the Greek and Roman times. Usually, Saint Augustine's Confessions is considered or acknowledged as the first fully fledged autobiography written around 397 C.E. Augustine's autobiography narrates the spiritual development of his selfhood. In fact, the subject hood of the self has been the main focus in the Western tradition of autobiography. Through the practice of self writing, the Western writers asserted their selves and also celebrated their self hoods. This Western tradition of constructing and celebrating selfhood continues from Augustine to Jean Jacques Rousseau's Confessions (1789), Benjamin

Franklin's Autobiography (1818), and J.M. Mill's Autobiography (1873) (Smith and

Watson 4).

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However, with the transition from the pre-modern to the modern era, comes a change in the theme of the autobiography. The theme of the pre-modern Western autobiographical narrative was mostly religious confession and spiritual enlightenment which is seen in Augustine's Confessions, and much later in John

Bunyan's Grace Abounding. The religious autobiographical narratives emphasise on the dramatic transition from ignorance to truth, from sinful life to a virtuous one and the transitions take place in the confessional and spiritual journey of the self.

However, with the advent of modernity, the theme of autobiographical narratives changed over time and secular themes began to appear. It is seen in Rousseau's

Confession. Rousseau has talked about his life‘s journey from a secular point of view. Raj Kumar points out this change in the predominant theme of western autobiography over time:

The confessional mode of writing underwent certain important changes in

Europe and grew more reflective once Christianity became an established

religion and lost its earlier novelty. This happened during the late Middle

Ages and especially during the Renaissance when non-confessional and

secularly oriented accounts of life began to appear. During this time,

diaries, memoirs, chronicles, journals, and other forms of writing became

popular and paved the way for autobiography in the modern sense. Over

time, autobiographical writing developed into a unique and autonomous

genre detailing its author's life. For example, Rousseau's Confessions,

although it has a little similarity to Saint Augustine's Confessions, the

subject matter it deals with is purely secular. (9)

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As we have seen, the modern European autobiography offered an opportunity to assess both the private and public lives of the individual. The public achievements of the individual consisted of his efforts to accomplish what was good for all the society. Often what was good for all the society was described in secular terms. A common understanding of what was good for all the society emerged in the site of the public sphere. Chares Taylor in his book Modern Social Imaginaries has argued that the public sphere emerged with the advent of Enlightenment modernity in Europe in the eighteenth century. The public sphere is basically a metaphorical space where the common people assemble and discuss various issues and reach a common understanding for public good. They not only assemble physically but also come together through the print media. The members rationally discuss and debate.

Charles Taylor defined the public sphere as follows:

The public sphere is a common space in which the members of a society

are deemed to meet through a variety of media: print, electronic and

face-to-face encounters; to discuss matters of common interest; and thus

to be able to form a common mind about these. (83)

This public sphere is one of the foundations of modern society. It is an extra- political, secular, meta-topical and common space where the members of the society share and open up their individual opinions, and thereby constitute their public life.

The individual members of the society build their public image by participating in the public sphere, by engaging with and working for the notion of public good (Taylor

83-84). Maulana Azad‘s life narrative engages with and narrates his work towards the public good of Indians, that is, their freedom from the external problem of Volume 4, Number 1, October, 2018, (IJCLTS) ISSN: 2321-8274, 60 http://ijclts.wordpress.com/

British colonial rule, and from the internal problem of communalism. It was this mindset of Azad that he wrote an autobiography in order to contribute to the modernization of the Indian nation by struggling for Indian freedom and also by advocating the modern values of secularism, and ethical citizenship. These values of modernity helped Azad to build his modern outlook.

Smith and Watson have discussed certain strategies for approaching and analyzing the life narrative. The task of interpreting life narrative depends on the reader and therefore, the reader interprets life narrative by locating and studying the context in which it was written. The context ascribes meaning to the life narrative. It also determines the validity of the life narrative. Through the context, the life narrative provides a historical sense of the age and the society from which the author writes. While reading life narratives, it is vitally important to understand the cultural meaning of authorship because in a sense it determines the value of reading the life narrative. The history of reading publics is also a prism through which the life narrative can be interpreted: it gives an access to information regarding the public acceptance and the popular demand for the autobiography in the public sphere. An understanding of the narrativised autobiographical ―I‖ is crucial to analyze the position of the historical person who is writing the autobiography, and also of the persons and events that are spoken about. Identity, the patterns of plotting, readership, memory, experience, agency, and relationality are the strategies through which the reader interprets the life narrative (Smith and Watson 165).

Autobiography in India: Narrating Public Lives

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The modern form of autobiography began in Enlightenment Europe and travelled to India through colonialism. The Indian tradition of writing modern autobiography began in the colonial era. With the inroads of European modernity during the colonial period, the practice of writing autobiography inspired the imagination of Indian writers and public figures. As colonial rule began in India, the

European modernity brought transformations in various sectors such as industry, transport, and healthcare. Likewise modern transformations in education, and the import of the autobiographical narrative mode created a new desire in India to write modern life narratives. This desire inspired many Indian writers and public personalities in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. For the first time, the writers and public figures opened up the stories of their lives to the reading public through the new literary genre of autobiography. By the early twentieth century, many autobiographies written by Indian writers in different languages began to appear. The writers and public figures wrote their life stories to give an account of the historical events and their participation in them. As Udaya Kumar writes in his essay ―Autobiography as a Way of Writing History‖,

Writing one`s life story in order to provide an account of well-known

events in the past has been most common among people who played an

active role in public life. Several prominent bureaucrats, political leaders,

and social reformers have justified their autobiographies in this vein.

(422)

The autobiographies of M. K. Gandhi, J.N. Nehru, Nirad C. Choudhuri and

Maulana Azad among others constitute the canon of the genre in India. The other Volume 4, Number 1, October, 2018, (IJCLTS) ISSN: 2321-8274, 62 http://ijclts.wordpress.com/ prominent autobiographies of the nineteenth century are: Narmada Shankar`s Mari- hakikat (Gujarati; My Life or Statement); Narayan Hemchandra`s Hoon Pote

(Gujarati; I Myself); Rajnarayan Basu`s Atmajivan (Bengali; My Life). The twentieth century autobiographies are M. R. Jaykar`s The Story of My Life (1958); N. G.

Ranga`s Fight for Freedom (1959); C. D. Deshmukh`s The Source of My Life

(1975); R. Venkataraman`s My Presidential Years (1994); G. Z. Sinh`s Memoirs of

Giani Zail Singh (1997) and many others (Raj Kumar 57-59). Most of these autobiographies engage with well-known events and movements of their times.

Maulana Azad‘s autobiography is not an exception. It engages with the chronological events in his life and the movements of the Indian national freedom struggle.

A dominant theme of autobiography in India is the development of a public self that works for the good of the society. This public self often embodies the spirit of nationalism, secularism, rationalism, and independent thinking. The writing of autobiography has created a unique space for Indian public figures to assert their individual identity which is connected to their nationalist or reformist aspirations.

Through the autobiographical narration of their work towards these public causes, the autobiographers build their public self or image. In the autobiographies of several freedom fighters, the themes of constructing a public self and nationalism have been the main focus. Because the autobiographers have seen and dealt with the development of their individual identity and public life in relation with the nation's journey from colonial subjugation to the attainment of freedom. Their public lives have been shaped by the national struggle for freedom. This has been expressed in their autobiographies. The narration of their evolution in stature as

Volume 4, Number 1, October, 2018, (IJCLTS) ISSN: 2321-8274, 63 http://ijclts.wordpress.com/ public figures and of the political struggle for national freedom has been found to go together in their remarkable autobiographies. Udaya Kumar comments on this feature of nationalist autobiography, ―Recent studies on nationalist autobiographies in the colonial world have observed an allegorical relationship between the individual and the emerging nation in many of them, often with a paradigm of progress and development linking the two‖ (424).

Western autobiographers construct their public selves and at the same time do not hesitate to reveal their private lives. Augustine`s Confessions is a narrative of his personal life, ―written in a tone which is a mixture of introspective soliloquy and formal writing‖ (Kaviraj 94). His autobiography also has dealt with his internal spiritual condition and religious devotion. Rousseau`s Confessions is too filled with personal emotions. But unlike Augustine, he has dealt with his personal accounts from a secular perspective and brought them into the public domain. In his

Confessions, Rousseau has demonstrated both his ―confessional moral courage of a certain kind and the very different courage of causing outrage‖ (Kaviraj 94).

But Indian autobiographies have predominantly been narratives of public life. They scrupulously ignore the private life as Azad has done this very carefully. He has been silence in the matters of his private life. The autobiographical narratives, especially those written by male authors, often demonstrate an indifference towards the ―private, interior lives of the protagonists‖ (Udaya Kumar 419). Indian autobiographers mostly engage with the public events in their lives rather than go into the private or intimate sphere of their lives. Prevalent social norms shaped their mode of self articulation and vice versa. Udaya Kumar writes:

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It is often regarded as a sort of silence or reticence adopted by authors in

deference to social norms. Such a view assumes the prior existence of a

fully expressive autobiographical desire in the author, upon which the

normative structures of society come to enact their constraining work.

This is problematic, for social norms are seen here as external to—rather

than shaping---subjects and their desire for self articulation. (420)

Barring Gandhi who has shown some courage to engage with his private life to some extent as an experiment in truth, most Indian public personalities have kept their private lives out of their autobiographies keeping in mind that their accounts are meant for public reading. They have blocked out their intimate and family matters from their autobiographies (Udaya Kumar 419-221).

The Islamic tradition has also contributed to the formation of the Indian autobiography. In medieval Middle East and Central Asia, there was a thriving tradition of writing life histories in different forms. In Indian context, the writing of autobiographical narratives began with Sultan Firoz Shah`s autobiography, Futuhat- i-Firoz Shahi written in AD 1351, and it was then followed by Tuzuk-i-Babur,

Humayun-nama, Tuzuk-i-Jahangiri, so on and so forth (Raj Kumar 50). The tradition of writing of religious biography, of ―lives as lessons‖ (Arnold and Blackburn 8), also began to be popular among the Muslims of South Asia. In colonial and postcolonial times, historians have argued, the earlier Islamic forms of autobiography continued to inspire the theologians and the learned to write life histories of ―exemplary human models‖ (Metcalf, 119). There were specific features associated with Muslim life narratives in colonial and postcolonial India. The audience for Muslim Volume 4, Number 1, October, 2018, (IJCLTS) ISSN: 2321-8274, 65 http://ijclts.wordpress.com/ autobiographies was mostly limited to the domain of family, kin and the nearest relatives. They could not exert influence as the mainstream autobiographies could

(Arnold and Blackburn 20). Some of the Muslim autobiographies are found to be written with no chronological development; they do not focus on an actor identifying goals, making plans, or working to overcome any problem; and also they do not focus on their lives exclusively, rather they focus on the narrator‘s relationship with other people (Metcalf, 120). While dealing with their public life, they have completely remained reticent about their private life.

Following the modern practice of writing autobiography, Maulana Azad wrote his autobiography demonstrating himself as a modern man and the testimony of his struggle for the national independence. Azad being brought up in religious family but later coming closer to Sir Syed Ahmed Khan, accepted the modern way of life which he asserted gave liberty, dignity and taught humane values. Realization of the need of freedom, he began associating himself with the Indian freedom struggle which was also to his mind the struggle for liberty and dignity. He awakened the Muslim community to join the Hindus against the oppressor British and liberate the nation.

He fought the British relentlessly and finally achieved the independence. But in the process of the nation building he found the religious animosity among the different communities as a drawback and disadvantage of the nation`s progress. So in order to free from the communal antagonisms, he promoted the modern principles of secularism and individual liberty and human dignity. He rose above the affinity of his

Volume 4, Number 1, October, 2018, (IJCLTS) ISSN: 2321-8274, 66 http://ijclts.wordpress.com/ own religious limitation and experienced the world from the perspective of a modern man.

Through his autobiography, Azad created the vision of a nation where the people of the nation would rise above their religious affinities without neglecting them. They would live together as one nation with one identity of Indianness. He admitted that India being a religious society, the people should use religion a bridge between the different communities rather than abandoning the religion. This becomes Azad's idea of securalisrm which is different from the western idea of secularism. In the west, secularism refers to the form of society where religion does not have any role. Azad also emphasized on the urgency of modern education in order to create modern citizenship. The vision of modern India is enshrined in the pages of his autobiography. Thus, the writing of autobiography which is defined as self-life-writing helped Azad to build his modern image.

To conclude, the paper has analyzed the historical origin and the defining features of modern autobiography. The modern autobiography originated from the

European Enlightenment and then travelled to the different nations through the process of colonization. India being a colonial nation inherited the modern practice of autobiography. Like many others, Maulana Azad was attracted to this form writing and thus took the adventure of writing the India Wins Freedom. His autobiography has largely allowed him to build his narrative of his life struggle in his making of himself and in the process of Indian nation building. As part of his struggle he has created a public self which he made evident in his autobiography. The public self,

Volume 4, Number 1, October, 2018, (IJCLTS) ISSN: 2321-8274, 67 http://ijclts.wordpress.com/ which was also inspired by the European imagination, helped Azad to bring himself in the light of national service. However, Azad has created a dichotomy by making his self image in the public while keeping his private life into dim light. Therefore, it is with the narrative strategies of autobiography that he has established himself in line of the founding fathers of the nation by creating his personae and building a vision of a modern India.

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Transcreating in a Multiple Intelligences classroom: A new dimension in Translation Studies

Pronema Bagchi

She is a PhD scholar at the Dept. of English, Savitribai Phule Pune University. She is pursuing her research in English Language and Literature Teaching in India and her area of interests are Comparative Literature, Translation Studies, Linguistics and Stylistics.

Abstract: The purpose of this paper is to discuss the role of Multiple Intelligences (M.I.) Theory in the process of transcreation. The paper begins on an argumentative note by assessing the traditional and progressive practices of English Studies with regard to the teaching of literature in a multilingual context. The pedagogical remarks are based on experiences of the research scholar practising M.I. Theory in the classroom Volume 4, Number 1, October, 2018, (IJCLTS) ISSN: 2321-8274, 72 http://ijclts.wordpress.com/ situation. The study further delves into the benefits of transcreation from the learner‘s point of view and sheds some light on the concept of CQ (Cultural Intelligence). This paper is a modest endeavor to prove how the M.I. Theory epitomises translation in action with the help of a literary text ‗The Frog and the Nightingale‘ by Vikram Seth. The study aims to exemplify the act of doing literature under the guise of M.I. Theory with the help of the selected poem. The intention is to envisage the framing of the Indian sensibility by exploring related genres and illustrate how the target audience will acknowledge transcreation as a more viable approach in the long run. This new dimension of Translation Studies, provided in the paper, can be implemented regionally as well as universally and therefore the study would involve a glocal (global + local) approach in the teaching of English literature in India. Keywords: Multiple Intelligences Theory, transcreation, Cultural Intelligence (CQ), translation in action, doing literature, etc.

Interface between language and literature:

The intricate relation that language and literature share is not unknown. Literature, being the subset of language, has established itself as one of the strongest disciplines in the humanities. It has been observed that the focus has gradually shifted from language to literature, giving rise to further sub-disciplines; this process of branching out has added to the drifting apart of the subset from its superset. Eventually, these events took a dramatic turn with regard to the English language and as far as the Indian subcontinent is concerned, English literature became a major share-holder in the post-Independence period. During the same period, English language evolved as the associate official language of India and very soon the locus of control got transferred to Queen‘s English in a foreign land. With the increasing number of receivers of the then foreign language, Indians developed an unquenchable thirst to know more and more about English literature. Somehow,

Volume 4, Number 1, October, 2018, (IJCLTS) ISSN: 2321-8274, 73 http://ijclts.wordpress.com/ too much was being said and done with regard to ‗what is literature?‘ but not much progress happened in dealing with the question ‗how to do literature?‘ The desire for English literature prevails even today and our obsession with Shakespeare or Tagore is globally recognized. Surprisingly, in a diverse country like ours, the same amount of zest and zeal regarding the mode of teaching these authors seems to be lacking. Even after several decades of independence, we are still grappling to know what English literature is all about without paying much attention to how the literary language is actually received by multilingual Indians.

Literature and the act of translation:

Literature, as defined by Rees (9), is ―permanent expression in words of some thoughts or feelings or ideas about life and the world‖. The permanence of expression is the matter of apprehension because as far as meaning is concerned, it is highly impermanent. Then what makes literature unique is the way in which it recognizes the expression of each author, creates a space for it and renders the quality of intransience to something transient. Literature truly becomes the intermediary between an artist and his/her expression. The contract, which then is born as a literary piece of art is the result of the author‘s negotiation with meaning and expression. This negotiation is nothing but the act of translation. The author knowingly or unknowingly translates the abstract concepts into concrete words and pens down his/her thought process in order to make it accessible to the rest. But the real challenge lies in the way a teacher or a mediator communicates this thought process to students or readers. The author is that translator who has encoded ideas into words of the literary discourse and the reader is that translator who decodes words of the discourse to unearth the ideas and derive meaning. Overall, this meaning-making process can be enhanced by the teacher playing the role of the mediator, helping students to decode texts in a better fashion. But, in the context of

Volume 4, Number 1, October, 2018, (IJCLTS) ISSN: 2321-8274, 74 http://ijclts.wordpress.com/ teaching, the most important question that arises is - are we to respect singularity or celebrate multiplicity?

Statement of the Problem:

Is it just the voice of the author that the teacher is expected to replicate as objectively as possible or is the authorial voice expected to provide a platform for subjective interpretations to take place? The second situation not only proves to be ideal but also more practicable and profitable in the Indian context. In a country like India, the number of students is directly proportional to the number of justifications provided for a particular reply to a literary question. This is precisely the reason why the same cloud appears to be a duck to one child and a rabbit to another. Every child is gifted with this kind of creative prowess in his/her tender years. But over a period of time, instead of channelizing this faculty, the education system curbs it to the hilt and therefore, the power of creating meaning by using one‘s own imaginative faculty is unable to reach its fullest potential. This then becomes one of the major hindrances amongst the young adults of our country. In majority of cases, the repercussions are so adverse that throughout their lives, they depend on external sources to understand and make sense out of the world.

The need for Multiple Intelligences Theory:

A scholar who understood the seriousness of the issue discussed above and worked extremely hard in this direction was Howard Gardner. His breakthrough contribution in the field of education is widely accepted and also incorporated in different corners of the world. He came up with the Multiple Intelligences (M.I.) Theory in 1983 which talked about seven distinct intelligences and later proposed eight abilities that he held to meet the following criteria: Volume 4, Number 1, October, 2018, (IJCLTS) ISSN: 2321-8274, 75 http://ijclts.wordpress.com/

The theory does not believe in pouring knowledge into the empty brains of children; in fact, it believes that every child is a unique learner and no longer is a teacher the sole arbitrator of knowledge. Whether call it ability or talent or intelligence, it is never present in the singular form. People possess a range of abilities but might be particularly strong in a specific area. Therefore, it is the teacher‘s responsibility to come up with diverse strategies for diverse learners. Additionally, the teacher is also expected to devise tasks in a way that prove to be a combination of two or more than two intelligences that complement each other and work in unison to produce the desired outcome.

So to cater to the needs of multiple intelligences present in students, you require multiple ways of doing the same piece of literature. To exemplify how this theory works, the poem ‗The Frog and the Nightingale‘ by Vikram Seth will be discussed. The poetic text is supposed to be representative of not just other kinds of poems but also other forms of literature which can be done in a similar manner. The text is often prescribed for the ninth or tenth grade learners of the CBSE Board. As

Volume 4, Number 1, October, 2018, (IJCLTS) ISSN: 2321-8274, 76 http://ijclts.wordpress.com/ the primary requirement of any literary text is its division into three stages – pre- reading, reading and post-reading; the activities ought to be designed in a way that they correspond with every kind of intelligence and students, individually or in groups, get the opportunity to exploit their hidden talents and realize their true potentials after crossing the post-reading stage. It is in this give and take of knowledge and sharing of thoughts that students learn the art of creation and thereby, transcreation. What initially seems to be like a mere movement or ferrying of words and concepts, later becomes the furthering and maturing of ideas in the process of transcreation.

For meeting the requirements of stage one, the class can begin with an association game where every student or a group of two students have to associate a quality / characteristic feature with the given name of a bird or animal. For instance, ‗timid‘ for rabbit, ‗proud‘ for peacock, ‗sly‘ or ‗cunning‘ for fox, ‗loyal‘ for dog, ‗wise‘ for owl, so on and so forth. The teacher can facilitate this process with the help of pictures, clipboards or sound images. He/she can either use charts or a PowerPoint presentation to display certain visuals. This pre-reading activity stirs them up and prepares the class to expect a similar kind of phenomenon in the text. It also sets the mood for doing poetry where students have already entered the zone of interpretation. To carry forward the experience of proximal transfer of meaning, students should be made to listen to the poem with their eyes closed. While attending to the cues in the poem only through their auditory channel, they start visualizing certain scenes from the text. After projecting some of their visualizations and having a group discussion on the same, the second reading of the poem can comprise of an analytical discourse where students examine the text and simultaneously work on the following lexical set:

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Ugly Croak

Frog and

Nightingale

Melodious Timid

This activity, of picking link words from the poem and placing it near the characters in the lexical set, would call for a total immersion into the text and can be more effective if the whole class is divided into groups of four or five. Discussion of vocabulary with regard to synonyms, antonyms and figures of speech can be reserved for the third reading of the poem. Here, it is strongly recommended that the responses be elicited from students instead of the teacher writing the glossary on the board. Unlike the deductive method, it is in the inductive method of teaching where students gain more knowledge and develop higher order thinking skills. They get rid of rote learning and by arriving at conclusions in a step-by-step fashion, they remember the linguistic constructs better. In anticipation of hundred percent student involvement at the post-reading stage, the pre-requisite is to plan, organize, execute and monitor activities judiciously. This is the crux of the process of doing any literary text. It is at this level that the target group ventures into the act of creative transposition. With varying likes and dislikes of all students present in the class, multiple tasks can be formulated to suit assorted demands and interests. One group

Volume 4, Number 1, October, 2018, (IJCLTS) ISSN: 2321-8274, 78 http://ijclts.wordpress.com/ can present the poem in the form of a puppet-show using live models related to the characters in the text. Another group can do a small role-play based on the theme and plot of the poem, with the help of a script. Yet another group can compose a song in the form of an obituary for the nightingale. Last but not the least, students can just go solo by imitating the bragging frog and give a boastful speech, all in praise of one‘s own self.

Pedagogical Implications:

The performances in the structure of a skit, a live band or an orchestra allow the poem to appear in a completely different rendition within the demarcation of the classroom. For instance, the association game helps those students, who are high on logical and visual intelligence. The lexical set caters to the needs of linguistically smart students. The performances prove to be a bonus for students who are kinesthetically and musically intelligent and there is a strong support mechanism for introverts too. Students high on intrapersonal intelligence would automatically incline towards writing the script or speech without any interference. Those high on interpersonal intelligence would necessarily prefer group activities and this is how the theory demonstrates the exclusive power of one‘s creative faculties. Even Thomas Armstrong (1991) believed in the natural genius of children and by paying tribute to the M.I. Theory, has offered practical tools for translating Gardner‘s concepts into concrete actions. This practice paves the way for a new approach to translation studies with the fact that every child learns differently and thereby in the long run, every person will translate ideas and concepts in his/her own unique way. There can never be standardized rules for transcreation and hence, the theory of Multiple Intelligences is genuinely translation in action.

The action does not stop here. The poetic text still has the scope to get transported into a new realm. This level blurs the line between the past and the

Volume 4, Number 1, October, 2018, (IJCLTS) ISSN: 2321-8274, 79 http://ijclts.wordpress.com/ present and allows student to revisit and relive the folktales of India. A session fully dedicated to the narration of Panchatantra stories can be organized as an ‗add-on‘ to the academic requirements of the text. Since the poem is an ode to archetypal characters, students can be introduced to additional typecasts and later, there can be a group discussion on stereotypes in India. This whole process pragmatizes the notion of genres with porous boundaries as, the poem can be claimed to have found itself in a new avatar taking the shape of a short-story, dramatic play, musical note and now, a blend of myth and fiction. The literary text can be said to have completely transmuted itself. Apart from serving the rhyme and rhythm, the poem can become a link between the cultural specificities that an individual inherits and that which he/she experiences in day-to-day transactions. Translation fills the gap between thinking and articulation but one of the primary acts of translation is the ferrying of words into actions. These actions then become the mediator of translating cultural nuances that further the process of understanding one‘s surrounding. If this process is executed in a dynamic manner then it aids in improving the Cultural Intelligence (CQ) of an individual. CQ does not just mean a skillful participation in multicultural interactions but it also means understanding one‘s own roots and being able to transfer that knowledge confidently to others. Having high IQ scores is desirable, achievable yet immaterial because being high on EQ (Emotional Quotient) is in vogue these days. But an ideal situation would try to tap in the cultural quotient as well because a student high on CQ will first learn to respect diversity in his/her own culture and then come to terms with the fact that cultures are similar yet different at spatial and temporal levels. The need is to sensitize students towards the cultural nuances of one‘s own surrounding and poetry, if used with less fret and more fervor, will definitely provide the means for sharpening sensibilities of students. Learners would then be aware of not only the local approaches to literature but would also acquire the art of appreciating and doing literary pieces from a global perspective. Consequently, students would learn to strike a balance between the regional points of view and the worldview.

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The new dimension through transcreation:

Roman Jakobson considers poetry to be ―untranslatable‖ (118) and strongly opines that only ―creative transposition‖ is the most agreeable way of doing poetry. The way reader response theory elevates readers to the level of creators of the text similarly, Jakobson‘s thesis brings the translator on par with the author. So in the context of the tripartite model of Jakobson which discusses intralingual, interlingual and intersemiotic translations, the M.I. Theory neither aims for rewording of poetry nor translation proper; it transmutes poetry where interpretation happens from verbal signs to nonverbal sign systems. This is how students become translators as well as transcreators of poetry through the medium of the M.I. Theory. Walter Benjamin, a proponent of cultural translation, goes a step ahead and comments that the translator experiences similar kind of ―birth pangs‖ (18) as the author of a literary text and the translated piece sheds more light on the ‗original‘ rather than darkening it. Benjamin does not discard fully the binarisation between the ‗original‘ and the translated but instead, calls the translation to be an ―echo‖ (20) of the ‗original‘. So here, the echo manifests itself at a certain tangential point on the ‗original‘ text where the reverberations are felt the most. These vibrations are then carried forward which become the after-life and not a resurrection of the ‗original‘ that precedes the translated text spatially and temporally. Lefevere too catalogues ―seven strategies for translating poetry‖ (87) in which the first six talk about phonemic, literal, metrical, paraphrase, rhymed and blank verse translation. According to him, these distort the communicative value of the poem and are unable to retain the essence in the target code. Only the last strategy can do justice to the poetic text and that is called interpretation where the substance of the source text is retained though there is a compromise in the form. It is indeed the M.I. Theory that gives space for this kind of interpretation to happen with regard to any literary text.

Different perspectives would definitely call for different interpretations. The unfolding of the literary text in different transcreated versions is like unlocking the minuscule criss-cross of lines that lay embedded on one‘s palm; this mesh signifies

Volume 4, Number 1, October, 2018, (IJCLTS) ISSN: 2321-8274, 81 http://ijclts.wordpress.com/ the interconnectedness of lines or strains of thoughts that seem to be sharing a dialogue at a microcosm level. The reader, who is also an interpreter and therefore a translator, is expected to participate in this dialogue by being an active agent while receiving the text. In the present research, the selected text is an evocative poem that values wisdom and originality but at the same time has the capacity to caution its readers regarding people with crafty, conniving and patronizing schemes. It is this glimpse of the Indian sensibility that represents a country which embodies collectivistic culture and has multiplicity at its very roots; this renders India a fertile land for transcreation. In the classroom situation, the teacher‘s task is to help students comfortably cover the distance between passive receptiveness and dynamic approachability while doing literature. Once students are able to bridge this gap, they will automatically feel motivated to transcreate literary texts freely and in multiple ways without being much concerned about deciphering the authorial voice in a unidirectional way. As a result, this is to confirm that translation or interpretation depends minimally on uniformity and relies heavily on appreciating polyphony.

Conclusion:

―There has of course always been translation, for almost as long as there has been literature‖ (Trivedi: 188). Translated literature redefines the understanding of the original text by locating culture in diverse points and hence, this opens doors for appreciating language, literature and culture amidst their closures and departures. For the purpose of this paper, a sample poetic text was selected for doing it in the school context. But this study is not restricted only to the primary or secondary level. In fact, any genre of literature can be practised with the help of the M.I. Theory and the process of transcreation can be incorporated at higher or tertiary levels too. Of course, the kind and level of activities would then change; like undergraduates students can rap a particular soliloquy from a dramatic text and postgraduate

Volume 4, Number 1, October, 2018, (IJCLTS) ISSN: 2321-8274, 82 http://ijclts.wordpress.com/ students can curate short films or mosaics related to fiction. But the undercurrent would be to have as many transcreations as possible. The essence of appreciating literature itself is pluralistic and the theory that best translates this pluralism is the M.I. Theory. It not only paves way for multiple interpretations but also directs one towards transcreation. This is how the literary piece of art gets regenerated in different garbs and sheds new light on the multiple existences of the same essence. The tradition was to have appropriations but the trend is to create approximations. These approximations exist in abstract forms when it comes to literature. So, to physically manifest these forms, one needs a medium that can formalize the abstract into concrete and M.I. Theory truly plays the role of that catalyst which allows transcreation to happen even within the four walls of the classroom.

Works Cited:

Armstrong, Thomas. Awakening Your Child‘s Natural Genius. New York: Putnam, 1991. Print.

Benjamin, Walter. ―The Task of the Translator: An introduction to the translation of Baudelaire‘s Tableaux Parisiens.‖ The Translation Studies Reader. Ed. Lawrence Venuti. London: Routledge, 2000. 15-25. ISBN 0-230-44662-3 Master e-book. Web. 5 July. 2017.

Gardner, Howard. Frames of Mind: The Theory of Multiple Intelligences. New York: Basic Books, 1983. Print.

Jakobson, Roman. ―On Linguistic Aspects of Translation.‖ The Translation Studies Reader. Ed. Lawrence Venuti. London: Routledge, 2000. 113-118. ISBN 0-230- 44662-3 Master e-book. Web. 5 July. 2017.

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Lefevere, Andre. ―Specific Problems of Literary Translation.‖ Translation Studies. Ed. Susan Bassnett. New York: Routledge, 1991. 82-135. 3rd ed. Print.

Rees, R. J. English Literature: An Introduction for Foreign Readers. Delhi: Macmillan India Ltd. 1973. Print.

Seth, Vikram. ―The Frog And The Nightingale – Poem by Vikram Seth.‖ Web. 9 May. 2018.

.

Tales of Panchatantra. 2010-16. Web. 20 June. 2018.

.

Trivedi, Harish. ―Translating Culture vs. Cultural Translation.‖ Translation and Culture: Indian Perspectives. Ed. Giv Prasad. New Delhi: Pencraft International, 2010. Print.

What is CQ? Cultural Intelligence Center, 1995-2018. Web. 12 June. 2018.

.

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Home, Homelessness and Acculturation: Diasporic

Experience in Jhumpa Lahiri‟s The Namesake

SHAHNAZ BEGUM

Assistant Professor in English,

Purnidevi Chowdhury Girls‘ College, Bolpur, Birbhum e-mail: [email protected]

The Namesake is Jhumpa Lahiri‘s second endeavour and debut novel from. Moving from the territory of short stories to the broader canvas of novel seems ‗liberating and, at times, overwhelming‘ to Lahiri (Interview, 4). This is a two generation long narrative of a family which covers thirty two years. In the span of the novel she explores socio-familial life of the immigrant people with tales of dislocation, exile, discontent and lack of adjustment.

The novel opens in 1968 in Boston where Ashoke and Ashima Ganguli, new arrivals from Calcutta, passes through a rite of passage. The earlier part of the novel focuses on the psychology of this couple especially of Ashima plucked from the comfort of a community life and placed to an utterly alien land. Ashoke, a research fellow at MIT, Boston, arrives in America seeking economic as well as psychological refuge from the horrendous memory of the train accident that almost killed him when he was just twenty two. He pursues the American dream of success and

Volume 4, Number 1, October, 2018, (IJCLTS) ISSN: 2321-8274, 85 http://ijclts.wordpress.com/ prosperity. Although he is self-exiled and is never at home in the USA, he does not have a sense of loss. He tries to compensate the loss in his own way by socializing with the members of the Bengali community there. This gives him a false sense of solidarity. Bhiku Parekh says that an Indian immigrant is

like the banyan tree, the traditional symbol of the Indian way of life he

spreads out his roots in several soils, drawing nourishment from one

when the rest dry up. Far from being homeless, he has several homes

and that is the only way he has increasingly come to feel at home in

the world (106).

But a character like Ashoke, a first generation Indian American, can hardly have multiple ‗homes‘ because of his limited negotiation with the ways of the adopted country. Despite their economic affluence and successful professional life, people like him find themselves socially marginalized. A full time professor at MIT and receiver of prestigious grants for research, Ashoke does not possess a single friend from white American or other South Asian communities. His acceptability level is low: cashiers of the stores smirk at his accent, salesmen ‗prefer to direct their conversation to Gogol, as though[…] (he is) either incompetent or deaf‘(68).

His ultimate dissatisfaction comes out, when being upset by Gogol‘s decision to change his name, he comments: ‗In America anything is possible‘(100). He is demoralized by the fact that in America the pursuit of individual happiness is so strong that it undermines the ancestral culture, tradition, and social values to which members of the first generation cling all their lives.

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Till Gogol, the protagonist, grows up and becomes the focus of the novel, it is through the psychological movement of the character, Ashima that Lahiri exhibits the life of the first generation Indian diaspora. Ashima passes through the four phases—the tourist phase, the culture shock phase, the conformist phase and the assimilation phase- which, according to Ingemar Torbiörn, are the characteristic attitudes that can be ascribed to the new migrants. It is through the eyes of Ashima, a virtual outsider, America is introduced to the readers. Life, here, seems to Ashima

‗so tentative and spare‘ (6) -- a realization exclusive to the expatriates. Ashama‘s disappointment starts with the small apartment where Ashoke brought her to stay. It is not at all like the houses she watched in the films such as ―Gone With the Wind‖ and ‗The Seven Year Itch‖ (30). The same kind of discontent is noticeable in the little girl narrator, Juhi in Vijay Laxmi‘s novella, ―Pomegranate Dreams‖. Juhi‘s dream of luxurious life is shattered when her father buys a ―plain dull house on a plain dull street with a plain dull name‖ (20). Similar reactions of both Ashima and Juhi in two different works by two different writers are indicative of the essentialized and glamourized image of America that ‗outsiders‘ form and nourish from distance.

Ashima‘s observation of the cultural differences reminds us of Mrs. Sen in the story ―Mrs. Sen‘s‖ which has been discussed in the earlier chapter. Mrs. Sen ignores the cultural gaps and refuses to change her ways. But Ashima silently observes the gulf between the two cultures. She notices in the hospital where she has been admitted for child delivery, how a husband openly declares his love for his wife in the public space, a thing unimaginable in India:

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―Goddamnit, goddamn you, this is hell,‖ she hears one of them say.

And then a man‘s voice:‖ I love you, sweetheart.‘ Words Ashima had

never heard nor expects to hear from her own husband; this is not

how they are.

Ashima is, however, aware of the differences between two socio-cultural life- styles and values. Being alone for the first time at night among the strangers,

Ashima is willing to talk to the women separated by curtain in the same cabin. But she controls herself since

[…] she has gathered that Americans, in spite of their public

declarations of affection, in spite of their miniskirts and bikinis, in spite

of their hand-holding on the street and lying on top of each other on

the Cambridge Common, prefer their privacy(3).

Bereft of the comforting presence of the dear and near ones in the distant land where the community help is absent, Ashima has to fend for herself. She finds child-bearing and child-rearing to be an extremely lonely job. Ashima, in the beginning, is scared of this mammoth task. The extreme loneliness she feels after

Ashoke leaves for MIT, makes her weep and this act of crying can go the whole day since there is, to the readers‘ despondence, not a single soul to console her.

She cries as she feeds him, and as she pats him to sleep, and as he

cries between sleeping and feeding. She cries after the mailman‘s visit

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because there are no letters from Calcutta. She cries when she calls

Ashoke at his department and he does not answer (34).

The new socio-cultural space in which the new immigrants find themselves, demands a new course of actions. The inability or unwillingness on their part to adopt themselves to the changed situation may lead to the danger of an insular life.

Ashima, however, unlike Mrs. Sen, responds positively. That is why we see her getting out of her house, along with her one- week old baby to buy a bag of rice- something she has to do out of compulsion. In India, such a tiny baby is hardly allowed to be taken out of the house. In such a case old prejudices have to be left behind.

The incident that changes Ashima‘s point of view about her present state of life is the congratulations showered on her by the unknown Americans for her newly acquired motherhood. This confers on her a confidence to find a meaning to her existence. Thus, Gogol, her child, is the means for her to relocate herself in the foreign land. The child also provides Ashoke a similar chance. He names his son after his favourite author who saved Ashoke‘s life from the terrible accident.

The sense of alienness is something that is ever present in the consciousness of the first generation immigrants. Ashima perceives, migrancy to be

a sort of lifelong pregnancy—a perpetual wait, a constant burden, a

continuous feeling out of sorts. It is an ongoing responsibility, a

parenthesis in what had once been ordinary life, only to discover that Volume 4, Number 1, October, 2018, (IJCLTS) ISSN: 2321-8274, 89 http://ijclts.wordpress.com/

that previous life has vanished, replaced by something more

complicated and demanding. Like pregnancy, being a foreigner,

Ashima believes, is something that elicits the same curiosity from

strangers, the same combination of pity and respect (50).

Their life is, consequently, intertwined with the sense of nostalgia for the things lost and the thrills of encountering exciting newness. Ashima recalls her life in

Calcutta and finds consolation by staring at the face of Gogol. ―At times, staring at the baby, she sees pieces of her family in his face—her mother‘s glossy eyes, her father‘s slim lips, her brother‘s lopsided smile‖ (35). At the same time, Ashima also learns to keep herself engaged in several works as the new space demands that.

Apart from the normal domestic chores, she takes care of Gogol, takes him to the public library for children‘s story hour and ‗makes samosas to sell at the international coffeehouse, […], next to the linzer squares baked by Mrs. Etzold, and baklava by

Mrs. Cassolis‘ (50).

The Ganguly family now comprising four members with the birth of a girl child

Sonia, gradually moves on the path of acculturation. Interestingly, they now possess a house amid the Johnsons, the Mertons, the Aspris, the Hills which like their neighbours‘ has a garage containing a sled, shovels and pruning shears. Besides,

they learn to roast turkeys, albeit rubbed with garlic and cumin and

cayenne, at Thanksgiving, to nail a wreath to their door in December, Volume 4, Number 1, October, 2018, (IJCLTS) ISSN: 2321-8274, 90 http://ijclts.wordpress.com/

to wrap woolen scarves around snowmen, to colour boiled eggs violet

and pink at Easter and hide them around the house. For the sake of

Gogol and Sonia they celebrate, with progressively increased fanfare,

the birth of Christ, an event the children look forward to far more than

the worship of Durga and Saraswati (64).

The acceptance of the Christian religious festivity along with the Americans is, no doubt, a remarkable indication of acculturation and hybridity which is further demonstrated by the fact that their daughter‘s name is changed from Sonali to Sonia is a prescient act acknowledging world citizenship as the dominant idea of identity in future.

The upbringing of Gogol and Sonia by Ashoke and Ashima makes room for both sticking to the Indian habits and deviating from it. Though Ashoke and Ashima never feel like changing their food habit and dress code, they allow Gogol and Sonia, sometimes willingly and most of the time unwillingly, to go for American food and dress.

In the supermarket they let Gogol fill the cart with items that he and

Sonia, but not they, consume: individually wrapped slices of cheese,

mayonnaise, tuna fish, hot dogs. For Gogol‘s lunches they stand at the

deli to buy cold cuts, and in the mornings Ashima makes sandwiches

with bologna or roast beef. At his insistence, she concedes and makes

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him an American dinner once a week as a treat, Shake ‗n Bake chicken

or Hamburger Helper prepared with ground lamb (65).

In spite of Ashima‘s disinclination to wear anything other than ‗saris and sandals from Bata‘, self- imposed restriction to consume Indian foods only and, moreover, her inability to regard Pemberton Road as her home after so many years of living, her acculturation into the American way of life is something which she accepts with resignation. Cow is worshipped in India and consummation of beef is sacrilegious for

Hindus. Ashima, a Brahmin by birth, does not eat beef herself but she cooks it to comply with the demand of her Americanized children. It is clear that so far as dress and food items are concerned, there are attitudinal differences. Dress codes and food codes circumscribe Ashima within the old world which she cannot transcend even in the new socio-cultural location. Her children show their adaptability and

Americanization in a pronounced manner. Ashima, however, give allowance to her children by giving them freedom to choose their own food.

Ashima decides to stay on her own when Ashoke leaves for Ohio which shows her growing self-dependence. More surprisingly she accepts a part time position at a public library and befriends for the first time American ladies at work.

She is friendly with other women who work at the library , most of

them also with grown children. A number of them live alone, as Ashima

does now, because they are divorced. They are the first American

friends she has made in her life. Over tea in the staff room, they gossip

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about the patrons, about the perils of dating in middle age. On

occasion she has her library friends over to the house for lunch, goes

shopping with them on weekends to outlet stores in Maine (163).

After the death of Ashoke, Ashima, divides her time between India and the

U.S. She thus bridges countries breaking nationalistic boundaries. She is a citizen of a globalized world.

The novel also mirrors the chasm between the American way of life and

Indian lifestyle through the portrayal of two American families. The first family we encounter, is Ashoke‘s landlord, Montgomerys- Alan, his wife Judy and two daughters, Amber and Clover. This family is enough kind to let their tenant use their washing machine, crib and pram , kind enough to offer help, when necessary, to

Ashima after delivery and they ‗leave a vase filled with flowers by the door (46)‘ hearing the news of Ashima‘s father‘s death. But Ashima finds their way of life totally different from her‘s.

Ashima remembers their apartment with abiding horror—just beyond

the ceiling yet so different from her own, piles everywhere, piles of

books and papers, piles of dirty plates on the kitchen corner, ashtrays

the size of serving platters heaped with crushed-out cigarettes. The

girls slept together on a bed piled with clothes. Sitting momentarily on

the edge of Alan and Judy‘s mattress, she has cried out, falling clumsily

backward, startled to discover that it was filled with water. Instead of

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cereal and tea bags, there were whiskey and wine bottles on top of the

refrigerator, most of them nearly empty. Just standing there had made

Ashima feel drunk. (32)

The other family is the wealthy Ratliffs. It is through the perception of Gogol, who starts living with the family, that the cultural differences are unfolded. He observes the way they exchange ideas about films, exhibition, restaurants, building and about the city in general at the dining table; the way Gerald and Lydia raise their daughter liberally and express their conjugal love publicly is an inhibition for their parents. His parents‘

Lives bear no resemblance to that of Gerald and Lydia: expensive

pieces of jewelry presented on Lydia‘s birthday, flowers brought home

for no reason at all, the two of them kissing openly, going for walks

through the city, or to dinner, just as Gogol and Maxine do. Seeing the

two of them curled up on the sofa in the evenings, Gerald‘s head

resting on Lydia‘s shoulder, Gogol is reminded that in all his life he has

never witnessed a single moment of physical affection between his

parents. Whatever love exists between them is an utterly private,

uncelebrated thing. (138)

Gogol also appreciates the Ratliff family‘s easy-going, relaxed lifestyle, contrasting into that of his parents who are all the time anxious and cautious of their existence:

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The family (i.e. the Ratliff family) seems to possess every piece of the

landscape, not only the house itself but tree and blade of grass.

Nothing is locked, not the main house, or the cabin that he and Maxine

sleep in. Anyone could walk in. He thinks of the alarm system now

installed in his parents‘ house, wonders why they cannot relax about

their physical surroundings in the same way. (155)

Jhumpa Lahiri‘s acumen for observing the details, imparts to the novel a realistic touch. The book puts on the flesh and blood, the anger and the emotions, joys and frustrations of the diasporic people. Her elegant, elegant and poised style of representation precludes the risk of exotica

II

The Namesake focuses on the subtleties of generational differences in the cross- cultural issues. As we have seen in the earlier chapters, members of the first generation and literary works by them are concerned with the enigma of arrival in an overtly ‗foreign‘ land, the specific trauma of dislocation, the painful process of acculturation and acceptance by the host societies. The question of identity loses its monolithicity due to crossing over and ‗making over‘. The identity is reshaped on the basis of the two metaphoric phrases ‗roots‘ and ‗routes‘ as illustrated by Susan

Stanford Freidman in Mapping (qtd. 166). The members of the second generation, who according to the sociologist Alejandro Portes, are ―native-born children of immigrant parents and children born abroad who came at a very early age

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(sometimes called the 1.5 generation),‖ and they suffer from existential crisis. Robin

E. Field in his essay, ‗Writing the Second Generation: Negotiating Cultural

Borderlands in Jhumpa Lahiri‘s Interpreter of Maladies and The Namesake,‖ analyses the predicament of this generation. The influence of American culture is obvious in their life style and they rarely subscribe to the polarized cultural identities their parents bear. This does not mean that they are completely out of touch with their ancestral lineage. Due to the physical intimacy and familial interaction with their parents as well as their childhood visits to the parental home town creates a sense of familiarity with their parents‘ culture. This, according to Field, facilitates the condition of being at ease with ‗two homelands‘ on the one hand and causes them to suffer from ‗dual alienation‘ on the other. They feel a gradual physical and psychological distance from the obligatory cultural rites they need to perform at home or in the community festivals. Again this second generation is yet to be considered as ‗real‘ Americans due to their ‗visible colour‘ in a country implicitly dominated and owned by the major white citizens. Min Zhou‘s observation regarding the othering of Asian Americans is true to all non-white Americans.

[M]any second-generation Asian-Americans, who are considered

assimilated, are till subjected to a pernicious system of racial

stratification. One second-generation Chinese-American described the

discrimination she has faced: ―The truth is, no matter how American

you think you are or try to be, if you have almond-shaped eyes,

straight black hair, and a yellow complexion, you are a foreigner by

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Gogol, his sister Sonia and Moushumi (who later become Gogol‘s wife) are the three second generation Indian Americans in the novel. They, since from their childhood, hate the conventional norms of Bengali cultures which their parents nurture and want to inculcate in them. They arrange ‗Bengali language and culture‘ classes for them out of the fear that one day their Americanized children will be divorced from their parents‘ lineage. This over-riding anxiety is best expressed by the narrator in the story ‗The Third and the Final Continent‘ over the less-possibility of fostering cultural ties by his son – ―

This is however due to the indifference and alienation, the second generation feels towards their ancestral legacy, the children attend these cultural classes apathetically, longing to join ballet or soft ball practice instead (66). Gogol particularly dislikes attending these classes as he has to miss the Saturday day drawing classes he is more interested in. These second generation Indian Americans do not grow any kinship with the extended Bengali community. Their parents get together and socialize in almost every week end to strengthen their cultural ties – a common practice among the Indian Americans. Not only that, this younger generation prefers celebrating Christmas and Easter over the ‗pujos‘ their parents arrange. The description Lahiri gives, brings out their attitude:

During pujos, scheduled for convenience on two Saturdays a year,

Gogol & Sonia are dragged off to a high school or a Knights of

Columbus hall overtaken by Bengalis, where they are required to throw

marigold petals at a cardboard effigy of a goddess and eat bland

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vegetarian food. It can‘t compare to Christmas, when they hang

stockings on the fire place mantel, and set out cookies and milk for

Santa Claus, and receive heaps of presents, and stay home from

school.(65)

Such an attitude results from their proximity to the mainstream culture. Education in

‗American‘ schools initiates them in a cultural world that is overtly different from the one they find in the Bengali community. The life around reinforce their belief in the cultural habits they adopt. Gogol‘s activities are not sudden or rebellious as Lahiri says:

Neither Gogol nor I was terrible, rebellious, really. I suppose I,

like Gogol, had my moments. But even ordinary things felt like a

rebellion from my upbringing - what I ate, what I listened to, whom I

befriended, what I read. Thing my American friend‘s parents would not

think to remark upon were always remarked upon by mine. (Interview

2)

Thus there always remains a dual pressure on this second generation: the pressure for Americanization and the one for remaining loyal to the ancestral culture.

Here Gogol‘s plight also his creator‘s –

One of the things I was always aware of growing up was

conflicting expectations. I was expected to be Indian by Indians and

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American by Americans. I didn‘t feel equipped even as a child to fully

participate in things. (Bahadur)

Gogol, like other second generation Asian Americans, inhabits the ‗liminal space of cultural borderlands‘ and continuously tries to negotiate and keep a balance between the demands of the binary cultures. This balancing preoccupies with every sphere of Gogol‘s life. He loves to eat Indian dishes such as lamb curry with potatoes, channa dal with raisins, luchis, pineapple chutney and sandeshes (72), concomitantly demands for American food such as shake in Bake chicken or hamburger Helper prepared with ground lamb. (65)During his stay with his family before leaving for New Haven, he accompanies his family to watch the Apu trilogy or

Kathakali dance performance (65), at the same time, ventures out at night with his

American friends to a neighbouring town to see the Rocky Horror Picture show, or bands in Boston (93). Not only that, Gogol often neglects the Bengali tradition his parents wishes to retain in their life, things like replying in English to his parents‘ query in Bengali, using shoes inside the house and preferring forks over hand (75) .

It signifies that it is the second generation‘s choice or allegiance, upon which depends the permeability of ancestral cultures in their American life style.

What Field argues in the essay mentioned earlier, the life of this second generation presents a ‗delicate balance between cultural prerogatives and personal agency breeding a new Asian American culture out of the synthesis of the two cultures. This new culture is almost but not completely American with some oriental practices. The ancestral rites incorporated in the American life is the result of their

Volume 4, Number 1, October, 2018, (IJCLTS) ISSN: 2321-8274, 99 http://ijclts.wordpress.com/ continuous experimentation, selection and rejection, adoption and discarding of their parents‘ habits. As Lisa Lowe observes the formation of this Asian American culture includes practices that are partly inherited, partly modified, as well as partly invented‖ (65) .

The free will or personal agency gets sharpened in Gogol as he grows up and is more exposed to the American environment. His decision to change his name from

Gogol to Nikhil, to pursue Architecture at Columbia University ignoring his father‘s choice for Engineering at MIT and to date with ‗white‘ girls indicates his agency to mould his life on his own. This will is nothing particular about Gogol but true to any second generation Asian American. As we see, Sonia, too follows American dress code, hairstyle religiously, attends American parties for youth and off and on threatens her mother with colouring her hair or piercing extra holes in her earlobes

(107).

Gogol‘s American identity is beyond doubt as he steps effortlessly into the so-called aristocratic world of the white American, Maxine. He is accepted and welcomed by

Maxine‘s parents, Gerald and Lydia. He efficiently takes part in their household and social activities—discussing ‗movies, exhibits at museums, good restaurants‘ at dinner, partying with men of ranks such as New York editors, artist, painter and gallery owner and summering in their lake house in New Hampshire. He is so well fitted in their lifestyle that Maxine hardly believes that Gogol had a quite different upbringing than her‘s.

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Despite the acceptance of the second generation South Asian by the mainstream

American society and their distance from parental cultures, they are also referred to in accordance with their cultural descent and a marginal status is imposed on them.

On his 27th birthday, at the Maxine‘s farm house, he meets a middle aged white woman, Pamela who keeps insisting on Gogol‘s acclimatization to Indian climate in spite of Gogol‘s mentioning that he is from Boston. ‗But you are Indian.[…] I‘d think the climate wouldn‘t affect you, given your heritage (157)‘. Even Lydia, Maxine‘s mother who stops Pamela by asserting that Gogol is born in America, herself ends up in confusion about the genuineness of her own utterance. At another incident,

Gogol cannot initially understands that he falls into the category of ABCD (American

Born Confused Deshi - an acronym coined for the second generation Indian

Americans ) as stated by the panelists discussing the so-called ‘marginality‘ of the second generation Indian Americans (118). These imposed identities fail to describe the life of the second generation Indian Americans – which is diverse and dynamic due to their constant experimentation and negotiation of cultures.

The distinctiveness of individual experience is projected by Lahiri through another second generation Indian American character, Moushumi. She like her author was born in London and reared up in America. Being doubly-migrated,

Moushumi feels at ease neither in her ancestral culture nor in the culture of adoption. Further, the pressure she receives from her parents and relatives regarding cultural prerogatives, almost destroys her spontaneous growth in her childhood and makes her vow not to marry any Indian man. The immigrant parents, desperate to retain their cultural identity in the unnerving new land, become over – Volume 4, Number 1, October, 2018, (IJCLTS) ISSN: 2321-8274, 101 http://ijclts.wordpress.com/ protective of their children. The consequence of this is sometimes disastrous.

Moushumi gradually grows rebellious and turns a deaf ear to her parents‘ urge to become a chemist, secretly double majors in French and liberates herself from familial mandate by going to Paris. Moushumi‘s revolt is not only academic but also ethical. Determined to be a free woman, she gives a free play to her agency:

Suddenly it was easy, and after years of being convinced she would

never have a lover she began to fall effortlessly into affairs. With no

hesitation, she had allowed men to seduce her in cafes, in parks, while

she gazed at paintings in museums. She gave herself openly,

completely, not caring about the consequences. She was exactly the

same person, looked and behaved the same way, and yet suddenly, in

that new city, she transformed into the kind of girl she had once

envied, had believed she could never become. She allowed the men to

buy her drinks, dinners, later to take her in taxis to their apartments, in

neighborhoods she had not yet discovered on her own. In retrospect

she saw that her sudden lack of inhibition had intoxicated her more

than any of the men had. Some of them had been married, far older,

fathers to children in secondary school. The men had been French for

the most part, but also German, Persian, Italian, Lebanese. There were

days she slept with one man after lunch, another after dinner. (215)

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These sexual encounters seem to her a revolt, not a normal course of life. In a society where every step of a woman is dictated by the family, relatives and culture, a single diversion from the track seems no less than a rebellion.

In spite of their earlier precautions, Moushumi‘s parents readily accept

Moushumi‘s personal choice, Graham, a white American. Though the immigrant parents remain vocal against inter cultural marriage since intra-cultutural marriage, they consider, a means to preserve cultural purity, they sometimes give in before their child‘s desire.

She (Moushumi) brought him (Graham) home to New Jersey, prepared

herself for battle, but in fact, to her enormous surprise, her parents

were relieved. By then she was old enough so that it didn‘t matter to

them that he was an American. Enough of their friends‘ children had

married Americans, had produced pale, dark- haired, half- American

grandchildren, and none of it was as terrible as they had feared. (216)

After being abandoned by the partners from the world ‗out side‘, Gogol and

Moushumi get married, to their utter amazement, to Indian. With the collapse of their marriage, Lahiri refuses to accept the ‗happily ever after‘ kind of solution. Lahiri projects both intercultural and intra-cultural marriages but privileges neither. It is indicated in the novel that Sonia is going to be happy with her half-Jewish, half-

Chinese fiancé, Ben.

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Multiple reasons work for the collapse of strict cultural barriers, --intercultural wedding, compulsion for acculturation, personal preferences and so on. Would

Sonia‘s child attend pujos and visit Calcutta the way his/her mother did in her childhood? What would be his/her identity, as he/she will inherit multi- ethnicity from his/her parents? According to sociologist, Herbert J. Gans, the formation of cultural identity would be complicated in diasporic communities in the next generation to come.

[I]dentifying with one‘s heritage does not require knowing much about

it. Pride and a sense of belonging can be evoked by attending an

ethnic folk festival, visiting an ethnic restaurant or merely seeing a film

made in the old country. ―Symbolic‖ activities of this kind have become

one of the main ways in which white ethnicity persists, and there is no

reason to think it will not also persist among the later generations of

today‘s immigrant. Eventually, however, even such symbolic ethnicity

may well prove transitory, as intermarriage creates a population so

multiethnic that its ethnic options run out. After all, no one can identify

with four or more ethnic culture at the same time. (44)

What this generation is leading towards is the identity of world citizenship- an identity unrestrained by cultural, religious and national demarcation. The articulation of this idea is noticeable in Russian American writer, Gary Shteygnart‘s affirmation:

―Today people like myself, Russians by birth and Americans by education, don‘t need to choose a single, exclusive identity. Equally at home (and homeless) in both

Volume 4, Number 1, October, 2018, (IJCLTS) ISSN: 2321-8274, 104 http://ijclts.wordpress.com/ cultures, we are global citizens of an increasingly borderless world‖ (290). This global citizenship also keeps open the provision of constructing identity drawing materials from any culture of the world as per individual liking and logic. This is what

Moushumi does.

Immersing herself in a third language, a third culture, had been her

refuge—she approached French, unlike things American or Indian,

without guilt, or misgiving, or expectation of any kind. It was easier to

turn her back on the two countries that could claim her in favor of one

that had no claim whatsoever. (214)

Thus Vijay Prashad‘s lamentation as revealed in ―The Karma of Brown Folk‖ that the complexities and diversities of identity formation and culture negotiation by the second generation Indian Americans are rarely addressed and represented, may be minimized by reading Lahiri‘s novel, The Namesake.

Works Sited

Bahadur, Gaiutra. ―20 Questions: Jhumpa Lahiri.‖ Philadelphia Citypaper.Net.

2004. 16-23. September 1999. Accessed 31 March

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Field, Robin E. ―Writing the Second Generation: Negociating Cultural

Borderlands in Jhumpa Lahiri‘s Interpreter of Maladies and The Namshake.‖ South

Asian Review XXV.2 (2004): 165-177.

Friedman, Susan Stanford. Mappings. Princeton: Princeton UP. 1998.

Gans, Herbert J. ―The American Kaleidoscope, Then and Now.‖ In Reinventing the

Melting Pot: The New Immigrants and What It Means to Be American. Ed. Tamar

Jacoby. New York: Basic Books. 2004. 33-45.

Lahiri, Jhumpa. The Namesake. New Delhi: HarperCollins, 2004.

------. ―Jhumpa Lahiri on her Debut Novel: An Interview with the author.‖ Hinduism on the Net. Accessed on 25 August 2006.

Lakshmi, Vijay. Pomegranate Dreams and Other Stories. New Delhi: Indialog, 2002.

Lowe, Lisa. Immigrant Acts. Durham: Duke UP. 1996.

Parekh, Bhiku. ―Some Reflections on the Indian Diaspora.‖ Journal of Contemporary

Thought, Baroda 1993. 106.

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Portes, Alejandro. The New Second Generation. New York: Russell Sage Foundation,

1996. ix.

Prasad, Vijay. The Karma of Brown Folk. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press,

2000. 125.

Sheyngart, Gary. ―The New Two-Way Street.‖ In Reinventing the Melting Pot: The

New Immigrants and What It Means to Be American. Ed. Tamar Jacoby. New York:

Basic Books. 2004. 285-292.

Torbiörn, Ingemar. ―Chidren,‖ Living Abroad: Personal Adjustment and Personal

Policy in the Overseas Setting. New York: Wiley, 1982. 90-93.

Zhou, Min. ―Assimilation, the Asian Way.‖ In Reinventing the Melting Pot: The New

Immigrants and What It Means to Be American. Ed. Tamar Jacoby. New York: Basic

Books. 2004. 139-153.

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The Making of World Literature in Odia: A Study of Biswasahitya Granthamala

Sonali Ganguly Research Scholar, Dept. of Humanities International Institute of Information Technology, Bhubaneswar Supervisor- Dr. Lipika Das

Abstract:

Literature and literary excellence have earned India, a recognizable position in the world forum. Indian literature is the amalgamation of various original but distinct cultures and languages. This paper opens with a brief estimation of the role of translation in enriching Odia literature and proceeds to discuss its contribution in the emerging field of literary studies, i.e., Children‘s Literature. The recent years have seen a huge proliferation of books in translation for children and young adults that not only expose the readers to the world authors and the distinct world culture but also serve as an inspiration to ignite the interest of reading and learning the global culture and pondering over the global issues. In this context, I intend to discuss the production, circulation, and reception of the literary adaptations of the world literary texts in Odia, especially, meant for a specific set of readers. Biswasahitya Granthamala, a remarkable contribution of Granthamandir, a Cuttack based publishing house is worth mentioning in this field. This phenomenal activity of translating world authors into a local Indian language is not a casual approach to introduce world literature to the young mass. It involves certain objectives, strategies, and planning for the implementation of the entire project that I would discuss later in this paper. Furthermore, this initiative of Granthamandir also accelerated the reception of global texts and transcultural reading practices among the young readers. The subsequent segment in the paper addresses the argument whether the adaptation of world literature in Odia abridged version can be considered as a short initial step towards the creation of World Literature in Odia.

Keywords: Translation, Adaptation, Biswasahitya Granthamala, Circulation, Reception, World Literature

1. Introduction

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The sixth classical language of India, Odia has approximately 53 million speakers across the globe. The literature of Odisha has passed through several phases and mostly enriched through translation as claimed by Mr. Mahendra Prasad in one of his articles titled ‗Enriched Through Translation.‘

Translation has begun in Odia Literature since the 16th century when the translation of the religious books from Sanskrit to Odia was most prevalent. The colonial Odisha developed an inclination towards western literature in the modern age and consequently, several government and private bodies took the initiative to foster the translation of western literature. The leading publishing houses such as Oxford University Press, University of California Press, Lark Books, Macmillan India Limited in collaboration with other Government entities such as Commission of Scientific and Technological Terminologies, National Book Trust, Sahitya Academy and Odisha State Bureau of Translation promoted the twofold translation activity in Odisha in the beginning of the 19th century. The modern age (20th-21st C) of Odia literature witnessed the long list of Odia translations of the western classics and the masterpieces. The translators such as Chittaranjan Das, Sakuntala Balliyar Singh, Prativa Sathpathy, and many others translated the works of Tolstoy, Sri Aurobindo, Vidyasagar, Rabindranath Tagore, Shakespeare, Thomas Hardy and many other Indian and Western authors. The accelerating Odia adaptation of the western texts was the result of the growing inclination to mark a self-recognition in the world forum. Several private publishers offered a helping hand in promoting the translation and publication of Odia translations of western texts. The growing concern of creating World Literature in Odia for a specific set of readers was seen in the initiative taken by Grantha Mandir, a Cuttack based publishing house which introduced its children‘s series ‗Biswasahitya Granthamala‘ (BSG) in the year 1969.

Besides Granthamandir, recent initiatives are also taken by the publishing houses such as Scholastic books, Katha, Pratham books, Story Weaver, Tulika Books, Eklavya Books, to popularize the children‘s literature in the Indian book market. The phenomenal contribution of the publishers in collaboration with the translators and authors has given a boom in the production and circulation of children‘s literature, both in original and translation. These sets of publishers foster the translation of the texts from English to Indian Languages and vice versa. Puffin Books, Red Turtle and Granthamandir are a few publishers that deal with the translation of literature from the regional languages to English and vice versa. Granthamandir is a self-financed, nonprofit publishing house, established in Odisha that attempted to reproduce the literary pieces of the world in Odia.

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Biswasahitya Granthamala responded to the crucial scenario addressed by Wang Ning, a Chinese translator and anthologist of World Literature (W.L.) that globalization has witnessed the death of literature due to the shifting interest from reading to the internet (Ning, 173). In this context, the selection panel of BSG envisioned the need to propagate the philosophical convictions of Rousseau and the philanthropic reformer Johann Basedow. Nevertheless, there is a slight contradiction in their views regarding their approach to Children‘s literature. They come to a compromise when it is concerned with educating the children naturally through experience gained by reading literature. Jill P. May in her work ‗Children‘s Literature and Criticism Theory‘ echoed the philosophers and emphasized upon the selection of the proper reading material for the children because it is directly instrumental in enriching the imagination of a child and strengthening their skill of understanding, by developing a clear perspective towards the world. The perception of the childhood greatly stimulated the choice of books for the children‘s series that I would discuss later in detail.

2. Objective

The objective of this paper is to examine the three-tier process (production, circulation and reception) involved in the publication of the Biswasahitya Granthamala published by Grantha Mandir, Cuttack, India. Furthermore, the literary encounter with the ancient classics and the modern masterpieces encourage to probe the literary excellence of both the authors and the translators. I also intend to examine the possibility of literary unification through the attempt made by Grantha Mandir to create World Literature in a provincial language, i.e., Odia.

3. Methodology

Exploratory research has been chosen for the study to clarify the relevant issues associated with the production of children‘s W.L. in a provincial language, Odia and to examine the essential factors that played a significant role in the making of the Biswasahitya Granthamala series. The study is based on the primary data that includes the information collected from the available books of the Biswasahitya series and a personal interview with the publisher of this series, Mr. Manoj Mohapatra. The collected data are further tabulated for the analysis and the findings are presented in the form of illustrations for better comprehension followed by the detailed analysis of the same.

4. About Biswashitya Granthamala

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Biswasahitya Granthamala series is the collection of the world literary texts in the abridged version, especially meant for children, published by Grantha Mandir, a Cuttack based publishing house in Odisha, India. The series aptly titled Biswasahitya Granthamala (collection of World Literature) is the compilation of the literary texts from across the world in abridged Odia translation. Texts from various literary genres such as the fantasy tales, morality tales, contemporary novels, and adventure tales, comprise the series. First published in 1965, the texts were reprinted; sometimes with the required modifications in the next edition. The series meets the objective of introducing the children with the world authors and the global culture, empowering their imagination and enriching their interest in literature. In addition to this, it expands the reader‘s horizon and prepares them for better assimilation and comprehension of the global culture and to respond adequately to the global issues. The inclusion of 186 titles and approximately 800 stories and novels by the world authors in the Biswasahitya series is an indicator of a pre-selection of the texts for an anthology of World Literature from a modern perspective, especially for the children. Furthermore, it won‘t be an exaggeration, if this phenomenal contribution by more than twenty-one translators is considered as an attempt to create World Literature in Odia.

5. Objective of BiswaSahitya Granthamala (BSG)

Biswasahitya Granthamala advocates the market demand, especially, the reading interest of the mass with an expectation to find a better reception in the literary market. A personal interaction with the owner of the Grantha Mandir, Cuttack, Mr. Manoj Mohapatra unveiled several interesting facts about the making of this series. The perspective behind the publication of Biswasahitya Granthamala received the first attention. When asked about the motivation behind the publication of the series, he said- ―Great men think alike. Biswa Sahitya Granthamala was the dream project of three great lovers of literature. My father, Sri Abhiram Mohapatra, grandfather late Sridhar Mohapatra and the eminent author late Sridhar Das first visualized the possibility of the compilation of world literary texts as Biswasahitya. Biswasahitya Granthamala series was formulated keeping in mind three major objectives. First, to introduce the world authors and their literary works to the children and expose them to the distinct global culture; Second, to broaden the reading horizon of the children and nourish them with a better knowledge and reading tastes and third, to nurture a logically sound mind, deep sensibility and build up a morally upgraded character of the young readers that would meticulously comprehend and adequately respond to the global issues. The act of translating the classics and the masterpieces in an abridged version without changing the plot and Volume 4, Number 1, October, 2018, (IJCLTS) ISSN: 2321-8274, 111 http://ijclts.wordpress.com/ the essence posed a challenge. The dedication of the translators in rewriting, editing and revising the texts made his venture a successful one. Late Sridhar Das, Former Odia Professor at Christ College, Cuttack took up the responsibility of translating most of the mythological stories and the fairy tales, almost 130 in number. Abhinav Mohapatra requested the concerned translators to take up the responsibility of re- framing the literary pieces to meet the objective of the series. My father was one of the translators who translated ‗Dasakumarachrita‘ and ‗Rakta Golapa‘.‖

It is the endless effort of thirty translators that made possible the publication of Biswasahitya Granthamala in the year 1970. Since then, it has been published and reprinted several times to meet the demand of the market and the reading public. The response it received in the book market is evident through the selling rate. In the words of Mr. Manoj Mohapatra, ―approximately, hundred sets of Biswasahitya series have been sold annually since 1970.‖ The series has 12-15 editions so far. The reprinting of 1000 copies in each edition signifies its popularity among the readers. The agencies such as UNICEF and CARE procured more than 500 sets to be distributed among the tribal districts of the state. The circulation and positive reception from the target readers gratified the publishers and encouraged them in this novel endeavour. The astoundingly successful initiative by Granthamandir has earned the gratitude of the parents; applaud from the educationists, and appreciation from the young readers. Late Sridhar Das was posthumously honoured by Sharala Awards and Sri Abhinav Mohapatra was felicitated in the ‗All India Odia Lecturer Conference‘ in the year 1999. Granthamandir further received the ‗Distinguished Publishers Award‘ given by the Federation of Indian Publishers in 1993 for this significant attempt to create a recognizable position of one of the vernacular languages of India, i.e., Odia in the world forum. This demonstrates the reception of the Biswasahitya series not only among the child readers but also among the adults.

6. Findings and Discussion

6.1 Books in Biswasahitya Series

Biswasahitya Granthamala consists of 186 books and most of them are the collection of stories by a single author or more than one author, selected carefully by the team. The selection of the specific books can be broadly categorized into three segments on the basis of genre. The first segment deals with the ancient classics such as Illiad, Odyssey, The Ramayan, The Mahabharat, Shakuntala, Hercules, Aesop‘s Fables, Dasakumaracharita and many more, whereas the second segment includes the most popular stories of all the times such as Arabian Nights, Brother Volume 4, Number 1, October, 2018, (IJCLTS) ISSN: 2321-8274, 112 http://ijclts.wordpress.com/

Grimm‘s tales, Hans Anderson‘s tales, Aesop‘s fables, and the fairy tales from France, China, India, Africa, Indonesia and many other countries of the world. The third segment comprises the fictions such as Pride and Prejudice, Wuthering Heights, Six Acres and a Third, Devdas, The Mayor of Casterbridge, The Huckleberry Finn, Robinson Crusoe, Far From the Madding Crowd, Gulliver‘s Travel and many more. The complete list of books in Biswasahitya Granthamala is enlisted in Appendix –A.

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Overall, 70% of the publication is devoted to the literature from the several countries of the world such as Africa, Indonesia, Greece, Holand, Japan, China, Egypt, Belgium, Paris, Burma, Germany, Rome, Switzerland, Poland, Italy and many more. U.K has a major share of 24%, whereas Russia and France have relatively less share i.e., 3% and 8% respectively. 6% of the books are from Arab, Africa and Scotland, and the remaining 29% of the books in this series include the fairy tales of several countries mentioned above. The Figure 1 below illustrates the same.

Books in Biswasahitya Series

India Uk Others France Russia Scotland Africa Arab

3% 2% 2% 2%

8% 30%

29% 24%

Figure I: Number of books in Biswasahitya Granthamala

Each fairy tale, in the series, is a corpus of texts that portray the socio- cultural setup and the religious sentiments of the nations they represent. For instance, the book Greece Desha Ra Purana Kahaani explores the world of Greek Gods and the stories associated with them. The Greek Gods are even compared to the Indian Gods in the preface to develop a relative understanding of the texts. Zeus is considered to be Indra, the king of Gods or in some other cases, there are references of Zeus being compared to Lord Brahma, the creator of the Universe, Eros is the Greek counterpart of the Indian God, Kaam Deva, the God of love and the list goes on. In case of representing the literature of the USA and the UK, the novels and plays are taken into consideration. I n d i a n Journal of Comparative Literature and translation Studies

Figure II below shows the selection of the texts from different parts of the world which complements the title Biswasahitya Granthamala that means the collection of the literary texts of the world.

Spain, 1 Scotland, 5 USA, 9 Italy , 13 France, 40 Arab, 17 Denmark Others, 207 , 24 Russia, 68

UK, 109

India , 168

Figure1I: Number of stories in 186 books of Biswasahitya Granthamala

Figure1I illustrates the record of more than six hundred stories in Biswasahitya Granthamala. This calculation is based on the number of books available in Print, i.e. 167 that comprises 661 stories. 207 stories out of them are taken from the countries such as Indonesia, Italy, Greece, Germany, Russia, Switzerland, Holand and many more. Next, the highest number of text is selected from India and the second highest position is acquired by the U.K. The western influence on Indian literature is a major reason for the UK being the second highest translated nation in the Biswasahitya series. The western literature dominated the Indian book market for a long time initially in the form of the original language and later in the form of translations. The image of the Indian literature remained at the periphery, which deserved attention. Nevertheless, the British initiated the literary exchange through translation in order to understand India for better administrative purposes. In this initial Volume 4, Number 1, February, 2019, (IJCLTS) ISSN: 2321-8274, 115 http://ijclts.wordpress.com/

I n d i a n Journal of Comparative Literature and translation Studies

phase, Sir William Jones translated the Sanskrit classic Abhijanasakuntalum and Charles Wilkens translated The Bhagavad Gita, a piece of the epic The Mahabharata into English. It was not before the first war of independence in 1857, the attempts were made to translate the western books into Indian languages. The selection team has more or less been influenced by the colonial impact or they simply responded to their familiarity with the literature of the colonizers. The translation activities in the post-colonial era had opened new dimensions to the linguistic and the cultural aspect. Moreover, it remained as a tool to understand the global culture.

Even though in the Biswasahitya series, the glimpse of the multilingual and multicultural mini world of India is visible through the inclusion of hundred and five literary texts from the Indian literature, it is a partial representation of the nation. It excludes other literatures of Marathi, Tamil, Gujarati and other language groups. Figure III depicts the number of books and stories from Sanskrit, Bangla, Hindi and Odia literature included in BSG.

Indian books and Stories in Biswasahitya series books stories

43

27 27 22 13 7 5 6

Sanskrit Odia Bangla Hindi

Figure III: The number of Indian Literature Included in Biswa Sahitya Granthamala

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I n d i a n Journal of Comparative Literature and translation Studies

Fig.III illustrates that 43 stories from the Hindi literature are taken into consideration, which testifies the dominant position of Hindi, being the national language and the wide reception of the literature in the specific language in India. Next, in the position is Bangla literature which acquires the second position with 27 novels, and Sanskrit literature is placed in the third position with 22 stories in BSG. The classics of Kalidas and Dandin are chosen from the ancient Sanskrit literature, the selected works of Bankim Chandra, and Sarat Chandra is included as Bangla literature. The works of Fakir Mohan Senapati and Premchand are placed from Odia and Hindi literature respectively. The finding unfolds the fact that BSG doesn‘t succeed in representing the multilingualism and multiculturalism prevalent in India. The result doesn‘t imply the absence of prominent authors in the other language groups, rather it reflects the strong influence of Sanskrit literature and Bangla authors in the enrichment of the Odia literature since its infancy.

The dataset reveals that the stories chosen for translation can be categorized into two types. One category included the novels by the popular authors that are both literary masterpieces and successful as screen adaptations and the other category encompassed the unfamiliar or less familiar works by the authors of different nations. The former was expected to get a positive reception whereas the later would develop a new insight into the reading habits of the readers. It indicates that the reception of the stories or novels played a significant role in the selection of the literary texts for translation under the Biswasahitya title. The comparison of the screen adaptations of a few selected texts by well- known authors is illustrated below:

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I n d i a n Journal of Comparative Literature and translation Studies

On-Screen Adaptations 45 40 35 30 25 20 15

In Number In 10 5 0

Name of the Novels

Figure IV: The On-Screen Adaptations of the literary pieces

Fig.IV depicts the reception of the above novels, among the readers and onlookers. Romeo Juliet by William Shakespeare leads with 40 screen adaptations, whereas, Hamlet has 34. Similarly, Wuthering Heights by Emile Bronte, Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen, Devdas by Sarat Chandra are the blockbusters of their time. The success is the result of an interesting plot with gripping characters and floods of emotions. The storyline satisfied the audience till the sci-fi came into the picture. The stories such as Time Machine and Invisible Man are also enjoyed by the people as it contained a blend of logical and scientific possibility added to it. The remaking of movies, television series based on fairy tales such as Panchatantra, Cinderella, Frozen, Harry Potter, Rapunzel, adventures and the suspense thrillers such as Gulliver‘s Travel, Robinson Crusoe, Robinhood, detective stories of Sherlock Holmes is mostly preferred by the movie makers when the immediate target is the children of different age groups. Biswasahitya attempted to portray those characters and stories in a local Indian language and introduce the original authors of those stories to the readers.

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6.2 Authors in BSG

The popularity of the authors of the 18th-19th century served as an important aspect for the choice of specific books for translation and publication under Biswasahitya Granthamala. It served as a platform for the children to read the world authors such as Charles Dickens, Thomas Hardy, Fakirmohan Senapati, Jane Austen, Shakespeare, H. G. Wells, Sarat Chandra, Bankim Chandra, Jules Verne and approximately eighty both familiar and less familiar authors, who were translated at a higher pace and also received higher reception in both literary and screen adaptations. The Figure below illustrates the selection of the authors and the number of their respective works to be included in Biswasahitya Granthamala.

Selection of Authors and their works 63 53 48 43 41

19 20 19 5 6 6 3 7 4 5 4 2 4 3 3 3 6 3

Figure V- Selection of the authors across the world in Biswa Sahitya Granthamala

Figure V illustrates the number of translated texts per authors. Arthur Conan Doyle had 63 stories translated and included in this series of children‘s literature, whereas there are many such authors whose single story or novel is taken into consideration keeping in mind the specific theme, those books deal with. The number of stories by many authors in this series, such as Louisa Mary Alcott, Willkie Collins, Charlotte Bronte, Charles Reade, and Anna Sewell, is very

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less in number. These authors along with a few others have been placed under the category of others in the graph above. The authorship of the fairy tales cannot be detected accurately, as being written by several authors. For instance, The Tales of Arabian Nights, more popularly known as ―The One Thousand and One Nights‖ has undergone a huge transformation over the time. It is a collection of stories without an author. It was the first European translation by Antoine Galland in the 18th century that brought this literary piece into the realm of literature. He observed a gap between the available 270 tales and the title promising endless stories. Galland relied upon the raw stories presented by Hanna Diab, which he made into full-blown tales. As the tales traveled across the borders, scribes attempted to fill in the gap and track down the origin of the stories. The popular stories such as Ali Baba, Aladdin, The Wonderful Lamp and The Thief of Bagdad do not exist in the original core tale of Arabian Nights rather; these pieces are believed to be the contribution of the French translation by a French scholar Abuback Chraribi. The adventurous stories of Sindabad were also added later to the collection. In this context, Martin Puchner, Harward University Professor and the World Literature expert in one of his talks pertinently asserted Arabian Nights as a sea of stories, with different people swimming in it, grabbing pieces and putting them together in different ways. Similarly, the tales from Africa, China, Germany, Ireland, Indonesia are most probably, written by multiple authors. These anonymous story collections are placed under the category of anonymous authors in fig. V.

BSG has taken into consideration the authors who are designated as children‘s authors such as Aesop, Andersen, Jules Verne and also the fiction writers who are not recognized children‘s authors but are presented to the child readers as storytellers. For instance, Shakespeare, Emily Bronte, Jane Austen, Bankim Chandra, Fakirmohan Senapati and other word authors. The findings further revealed a surprising fact that BSG excludes the works of the Nobel Laureates as it is already being sanctioned as World Literature. The emphasis, probably, is on the creation of World Literature, not through the award-winning titles, rather, through the popular and less read authors who deserve a space in the world literary forum. It questions the preconceived notion of Nobel Prize being an important criterion to assess a book to be a part of World Literature. It

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is the worldwide reception and an interlingual translation of literary pieces across the world paves the way to get into the world forum.

6.3. Genre in BSG

Translators of Biswasahitya Granthamala adapted a specific strategy in the adaptation of the voluminous texts to represent the same in the abridged version keeping the storyline and essence intact. The objective of the series is not a mere reproduction of the World Literature for a specific set of readers; the implicit idea is the creation of the literature of the world in a provincial language. The plot structure of each story remains the same with a little change in the events and the details. The preferred themes that comprises the concerned series are- the adventure tales, fairy tales, thriller, detective series, tales of Gods and legends, short stories of children, etc. The selection comprises the genres such as folklore, fairy tales, novels, drama, and stories. The further categorization of these genres reveals that the fantasy stories and the modern novels dominate the children‘s literature; so, it remained as a preferable choice of the selection team and preoccupied a major portion of the series. The graph below illustrates the same:

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200 175 180 157 160

140

120 95 100

In Number In 80 60 37 40 20 5 10 0 Fantasy Morality Tales Traditional Modern Science Adventure Stories Stories Novels Fiction Fiction Genres

Figure VI: Number of Stories Translated per Genre in BSG

Fig. VI reflects that the fantasy tales dominated the children‘s genre since its inception resulting into the literary market being flooded with the fantasy stories. Besides fantasy, the other genre that grew popular was the modern novels as the impact of the revolutions and the aftermath of the world war. The authors were more conscious to blend realism with the accepted genres of children‘s literature. BSG significantly included 157 books under this category.

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Genre in BSG

Novel Story Drama

6% 28%

66%

Figure VII: Dominant Genre in BSG

The pie-chart in fig. VII depicts that story is the dominant genre in the Biswasahitya series as the selected texts are readers oriented. The immediate readers of this canon of texts being the children; the translators preferred to reconstitute the respective texts from distinct genres and transform the same into stories that appeal the readers most.

6.4. Translators of BSG

Translation, a new field of academic study has come into existence as the consequence of the rise of prolific translators, who not only contributed to the enrichment of literature but also earned a respectable position in this field of study. The choice of the texts and the mode of translation depend upon the translator that makes his position a vital one. The production of the Biswasahitya series is the result of the dedicated effort of more than 25 translators in collaboration with Granthamandir, who selected the authors, texts and translated the same into an abridged version. The Graph below shows the number of stories translated by each translator:

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172 180 160 140 120 84 100 65 80 60 43 22 30 21 40 5 14 15 11 13 8 20 4 2 3 2 4 1 1 1 4 1 4 1 1 1 1

0

Sridhar Das Sridhar

Sunanda Kar Sunanda

Dibakar Pani Dibakar

Sujata Mishra Sujata

Bansidhar Das Bansidhar

Kalyani Ghosh Kalyani

Sarbeswar Das Sarbeswar

Natabara Sahu Natabara

Gayatri Gayatri Mishra

Kshtrabala devi Kshtrabala

Badyanath Padhi Badyanath

Sarat kumaridevi Sarat

Sudhanshusekher…

Subhendramohan…

Gangadhar Mishra Gangadhar

Dinabandhu Ratha Dinabandhu

Sridhar Mahapatra Sridhar

Basanti Kumai devi Kumai Basanti

Nandikishore Singh Nandikishore

Sarat kumar kumar mishra Sarat

Jayadev Pattanayak Jayadev

Jogendra Mohapatra Jogendra

annada prasad rakhit prasad annada

Dasarathi Pattanayak Dasarathi

Rama KrushnaNanda Rama

Kanchamala Mohanty Kanchamala

Chintamani Mohapatra Chintamani Bijay Prasad Mohapatra Bijay Prasad 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 Translators of BSG series

Figure VIII: Translators and their number of translated stories in BSG

Fig.VIII reveals that the maximum number of stories had been translated by Late Sridhar Das, the Odiya professor at Christ College, Cuttack. Mr. Mohapatra, the owner of Granthamandir, stated that almost all the translators were the teachers by profession which signifies that the choice of the texts relies upon their experience and further expectation to groom the child through the literature of the world.

6.5. Translation Strategy

The transparency of a translated text accelerates its receptivity among the target readers. Experts often assert that the transparency of the text is the consequence of the presence of the author and the invisibility of the translator. I partially agree with this statement as the presence of the translator remains evident in the text in the form of the words chosen accurately to represent a foreign culture for a set of specific target reader. The role of a translator is not less than a mediator, who negotiates the world literary texts in a distinct

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linguistic and cultural set up. The translator not only creates an impression in the mind of the readers and the listeners but also manipulates the storyline on the basis of the comprehension skill of the readers and the expectation of the publishing houses. Hence, this challenging task earns them prominence in the literary world. The strategies of emphasizing certain aspects, adding or subtracting a few, revising or explaining some aspects depend upon the decision of the translator based on his prior assumption of the reader‘s knowledge of the source culture. In the Biswasahitya series, the presence of the translator is noticed when we find some additions in the translated text or certain modifications made in the climax of the story. It slightly deviates from the original plot but becomes more relevant to the young readers. For instance, the omissions of the numerous characters, lengthy dialogues while translating Shakespearean plays and changes at the end of the fairy tales of Anderson is made to end the story with a happy note. A brief discussion of the translated Shakespearean plays would better illustrate the translation strategy implemented in this series.

Shakespeare is the only playwright of the west who is included in the Biswasahitya series, owing to his contribution in the making of the English Literature. 21 plays of Shakespeare made its place in the series. Fig. X elaborates the same:

Shakespearean plays

14 15 12 11 12 8 10 5 1 0 Comedies Tragedies Historical Plays

Total BSG

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The complete list of 21 selected plays and the detail are attached in Appendix-B

Translators of Biswasahitya Granthamala adapted a specific strategy in the adaptation of the voluminous texts to represent the same in the abridged version keeping the storyline and essence intact. The plot structure of each story remains the same with the changes in the events and the details. For instance, in case of translating the plays of Shakespeare, all the characters are not introduced in the translation. The graph below depicts the same with much clarity:

Figure X: Number of Selected Shakespearean Characters in BSG

In some of the books, the translators included an introductory remark either, about the original author or on the background of the story to assist the readers in recognizing the authors and understanding the plot simultaneously. For instance, Sunanda Kar discussed the religious sentiments attached to the Bible before translating the stories of the Bible and also compared king Vikramaditya with King Arthur in the preface to make the readers accept the protagonist as expected. This could hardly be considered as a preface because it

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neither offer insight into the selection of the texts nor provide any significant information about the translation strategies and the motivation behind this literary endeavour. Nandakishore Singh, one of the translators of BSG, in one of the translated books mentioned in the opening pages that his intention was not to depict the replica of the work of the author but was to make the translation, not a translation. It throws a faint light on the attempt of the translators to maintain transparency in their work. Nevertheless, through these literary and cultural translations, every text goes through a process of metamorphosis. The authors such as Jane Austen, William Shakespeare, Senapati Fakirmohan, Premchand, Charles Dickens, H. G. Wells and many more were not introduced, being assumed to be known already ad need no further introduction, whereas some translators provided a brief introduction of the author such as Joseph Conrad, Bamkim Chandra, Sir Henry Rider Haggard and many more. Another important aspect is the domestication and foreignization of the text. Domestication is the bringing the text near to the readers by reproducing it in the target linguistic and cultural model whereas in foreignization the reader is taken to the text (Oittinen and Paloposki, 2001). The American scholar Lawrence Venuti preferred the use of foreignization and condemned domestication as ‗ethnocentric racism‘ and ‗conformation to a dominant cultural value. The BSG series attempted maintain a balance between the two by retaining to the proper nouns and some foreign words in the translated text and also used long expressions to describe specific terms. The strategy revels the intention of the translators to not to ignore the child readers who may lose interest if they miss the links. So, the domestication would bring the foreign culture closer to the readers and the foreignization would retain to the foreign element in the text that maintains the essence of the original.

7. Illustration in BSG

The use of illustrations for storytelling has been in practice since the ancient time when Hieroglyphics were prevalent. Illustrations are generally considered to be a supplement in a book but they have an essential function when it comes to children‘s literature. The projection of a world or culture in words is open for multiple interpretations without illustration. A good illustration is instrumental in

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establishing the setting, maintaining textual coherence and appealing the reader in a number of ways. In the words of Mabel Segun, ―A good illustration can give children a sense of personal identity and an awareness of their cultural heritage. They sharpen the perception of children, stimulate their imagination and increase their sense of observation. The overall development of children can be aided by good illustrations‖ (Segun, 1988).

The illustration used in BSG is a part of the strategy to grab the attention, to build clarity in understanding concepts, to enrich the imagination and to sharpen the perception of the readers.

Stories of Don Quixote, Hercules, BSG Sindabaad, BSG BSG

Figure XI: Illustration in BSG

Fig. XI depicts three examples from the BSG series that assist the readers to peep into the luxurious palace of Sindabaad, imagine the dangerous dragon that Hercules fought with and to understand the protagonist of Don Quixote and the way he artificially dressed as a knight. These illustrations are made by the artists to bring the book to life. The illustrators connect the author‘s imagination with that of a reader and deserve an equally worthy position as the authors and the translators in the literary world. The fairy tales and some novels in BSG Volume 4, Number 1, February, 2019, (IJCLTS) ISSN: 2321-8274, 128 http://ijclts.wordpress.com/

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include similar illustrations that respond to the curiosity of the readers to explore further.

8. Conclusion

The results of the study projected the crucial role of the literary market in either accelerating or decelerating the book production. The circulation and reception are to some extent interdependent and the smooth functioning of the three-tier system demands an active participation and dedication of the writers, translators, illustrators, publishers and the academicians. To conclude, a piece of literature in the form of translation and wide reception can contribute to the world peace and nourish human values. This can be made possible by the mutual acceptance of the global culture and literary treasure. Biswasahitya attempts to visualize World Literature, not in English but in a local Indian language to get the real essence of the literature of the world which is done by absorbing the flavours of 30 different nations and cultures. It is a step towards the unification of the World Literature. Hence, Biswasahitya Granthamala can be considered as a pre-selection of the texts for an anthology of World Literature from the modern Indian perspective and further considered to be a small step towards ‗literary Universalism‘. If anthologized, the canon can also be considered as an anthology of World Literature in an abridged version for children.

Acknowledgment:

I extend my sincere gratitude to my Supervisor Dr. Lipika Das for her guidance in this research.

Bibliography:

1. Prasad, Mahendra. ―Enriching Through Translation.‖ The Telegraph, 7 Apr. 2014. Assessed on 7th November, 2017 2. Johnson, Rebecca A., "Trends in Children's Literature and the Social Implications". University of Tennessee Honors Thesis Projects. 2014

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3. Lathey, Gillian. ―The Translator Revealed.‖ Children's Literature in Translation: Challenges and Strategies, Routledge, 2014, pp. 1–16. 4. Ghesquiere, Rita. ―Why Does Children's Literature Need Translation.‖ Children's Literature in Translation: Challenges and Strategies, Routledge, 2014, pp. 19–32. 5. Damrosch, David. Interview with Wang Ning. ariel: a review of the international English literature, Vol. 42, No. 1, 2011, Pages 171–190. 6. Oittinen, Riitta. ―No Innocent Act.‖ Children's Literature in Translation: Challenges and Strategies, Routledge, 2014, pp. 35-43. 7. Mohapatra, Manoj. Personal Interview. 8 March. 2018 8. Ganguly, Sonali. ―World Literature without English: Biswasahitya Granthamala- A Case of the Making of Children's Literature.‖ Language in India, vol. 18, no. 2, Feb. 2018, pp. 406–418. 9. ―Role of Illustration in Children's Book.‖ Maa Illustrations.com. 2016.Accessed 10th May, 2018. 10. ―Drawing on Success: The Importance of Illustrations.‖ Dorrance Publishing Company, 5 Aug. 2016, www.dorrancepublishing.com/drawing-success-importance-illustrations/. Accessed 10th May, 2018 11. Fang, Zhihui. ―Illustrations, Texts and the Child Reader: What Are Pictures in Children's Storybooks for?‖ Reading Horizons, vol. 37, no. 2, Nov. 1996, pp. 130–141. 12. Segun, Mabel. ―The Importance of Illustrations in Children‘s Books.‖ Illustrating for Children, Ibadan: CLAN, 1988. pp 25-27. 13. Zhenduo, Zheng. ―A View on the Unification of Literature‖ Ed.David Damrosch, World Literature in Theory, Willey Blackwell, 2014.pp 58-67.

Appendix-A

List of Books in Biswasahitya series

Odia Name of the Sl.no Odia Translation Author Translator Book Basanta kumari Sharat 1 Baikuntha Ra Will Baikunter Will Devi Chandra

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Banshidhara Stories from 2 Africa Ra Kaahani Anonymous Das Africa The Gorilla R. M. 3 Guerilla Shikari Sunanda Kar Hunters Ballantyne Arabya Rajanira Banshidhara The Tales from 4 Anonymous Kaahani Das Arabian Nights Sindbad Ra Banshidhara The Adventures 5 Anonymous Kaahani Das of Sindabaad Subhendra Aladdin Ra Kuhuka Aladdin‘s Magic 6 Mohan Anonymous Deep Lamp Srichandansingh Arab Desa Ra Stories from the 7 - Anonymous Kahani Arab World Stories of 8 Ali Baba Kahani - Anonymous Alibaba Ireland Desa Ra Banshidhara Stories from 9 Anonymous Kaahani Das Ireland Jyogendra 10 Samudra Ra Nabika Toilers of the Sea Victor Hugo Pattanayak Nandkishore 11 Lord Jim Lord Jim Joseph Cornad singh Burma Desha Ra Banshidhara Fairy tales of 12 Anonymous Roopakathaa Das Burma Subhendra Chin Desha Ra Mohan Fairy tales of 13 Roopa Kaatha (part Anonymous Srichandan Burma 1 &2) Singh Anderson Ka Pari Anderson's Fairy Hans Christian 14 Sujata Mishra Kaahani tales Anderson Subhendra Denmark Ra mohan Fairy tales of 15 Roopakatha (part-1 Anonymous Srichandan Denmark 2) Singh Gangadhara The cat of 16 Bubastar Ra Biradi G.A.Henty Mishra Bubastes

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Anaatha Baalaka Charles 17 - Oliver Twist Oliver Dickens Subhendra Mohan 18 Adam Bede Adam Bede George Eliot Srichandan Singh 19 Chandrakantamani - The Moon Stone Wilkie Collins Nicholas Ra Jogendra Charles 20 Nicholas Nickleby Kaahani Pattanayak Dickens Pagala Janata Ra Far from the 21 - Thomas Hardy Dure madding Crowd Roger Mahabira Raaja Knights of the 22 Sunanda Kar Lancelyn Arthur Round Table Green Jogendra Mystery of 23 Adrushya Baiyanika Jules Warne Pattanayak Welham Stories Jogendra 24 Kala heera Black Diamond Jules Warne Pattanayak Pruthibi simantare Jyogendra Lighthouse at the 25 Jules Warne battihara Pattanayak End of the World Around the Asi Dinare Pruthibi 26 Sridhar Das World in Eighty Jules Warne Parikramana Days Banshidhara Alexandre 27 Kalaphula Black Tulip Das Duma Sudhanshu The Corsican Alexandre 28 Corsican Due Bhai Sekhar Brothers Dumas Chakraborty Abhiram Twenty Years Alexandre 29 Codiye Barsa Pare Mohapatra After Dumas 30 Carpathiyan Durga Natabara Sahu Carpathian Fort Jules Warne Jogendra Three Alexandre 31 Teeni Sipahi Pattanayak Musketeers Dumas Jogendra 32 Dukhini Les Miserable Victor Hugo Pattanayak France Desha Ra 33 - Stories of France Anonymous Kaahani Volume 4, Number 1, February, 2019, (IJCLTS) ISSN: 2321-8274, 132 http://ijclts.wordpress.com/

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Banshidhara Count of Alexandre 34 Montecristo A Raja Das Montecristo Dumas Lauha Mukha Dhari Jogendra Alexandre 35 Man in Iron Mask Manisha Pattanayak Dumas Twenty Samudra Garbha Thousand 36 Re Kodiye Hajar Sridhar Das Jules Warne Leagues Under League Bhamana the Sea Germany Desha Ra Stories from 37 - Anonymous Kaahani Germany 38 Aesop Kahani Sridhar Das Aesop's Fables Aesop Greece Desha Ra Sridhar Das, Stories from 39 Anonymous Kahani (part1,2,3) Banshidhar Das Greece Greece Desha Ra 40 Sridhar Das - Anonymous Purana Kaahani 41 Homer Kaahani Sridhar Das Illiad & Odyssey Homer Holand Desha Ra Banshi dhar Fairy tales of 42 Roopa Kaatha( part das, Sunanda Anonymous Holand 1 & 2) kar Aama desa ra Sarat kumar 43 - Anonymous purana kahani Mishra 44 Birbal kahani Sujata Mishra - Anonymous Budhajataka Sridhar Das, 45 kahani (part Dinabandhu Jataka Stories Anonymous 1,2,3,4) Ratha Birbal ka Hasa 46 Natabara Sahu Birbal Stories Anonymous - Khushi Kaahani Fakirmohan 47 Lachchama - Lachchama Senapati Dasakumaa Charita Sridhar Dashakumaracha 48 Dandin (p-1 &2) Mahapatra rita Ocean of the Pilankara Nandi kishore 49 Streams of Somdeva Kathasaritasagara Singh Stories Khetrabala Devi 50 Anuradha o Sati & Sarat kumari Anuradha o Sati SharatChandra Devi Volume 4, Number 1, February, 2019, (IJCLTS) ISSN: 2321-8274, 133 http://ijclts.wordpress.com/

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Sudhanshusekh Bankim 51 Anandamath Anandamath ar Chakraborty Chandra Krushnakanta ka Krishnakanta's Bankim 52 - will Will Chandra Bankim 53 Mrunalini - Mrunalini Chandra Sudhanshusekh Bankim 54 Raj Singha Raj Simha ar Chakraborty Chandra Sudhanshusekh Bankim 55 Kapalakundala Kapala kundala ar Chakraborty Chandra Dinabandhu Fakir Mohan 56 Maamu Maamu Ratha Senapati Mahakabi Kalidasa 57 Sridhar Das - Anonymous Ka Kaahani Mahabharata The 58 Sridhar Das Anonymous Kahani Mahabharata 59 Ramayana Kahani Sridhar Das The Ramayana Valmiki Jayadeva 60 Kalidasa Kahani - Kalidas Pattanayak Malavika and Malavika and Maha kabi 61 Sridhar Das Agnimitra Agnimitra Kalidasa Mahakabi 62 Sakuntala Sarbeswar Das Sakuntala Kalidasa Gayatri Mishra Premchand k Shivram Munsi 63 Kahani(part1,2,3,4, Mahapatra - Premchand 5,6 Pankajakhya panda Fakirmohan ka Fakir Mohan 64 Kaahani (part - - Senapati 1,2,3) Dinabandhu Fakir Mohan 65 Prayaschita Prayaschita Ratha Senapati 66 Arakhyaniya Natabara Sahu Arakhyaniya Sarat Chandra Sarat kumari 67 Chandra Nath Chandra Nath Sarat Chandra Devi Sudhanshu Debi Bankim 68 Debi Choudhurani sekhar Choudhurani Chandra Volume 4, Number 1, February, 2019, (IJCLTS) ISSN: 2321-8274, 134 http://ijclts.wordpress.com/

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Chakraborty

Sudhanshu Bankim 69 Durgesh Nandini sekhar Durgesh Nandini Chandra Chakraborty 70 Devdas Natabara Sahu Devdas Sarat Chandra Sudhanshu 71 Darpa Churna Sekhar Darpa Churna Sarat Chandra Chakraborty 72 Niskruti - Deliverance Sarat Chandra 73 Nababidhan Natabara Sahu Nababidhan Sarat Chandra Basanta kumari 74 Path Nirdesha path nirdesha Sarat Chandra devi 75 Pandita Mahasaya Natabara Sahu Panditmoshai Sarat Chandra Bodo Didi (the 76 Bodo Didi - Sarat Chandra Elder Sister) Basanta kumari 77 Brahmanara jhia Bamuner Maye Sarat Chandra devi Abhiram Biraj Bohu (Mrs. 78 Biraj Bohu Sarat Chandra Mohapatra Biraj ) 79 Mamlara Phala Kalyani Ghosh Mamlara Phala Sarat Chandra 80 Maara Sneha Natabara Sahu - Sarat Chandra Basanta Kumari Ram's Good 81 Ramara Sumati Sarat Chandra Devi Sense 82 Parineeta - Parineeta Sarat Chandra Sharat 83 Palli Samaja Natabara Sahu Palli Samaja Chandra Banshidhara Swami (The Sharat 84 Swami Dash Husband) Chandra Indonesia Ra Stories from 85 - Kaahani Indonesia Anonymous Gulliver Ra 86 - Gulliver's Travel Jonathan Swift Bhramana Kaahani 87 Apahruta Rajaa - The Lost King R. Sabatani 88 Jaladashyu Dibakara Pani Captain Blood Sabatini Volume 4, Number 1, February, 2019, (IJCLTS) ISSN: 2321-8274, 135 http://ijclts.wordpress.com/

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Italy Desa Ra Banshidhara Stories from 89 Anonymous Kaahani Das Italy 90 Pinocchio Sujata Mishra Pinocchio Carlo Collodi Japan Desha Ra Fairy Tales of 91 Sunanda Kar Anonymous Roopakathaa Japan The Vicar of Oliver 92 Wakefield Ra Vicar Sridhar Das Wake Field Goldsmith Pompei Nagari Ra Jogendra Last Days of Edward 93 Sesa Dina Pattanayak Pompei Bulwer-Lytton The Treasure Robert Louis 94 Ratna Deep Sridhar Das Island Stevenson Cha Mana Atha Dinabandhu Six Acres and a Fakir Mohan 95 Guntha Ratha Third Senapati Subhendra Parashya Desa Ra Mohan 96 - Anonymous Kaahani Srichandan Dingh Poland Desha Ra Stories from 97 - Anonymous Kaahani Poland Rome Rajya Ra Fairy tales of 98 Sridhar Das Anonymous Roopa Kaatha Rome 99 Chekov Kahani Sridhar Das - Anton Chekov Sridhar Das, Tolstoy Kahani 100 Dinabandhu - Leo Tolstoy (Part-1,2,3,4,5) Ratha Baba Badyanath Crime and Fyodor 101 Paap o Prayaschita Padhi Punishment Dostoyevsky kanchanmala Alexander 102 Bidrohi Dubrovosky Mohanty Puskin Baba Badyanath 103 Maa The Mother Maxim Gorky Padhi Rus Desha Ra Fairy tales of 104 - Anonymous Roopa Kaatha Russia Jogendra R. M. 105 Prabaladeep The Coral Islands Pattanayak Ballantyne 106 Bichitra Tabij Sridhar Das The Talisman Walter Scott

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Badyanath Robert Louis 107 Bhoutika Bottle Bottle Imp Padhi Stevenson Montrose Ra Rupa A Legend of 108 - Walter Scott kahani Montrose Jogindra 109 Biplabi Rob Roy Walter Scott Pattanayak Ramakrushan 110 Don Kusti Don Quixote Cervantes Nanda Swiss Family 111 Swiss Robinson - Johann David Robinson Wyss Turkey Desha Ra Fairy tales of 112 Roopakatha - Anonymous Turkey (part1,2) Dueti Nagari Ra Jogendra A Tale of Two Charles 113 Kaahani Pattanayak Cities Dickens David Charles 114 David Copperfield Sridhar Das Copperfield Dickens Great Charles 115 Aneka Aasha - Expectations Dickens Baba Badyanath 116 Adrushya Manaba The invisible Man H.G.Wells Padhi Pride and 117 Aahamika o Bhranti Sridhar Das Jane Austen Prejudice 118 Ivan Hoe Sridhar Das Ivan Hoe Walter Scott Valley of Fear Arthur Conan 119 Aatanka Upatyaka Dibakar Pani (part-1 & 2) Doyle Arthur Conan 120 Andaman Ra Bandi Dibakar Pani The sign of Four Doyle Allan H. Rider 121 Allan Quantermain Dibakara Pani Quantermain haggard Dasarathi 122 Emma Emma Jane Austen Pattanayak Nandakishore 123 Will Ra Kaahani Will O' the Mill R.L. Stevenson Singh Subhendramoha 124 Kenilworth n Srichandan Kenilworth Walter Scott Singh

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125 Kalasara Sridhar Das The Black Arrow R.L. Stevenson Caster bridge Ra The Mayor of 126 - Thomas Hardy Mayor Caster bridge Henryk 127 Quo Vadis - Quo Vadis Sienkiewicz 128 Krishna Sundara - The Black Beauty Anna Sewell The Cloister and 129 Gruhi O Sanyashi Sridhar Das Charles Reade the hearth Chandra Prustha First Man on the 130 Re Prathama - H. G. Wells Moon Manab Zenda Durga Ra Prisoner of 131 Bansidhar Das Anthony Hope Bandi Zenda Chintamani Charlotte 132 Jane Eyre Jane Eyre Mohapatra Bronte The Time 133 The Time Machine Sridhar Das H.G.Wells Machine Due Abhisapta Chintamani The Weathering 134 Emily Bronte Paribaar Mohapatra heights The Nicolson Ka Nandkishore 135 Misadventures of R.L. Stevenson Durbhagya Singh John Nicholson Paschima Patha Charles 136 Dibakar Pani West Ward Ho Jatri Kingsley Hound of the Arthur Conan 137 Bhoutika Kukura Dibakar Pani Baskervile Doyle Subhendra mohan The Ring and the William 138 Mudi O Golapa Srichandan Rose Makepeace Singh Thackeray The Maracot Arthur Conan 139 Maracot Deep - Deep Doyle 140 Robinson Crusoe - Robinson Crusoe Danial Defoe Raaja Solomon ka Jogendra King Solomon's H. Rider 141 Heera Khani Pattanayak Mines Haggard

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A Study in Arthur Conan 142 Rakta Sanketa Dibakar Pani Scarlet Doyle 143 Loora Doone - Loora Doone Blackmoore Gangadhar The Scarlet Baroness 144 Lal phula Sanket Mishra Pimpernel Orczy Subhendra Lal Ghiri Ra Eti Mohan The Mill on the 145 George Eliot Kaatha Srichandan Floss Singh 146 Silas Marner - Silas Marner George Eliot Chintamani The Woman in 147 Swetambari Wilkie Collins Mohapatra White H. Raider 148 Sri Sridhar Das She Hogard Montazuma's H. Raider 149 Samratnandini Bansidhara Das Daughter Hogard Romancha kara Aparadha Arthur Conan 150 - - Anusandhana Ra Doyle Kaahani Sherlok Homes kahani (part- The Adventure of Arthur Conan 151 Dibakar Pani, 1,2,3,4,,6,,8,9,10,1 Sherlock Homes Doyle 1,12,13,16) Shakespeare Comedies, & William 152 Kahani (part Sridhar Das Tragedies Shakespeare 1,2,3,4) Banshidhara The Report of 153 Hentzau Report Anthony Hope Dash Hentzau Chintamani 154 Haranachaala The Kidnapped R.L. Stevenson Mohapatra Aranya Ra Nanda Kishore The Call of the 155 Jack London Aahwana Singh Wild Uncle Tom's Harriet 156 Tom Kka Ka Cabin Sridhar Das Cabin Beecher Stowe The Little Louisa Mary 157 Chari Bhouni Sujata Mishra Women and Alcott Good Wives

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158 Tom Sayer Sridhar Das Tom Sayer Mark Twain

Dasarathi 159 Prabhati Tara The Morning Star Pierce Brown Pattanayak Charles Bounty Jaahaj Ra Mutiny on the 160 Sridhar Das NordhoffJame Bidroha Bounty s Norman Hall Jogendra Prince and the 161 Rajaputra O Bhikari Mark Twain Pattanayak Pauper Jogendra 162 Robin Hood Robin Hood Pattanayak Howard Pyle Huckleberry Fin Ra 163 Sujata Mishra Huckleberry Fin Mark Twain Kahani Herman 164 Teemi Shikara - Moby Dick Melvile Aame Baji Hari The Chips are 165 - Paul Sartre Galu Ja Down 166 Garky kahani Sridhar Das - Maxim Gorkey Wilhelm Grimms ka pari Grimm's Fairy 167 Bansidhara Das Grimm, Jacob kahani (part1 & 2) tales Grimm Alexandre 168 Chakrantakari Dibakar pani The Conspirators Dumas Jackle o Hide Ra 169 - - - Kaahani Ramachandra 170 Dasyudamana - - Mahapatra Debanmanaba Annada Prasad 171 Hercules - Herculis Rakhit 172 Dukha Pare Sukha - Hedi Johanna Spyri Desa Bideshara Godabarisha 173 - - Roopa Kaatha Mohapatra Subhendra Mohan 174 Phroso Phroso Anthony Hope Srichandan Singh

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Cast Ashore, Bipanna Nabikara George Alfred 175 - from Under Kaahani Henty Drake's Flag Subhendra Bichitra Desha Re Mohan Alice in the 176 Lewis Carroll Alice Srichandan Wonder Land Singh Bichitra Mulakara 177 - - - Kaahani Nanda Kishore 178 Betala Kahani - - Singh 179 Bible Kaahani Sunanda Kar - - Bijay Prasad 180 Bhayanaka Galpa - - Mahapatra Chintamani 181 Martin Ratler Martin Ratler R.M.Ballantyne Mohapatra Mruchhakatika o Mricchakatika, Sudraka, 182 Sridhar Das Mudra Rakhyasha Mudrarakshasa Vishakhadatta Henri René Mopaso Kahani Stories of 183 Sridhar Das Albert Guy de (part 1,2,3,4) Maupassant Maupassant Sridhar 184 Rakta Golapa - - Mohapatra In Service of the 185 Rani Ka Seba Re - - Queen Subhendra Mohan 186 Rustam Kahani - - Srichandan Singh Hasakhusi Ra 187 - - - Kaahani

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Appendix-B List of selected Shakespearean plays in BSG Shakespearean Plays in Biswasahitya

No. of No. of No. of No of Pages in Year of Scenes Characters Characters Sl.no Name of the Play Category Translation the Publication (Original (Original 5 in Translati 5 act play) Act paly) Translation on 1 Macbeth 1605 Tragedy 28 40 Macbeth 12 7 2 Hamlet 1600 Tragedy 20 34 Hamlet 13 9 3 King Lear 1605 Tragedy 26 25 King Lear 13 9 Part-1 4 Julius Ceaser 1599 Tragedy 18 49 Julius Ceaser 12 7 5 Othelo 1604 Tragedy 15 26 Othelo 14 7 Dwadashi- Twelfth Night 1599 Comedy 18 18 Rajani ba 15 7 6 BhamaBhrant Much ado about Bwaharambhe 1598 Comedy 17 23 12 11 7 nothing Laghukriya Midsummer Nidagharatri Part-2 1595 Comedy 9 23 11 9 8 Night's Dream ra Swapna Jaha Tumara As you Like it 1599 Comedy 22 27 16 11 9 Echha 10 Cymbeline 1609 Tragedy 27 40 Cymbeline 14 9 Merchant of Venice ra 1596 Comedy 20 23 15 7 11 Venice Banika Taming of the Kalihudi ra 1593 Comedy 14 36 13 7 12 Shrew Sikhya

Timon of Athens 1607 Tragedy 17 57 Timon 15 6 Part-3 13 14 Pericles 1608 Historical 26 46 Pericles 18 12 15 Tempest 1611 Comedy 9 21 Tofaan 14 8 Romeo - Romeo and Juliet 1594 Tragedy 26 33 17 8 16 Juliet Sitarutu ra Winter Tales 1610 Comedy 15 34 13 13 17 kahani Two Gentlemen Verona ra due 1594 Comedy 20 17 16 10 18 of Verona bhadraloka Bhranti- Comedy of Errors 1589 Comedy 11 19 17 12 Part-4 19 Koutuka All is well that Sabu bhala 1602 Comedy 23 26 15 6 20 ends well jadi seshati Measure for Jemiti ku 1604 Comedy 17 24 21 8 21 measure semiti Volume 4, Number 1, February, 2019, (IJCLTS) ISSN: 2321-8274, 142 http://ijclts.wordpress.com/

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Translation from Hindi into English of select poems from Sudama Pandey „Dhoomil‟‟s collection Kal Sunana Mujhe Pooja Sancheti

She is a Faculty at the Institute of Science Education and Research (IISER) Pune in the Humanities and Social Sciences Program. She was awarded her PhD in English Literature in 2014 from English and Foreign Languages University (EFLU), Hyderabad [the university was formerly Central Institute of English and Foreign Languages or CIEFL). Her areas of research are postmodern fiction, magical realism, and world fiction, as well as teaching of English as a second language. She was also the Fulbright FLTA (Foreign Language Teaching Assistant) Hindi at Stanford University (USA) in 2010-2011. She has done English-Hindi translation of pedagogic material for CSSL (Center for Science of Student Learning).

About the poet: Sudama Pandey ―Dhoomil‖ (9 November 1936 – 10 February 1975) is a famous and critically acclaimed Hindi poet. He was born in Khevali, a village near Varanasi in Uttar Pradesh. He studied in Varanasi at the ITI (Industrial Training Institute) and eventually joined the same institute as an instructor in the Electricals Department. He was known for his rebellious poetry, also called ―protest-poetry‖. During his short lifetime, only one collection of his poetry titled Sansad se Sarak Tak was published; another collection of poetry titled Kal Sunana Mujhe was published posthumously in 1978 and won the Sahitya Akademi Award in 1979.

1.

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लोहे का स्वाद* The Taste of Iron*

"शब्द किस तरह ―Observe िकिता बनते हℂ how words turn इसे देखो into poetry, Read the man अक्षरोों िे बीच किरे ए fallen in the cracks between the letters आदमी िो पढो of the alphabet; क्या तुमने सुना कि यह Did you hear if this is लोहे िी आिाज है या the sound of iron or कमट्टी मᴂ किरे ए खून the colour of blood िा रोंि" spilt on soil‖

लोहे िा स्वाद Don‘t ask the smith लोहार से मत पूछो the taste of iron, उस घोडे से पूछो Ask that horse कजसिे मुԁह मᴂ लिाम है. whose mouth is gagged by the bit.

*This is considered Dhoomil‟s last poem

2.

अंतर Contrasts

िोई पहाड No mountain सोंिीन िी नोि से बडा नहीों है . is bigger than the tip of the bayonet. और िोई आԁख And no eye is smaller than an ocean छोटी नहीों है समुद्र से It is merely the difference in our यह िेिल हमारी प्रतीक्षाओों िा अोंतर है - expectations जो िभी Volume 4, Number 1, February, 2019, (IJCLTS) ISSN: 2321-8274, 144 http://ijclts.wordpress.com/

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हमᴂ लोहे या िभी लहरोों से जोडता है . that sometimes grafts us onto iron, and at other times onto waves.

3.

ददनचर्ाा Routine

सुबह जब अोंधिार िहीों नहीों होिा, At dawn, when there is no darkness हम बुझी ई बकियोों िो anywhere, इिट्ठा िरᴂिे और We will gather those extinguished wicks आपस मᴂ बाԁट लᴂिे. and split them between us.

दुपहर जब िहीों बर्फ नहीों होिी

और न झडती ई पकियाԁ At midday, when there is no snow anywhere आिाश नीला और स्वच्छ होिा Nor are autumnal leaves falling निर क्रेन िे पट्टे मᴂ झूलता आ The sky will be blue and pristine हम मोड पर कमलᴂिे और The city swinging in the belt of a crane एि दूसरे से ईर्ष्ाफ िरᴂिे. We will meet at the bend and envy each other. रात जब युद्ध एि िीत पोंक्ति िी तरह कप्रय होिा हम िायकलन िो रोते ए सुनᴂिे At night, when war, like a lyric, अपने टूटे सोंबोंधोों पर सोचᴂिे will be dear to us दुुःखी होोंिे We will listen to the weeping violin, Mulling over our broken bonds and we will mourn.

References:

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Biography of Sudama Pandey ―Dhoomil‖: http://pratilipi.in/dhoomil/

The poems of Dhoomil were sourced from Kavitakosh: http://kavitakosh.org/Search

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Translation of Shankha Ghosh‟s article Atmotriptir baire („Beyond Self- satisfaction‟)1 from his book Kobitar Muhurta (1987)

Soumava Maiti

The Translator is PhD research scholar in English Literature at the University of Delhi and completed his M.Phil in English literature from Visva-Bharati, Santiniketan; qualified UGC NET; served as Guest-lecturer in English literature at Andul College (University of Calcutta) for four years, and Gold-medalist in M.A. He has published research articles in journals such as Muse India; Rupkatha; Antae: Journal of the Dep. of English, University of Malta; Journal of the Dep. of English, Vidyasagar University; English Forum: Journal of the Dep. of English, Guahati university; Appropriation: Journal of the Dep. of English, Bankura Christian College and The Criterion; he has presented research papers in the National Young Researchers‘ Conference at CES, Jawaharlal Nehru University (UGC-SAP-DSA-I); at Ramakrishna Mission Post-Graduate College, Narendrapur; at Vivekananda College for Women and in the 16th Melus-Melow international conference in Chandigarh. His first Bengali poetry book (Bangla kabyograntha), titled, Jotota Na Chhile Samporke, is published by Saptarshi Prakashan in January 2017.

When Krittibas2 had been first being published thirty years ago, then there used to be one or two thought provoking essays in each issue. Along with the poems by the young poets, senior poets and essayists like Samar Sen3, Jyotirindra Maitra4 and Sunilchandra Sarkar5 from Santiniketan used to write articles on the Volume 4, Number 1, February, 2019, (IJCLTS) ISSN: 2321-8274, 147 http://ijclts.wordpress.com/

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problems of new or contemporary poems. It is very difficult today to comment on how intensely the poets or the readers were looking at these little essays. But, in these writings there was a subtle unity, such a perception that could be noted as very significant from the historical perspective of that particular time.

Twenty-five years past the modern poetry movement, they (the above mentioned authors) had been indicating towards a change of direction or a turnaround; towards a liberty— from the little groups (goshthhi) towards a larger society. Here was their unity. Samar Sen was speculating that the language of poetry was gradually becoming more easier, when he said that ‗those who used to write lines controlling their emotion earlier, now had a clear inclination towards expressing more words‘; and the drive behind this tendency, as Sen thought, was ‗the urge to come out into the bigger society from the little groups‘. Jyotirindra Maitra intended the popular art of poetry-recitation to come back again— ‗an elevation to public imageries from the personal imageries‘ in Bengali poetry. He thought that a poet should go through the middle passage of self-manifestation and self-sacrifice, and this might be the only way for the new poetry. Sunilchandra Sarkar said almost the same words when he opined that if the poets ‗harvest the golden crops by self-lamentation‘, then the poems could only be the permanent ones for days to come. This was how the problems of the movements of poetry— the problem of moving poetry towards the reader, reckoned in the thoughts of these three authors.

Was there any other sign of this notion of moving poetry ahead seen then? Was there any possibility of a new path for the communication between the poets and the readers being searched for? We can remember that, the movement of the poets with the chant of ‗read more poetry‘ (aro kobita porun) in the streets of Kolkata, was a contemporary incident; we can remember that Sunil Gangyopadhyay, the young editor, wrote an report, entitled ‗kabyosabha‘, in the very first issue of Krittibas magazine. Describing the first meeting of that above Volume 4, Number 1, February, 2019, (IJCLTS) ISSN: 2321-8274, 148 http://ijclts.wordpress.com/

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mentioned poetry-convention (‗kabyosabha‘), took place at Scottish Church College, Sunil wrote that, ‗this assembly may help the self-centered poets to open their eyes; this meet will invite all poets for recitation and discussion‘. The proposed poetry-convention perhaps could not go much ahead, but few days later at the Senate Hall was seen the historical two-day poetry-meet, after the success of which, the open poetry-reading (kabyapatth) became an inevitable part of our cultural-studies (songskriticharcha) during these three decades.

Did what Jyotirindra Maitra or Samar Sen wanted happen in reality days after days? Did poetry move from group to society? From room to path? Did self- expansion happen in reality in place of self-centeredness?

Before arriving at the answer, we have a subject to discuss. With the poems of Sukanta Bhattacharya6 or Subhash Mukhopadhyay7 or with the poems of those who wrote like them, there began a tradition of popular or political poetry, already popular then. But they were not those who came out on the streets with the slogan of ‗read more poetry‘ (aro kobita pora). They were poets like Naresh Guha8 or Arunkumar Sarkar, who wanted to make poetry easier, but the basis of their poetry was a very small and personal world. Presuming that sociality and politics were abhorrent for poetry, they wanted to create a solitary purity. Along with that, the main essence of magazines like Krittibas or Shatabhisha9 was built on individualism. Though in the first issues of both these magazines, the crisis of ‗self-satisfaction‘ or ‗self-centeredness‘ was discussed, within few years the propensity tended towards it (self-satisfaction). The oblique expressions of language, reflection of revealing solidarity and sometimes the poets‘ attraction towards hint or mystery were observed again.

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I don‘t want to comment now whether this tendency was good or bad. But what we must consider is what type of relation is expected between this new type of poetry and the readers. Did the reason or inspiration behind Jyotirindra Maitra‘s contemplation on the recitation of poetry not lie in the thought of communication? He thought that, in order to build new relationships a poet ‗now has to adapt an imaginative language of simple and direct appeal, devoid of the decorative aspects of it‘. He thought that, though not the first one, the poems that can be recited in public sphere, must have their own characteristics, and it was natural that there would be a tendency towards eloquence or oratory or clamor. Could the poems which are against this principle be recited so easily in a public gathering of many poets or could they bring forth the underlying essence? Could the poetry of meditation, mystery, and perception be easy elements of ‗read more poetry‘ call?

Yet, this happened in reality. As a consequence, there arose a ‗paradox‘—rather than changing the characteristics of poetry, only the mode or style of the communication between poetry and the reader was changed. It seemed to the poets that poetry was unjustly alienated from the reader. But, they did not change themselves, nor did they change their understanding of poetry; they only changed the method of their publicity. The printed words are prisoner of the two covers of the books; the readers did not feel any enthusiasm to open up the wrappers of the words and look deep into the hearts of the words. That‘s why the poets should, they thought, convey the reflected words to the larger society through utterance or elocution. That was the reason behind the kobisammelan (poetry-meet). It was quite natural that, the poems which we should read twice or thrice, or the poems that crave to attract the deepest bottom of the readers‘ hearts through instant expressions or intense cascades of words or the poems that remain incomprehensible or ambiguous even after repeated reading, could not be effective with the mere utterances in these poetry-meets. Yet, the poems which were not meant for these poetry- assemblies (kobitasobha), stood in front of these gatherings. And, as a result of this, there created a secret contradiction. The audience had noticed that there Volume 4, Number 1, February, 2019, (IJCLTS) ISSN: 2321-8274, 150 http://ijclts.wordpress.com/

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was a certain amount of gaudiness or dramatization or mere journalism in the linguistic aspects of these poems. The myth of poetry became more important than the poetry itself. Poetry wanted to be social in the wrong sense.

We must consider another contemporary incident in the context of the poetry‘s mistaken role of sociality. Till the beginning of fifties we have seen that the poetry-readers would wait anxiously for few magazines such as Kobita, Parichay, Sahityapatra, Agrani or little known magazines like Kranti.10 The main resorts of the poets were these magazines; the young poets would be happy if they could write in these magazines; the readers also knew that they could touch the artery of the modern poetry in these magazines. But some of these magazines became extinct towards the end of the 1950s; some have sunk in spirits; some were published irregularly. On the other hand, the reputation of the weekly magazine Desh11 expanded right in that moment; in comparison to the 50s, their printing had increased by three times in the sixties, and by seven times in the seventies. With this massive expansion, the magazines like Desh began to confer much honor upon poetry. Gradually, depending only on these daily or weekly or fortnightly magazines, a group of new readers arose this time— the swift- minded reader without any zeal or preparation could easily comment that the modern poetry ‗cannot be understood‘ or ‗are very excellent‘. We can see this expansion of the amount of readers only as the expansion of poetry-related comments or remarks, not as an expansion of poetry-related perception. Samar Sen in his essay, published in Krittibas, reminded us that in new poetry‘s attempt to be socialized there was a fearful side too. The poetry might lead into grandiloquence or verbosity; sentimentalism might be noticed; poets might have forgotten that the synthesis of emotion and intelligence was the source of poetry— reminded Samar Sen in that essay. For many corresponding reasons, for the incongruity between the publication and the publicity of poetry, the fear had become partially true. A new kind of contemplation was seen in the history of poetry in that— a kind of sentimental pomp or journalistic falsity pervaded the capacious portion of the poetic language.

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2.

From one perspective, this critical situation is not only the dilemma of our country, but also of our time. It does not take much time now to draw the true utterance towards the false splendor; any understanding or perception might become mere commodity within few moments. Hence, the usage of words or language sometimes brings fear to us; the authors also sometimes become suspicious about the probability of their language-usage. Some think of stopping their writings. The one, who stops writing, does not have any problem. But, that everyone would stop writing because of the complexity of the blockade is not true. Rather, a new kind of fight arises before a conscious artist— a fight to reach the truth of language breaking the language itself. We can compare this image with Burroughs‘s novel Nova Express, where he shows that silence is our most desirable state; but we can reach such type of silence through a distinct style of application of words.12 In his search for this style, he (Burrough) had to break the practiced/ accustomed sequence of words or images, and had to accommodate with the cut up method. We can observe almost similar kind of style when Ginsberg13 postulated that the rhythm of his poetry would grow from the deepest core of his body, from his breath, from the lungs— it is not any mere creation of his mind.

We have seen some scattered and desperate usages of these style and rhythm in Bengali poetry many times in the last twenty years. Temporary pomp/coarseness or commodity of market moves us far from truth; standing in front of that fear, many had turned their faces from lives; many wanted to carry language beyond tactile reality. Some dreamt of making a second world, both Volume 4, Number 1, February, 2019, (IJCLTS) ISSN: 2321-8274, 152 http://ijclts.wordpress.com/

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challenging and imaginary; some dreamt of making mysterious surrealism through spontaneous and unstrained imageries; some, in their attempt to devoid the language of its ceremonious quality, made it empty, as poor as they could. And, sometimes the language was attacked miserably; destructing the language wretchedly a contemporaneous yet secret characteristic of reality was craved for.

It was not true that there was no consciousness about the contemporary massacre in the poetry, written during the last twenty years. With the appearance of a group of young poets, they (the young poets) became familiar with such danger each time, and wanted to fight against this menace in their own ways. But, it was also true that, in most of the cases those battles were wasted, undecided, scattered about, and incomplete; often spoiled in the middle of their ways. Thus, we rarely notice any magnificent arrangement of poetry in front of us today. Perhaps, we do not have a control any more of a proper language, worthy of poetry— such kind of poetry where poetry would be eternal through ephemerality, poetry made out of a totality of perception and intelligence, poetry that will be created out of an experience of possessing history in the entity. Many days ago, Jibanananda14 thought that the future will not be satisfied with the fragmentary poems, and in the history of Bengali poetry there would be diversity in terms of satire, dramatization and length in the near future. In spite of the recent publication of few long poems, I do not think that, Jibananada‘s comprehension has become true in our contemporary history of poetry. For, we must remember that, fragment or length is not merely a difference of quantum index now; Jibanananda certainly thought of a change of the character of poetry. Perhaps, he had been thinking about such a poem which could bear a completely different beauty of our new and complex time— which could possess a Shakespearean expansion.

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There were traces of these transformations from experience to wholeness in the history of Jibananda‘s poetry. His poetry had emerged out of a concave of existence, though actually had emerged towards a ship of history around an uncivilized civilization. From Mahaprithibi to Satti Tarar Timir, from Satti Tarar Timir to Bela Abela Kalbela, we see how a poet carries with him all the dirt and desire, fall and flight, fear and love in his marrow; how a poet transcends himself from the depth of subconscious to super-conscious. We have been brought to the sands of ‗flowing history‘ to quench our thirst; we can understand that ‗the knowledge that brings augmentation of time in our heart/ is not here; — here is only infirmity and decrepitude‘, yet we can say that ‗better is that refuge: / that takes deep light from knowledge‘ as said Jibananada Das.15 Yet something seemed incomplete to Jibanananda. The modernity that wants to hold in its core ‗much larger history, dependent upon time‘ did not seem enough to Jibanananda, even in its maturity.

Is the Bengali poetry not losing its background/setting what has been prepared by Jibanananda? The contemporary world of poetry is full of Jibanananda‘s overwhelmed fans, but they could not carry his true legacy. This tradition became disheveled, sometimes in dreaminess, sometimes in petty temporariness, and sometimes in tenacity for words. The traces of the true senses, in which poetry wanted to move forward towards time, and the signs of the ways/styles in which poetry longed to capture in its hand everything from the philosophical time to the historical time one day, have been gradually receding from our culture. Days after days, we are surrounded by a wrong sense of sociality, a petty sociality; there are many unnecessary exposures around us, many advertisements and publicity; during the last decade we have noticed around us a huge explosion of magazines, and a powerful age of media- exposure. As the values of indifference and silence, through which the background of an artist could have grown towards a true spending of life (jibanjapon), have been being broken down very quickly around us, the poets become more confused/ perplexed today or sometimes become more self- satisfied. It is such a time when the world of poetry becomes small and happy, Volume 4, Number 1, February, 2019, (IJCLTS) ISSN: 2321-8274, 154 http://ijclts.wordpress.com/

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when we have forgotten to move towards a much larger self-expansion. It is such a time, when a poet needs more personal bravery; concealing himself under his personality, he has to detect the clot/complexity of our great time— not through his self-annihilation, but through a be-all and end all self-revelation. This might be a new kind of transcendence for today‘s poetry. We do not know yet, from whom and where to find a language, worthy of such transcendence, where to find a sacrifice worthy of offering all.

Notes:

1 „Atmatriptir Baire‘ is the first chapter of the 2nd part of the book, Kobitar Muhurta. This article was written by Ghosh in 1983, as informed at the end of the easy. pp 103-09. See ‗Works Cited‘.

2 Krittibas is the legendary Bengali poetry magazine, first published in Kolkata in 1953. The editors of the inaugural issue were Dipak Majumdar, Ananda Bagchi and Sunil Gangyopadhyay. The magazine became a platform for a new/ younger generation of poets experimenting with many new forms in poetic themes, rhythms, and words.

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3 Samar Sen (1916-1987), the grandson of the well-known writer Dinesh Chandra Sen, along with Suvash Mukhopadhyay, belonged to the second generation of modern Bengali poets. Some of his famous poetry books are— Grohon, Khola Chitthi, Tin Purush, Koyekti Kobita, and Nana Kotha.

4 Jyotirindra Maitra (1911-1977), known as Botukda, was primarily noted as a poet emerging on the scene during the time of Second World War, famine and fast changing values. His Madhu Banshir Gali drew immense attraction. The budding poet was soon overtaken by the musician in him. He extended his musical cooperation when requests came from eminent film makers like Ismail Merchant, Ritwik Ghatak, Satyajit Roy and James Ivory.

5 Sunil Chandra Sarkar was specialist in Tagore‘s educational philosophy, and along with Amiya Chakravarty, P. Mahadevan, Ranjee G. Sahani, P. C. Gupta, Paritosh Banerjee, Bishnu Dey, Ananda Coomaraswami, Amalendu Das, M. A. Farooqui, Sati Chatterjee and many others, he was one of the earliest Indian critic of T.S Eliot.

6 Sukanta Bhattacharya (1925- 1947), along with Tagore and Najrul Islam, was one of the greatest and key figures in modern Bengali poets. Some of his famous poetry books are— Chharpatra, Ghum Nei, Abhijan, Giti Guchchha, Mitthe Karaa, and Purbavas.

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7 Subhash Mukhopadhay (1919-2003) was one of the most foremost Bengali poets of the 20th century. Some of his remarkable works are— Padatik, Chirkut, Kaal Madhumaas, Bangalir Itihas (prose work), Phul Phutuk, and Agnikone.

8 Naresh Guha (1923-2009) was a Bengali poet, who started his career as a journalist with Jugantar. His first collection of poems came out in 1952, titled Duronto Dupur, and later won the Sahitya Academy award for his Kobita Shongroho. Some of his well-known poetry books are Duranta Dupur, Tatar Samudraghera, Bidishar Iti Ar Uni, and Tapatir Man (collection of short stories).

9 Shatabhisha magazine was first published by Alok Sarkar in 1951, and co- editors were Dipankar Dasgupta, Tarun Mitra, and Alokranjan Dasgupta.

10 Kabita magazine was first published in 1935, and in the first two years its joint editors were Buddhadeb Bose and Premendra Mitra; Parichay was first published by Sudhindranath Datta from Kolkata.

11 Desh magazine was first established in 1933. Satyendranath Majumdar was its first founding editor.

12 Nova Express is a 1964 novel by American author William S. Burroughs. It was written using the 'fold-in' method, a version of the cut-up method. It is part of ‗The Nova Trilogy‘, or ‗Cut-Up Trilogy', together with The Soft Machine and The Ticket That Exploded.

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13 Allen Ginsberg (1926-1997) was a American poet and one of the leading figures of the ‗Beat Generation‘ of the 50s. Some of his renowned works are Howl and Other Poems, Empty Mirror: Early Poems, Plutonian Ode, Iron Horse, and Planet News among others.

14 Jibanananda Das (1899-1954) was one of the greatest and prominent figures in the post-Rabindranath Bengali poetry scenario, and he has a tremendous and immense influence upon the contemporary Bengali poetry. Some of his notable and significant works are Jhora Palok, Dhusor Pandulipi, Banalata Sen, Shreshtho Kabita, Alo Prithibi, Sudarshana and Satti Tarar Timir.

15 Shankha Ghosh quotes from Jibananda Das‘s famous poem ‗Itihasjan‘. The lines are translated by me.

Works Cited:

Ghosh, Shankha. ―Atmatriptir Baire,‖ Kabitar Muhurta. 1987. Kolkata: Anushtup, 2014. 7th ed. pp. 103-109.

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The Story

Translated from the Urdu “Kis Ki Kahani” by Gulzar.

By Sumbul Nasim

He is an Assistant Professor of English at Triveni Devi Bhalotia College, Raniganj, West Bengal. She completed her graduation and postgraduation from the University of Burdwan. Currently, she is pursuing her Ph. D on Saadat Hasan Manto‘s works from Kazi Nazrul University, Asansol, West Bengal. She has published papers in international journals and national-level edited books.

What a difficult name Annu had! I got to know about it when his story was published in the school magazine—―Anil Kumar Chattopadhyay, Class VI.‖

Since then he wanted to be a writer, and he was very creative also. I have always believed that the qualities of a poet or a writer are god-gifted, otherwise wouldn‘t everyone be a poet? And Annu had that in-born quality of great writers.

Even when we would play gilli-danda in the gulley, Annu would sit aloof with his copy, either writing or thinking something, and I used to be so curious to know what must be going on in his mind at that time...... How he creates a character in vacuum and transfers it onto the paper in front of him; then that character starts moving and walking; Annu sends him wherever he wants to, makes him do whatever he wants him to do and as the character keeps moving, the plot of the story gets woven. Gosh, these writers are just amazing!! They can kill anyone, they can give life to anyone. Isn‘t it so godly?

Annu laughed! We were in college at that time—―It‘s not like that. My characters are not imaginary. I don‘t even control them, rather they control me.‖ Now Annu had even started to talk like a writer and I loved it. I would beam with pride when his stories would get published in the Sunday edition of ―Partap‖, ―Milap‖

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or ―Jung.‖ I showed the newspaper to my mother, ―See, this is Annu‘s story. Anil Kumar Chattopadhyay I had told you about!‖

―Tell me what he has written,‖ my mother asked.

I narrated her the story. It was about a poor cobbler. My mother‘s eyes filled with tears, ―Arrey, this is the story of that cobbler, Bhikoo of our mohallah. The same happened with his mother.‖

I did not know this but quickly I repeated Annu‘s words, ―His stories are not imaginary, Ma. He does not ‗create‘ his characters rather he chooses them from his surrounding, and for this, one must keep open not only his eyes and ears but also the windows of his thought and understanding.‖

Ma was greatly impressed, perhaps with my words which were actually Annu‘s.

There was a big jamun tree in our gulley. Bhikoo cobbler used to sit under it. All the shoes and slippers of the whole mohallah used to go to him, and it was the favourite haunt of Annu too. His clothes might be dirty but Annu always kept his shoes shining.

Bhikoo was teaching his son Ghaseeta to stitch in a slipper. When I narrated him the story written by Annu, he choked, ―Only you people will understand our sorrows and grieves, Son. If you will not know our story, then who will?‖

Since that day, I started respecting Annu even more. He truly was a born writer.

------

After finishing college, I left Delhi and came to Bombay. I got a job here while Annu started helping his elder brother at his ―Baithak‖ from where his brother sold ayurvedic and homeopathy medicines. His brother was a government servant but every morning and evening, for two hours, he used to run this

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medical store from his living room (baithak). He had done a lot of canvassing to get Annu a government job, but to no avail.

Once when I went to Delhi on my sister‘s wedding, I met Annu and his brother. His brother was very ill. He said to me, ―Please tell Annu to do something worthwhile. What is the point of writing stories?‖

I remained silent. For a long time, he kept coughing and spitting the phlegm away. Then he spoke again, ―He will be back to his senses only if that bitch leaves him.‖

―Who is that bitch?‖, I asked Annu.

He answered, ―Story-writing! Brother keeps abusing and cursing it. He just doesn‘t understand. He treats the bodily diseases while I treat social and spiritual diseases. I put the bandage of my stories on the dripping wounds of the society; I give light to the exploited ones lost in darkness; I provide them with weapons to cut the shackle of mental slavery...... ‖

I wanted to clap at his words. He kept speaking for a long time. He told me that his first book was ready for publication, and that his stories were now getting published in the esteemed national literary journals. People even requested him to write for them but he could not oblige all. He was also writing a novel but because of ―Baithak‖, could not finish it any soon. His elder brother had been very ill of late, and he had two small children also. Those poor children!!...... He was thinking to write a story on them also.

Nowadays, his conversation would be laced with the names of great writers. I was familiar with some names, and not so familiar with others about whom he would tell me. After Saadat Hasan Manto, Ahmed Nadim Qasmi, Krishan Chander and Rajinder Singh Bedi, he was telling me the existentialism of Kafka and Sartre. I pointed out that this was not related to the story-writing or story but Anil Kumar Chattopadhyay taught me, ―A story does not mean the details of

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the incidents of the plot and the relation among its characters. Mental impressions of incidents also give birth to story and its aesthetic effects...... ‖

I didn‘t understand what he was saying. Nevertheless I was impressed by the weight of what he was saying.

Once Anil came to Bombay to participate in a writers‘ conference. I showed him his four signed books which I had always preserved. I used to flaunt these books in front of my friends. Such a big writer! And now he was staying at my house. I asked him about the story he was thinking to write about his brother‘s children, ―Did you write that?‖

He answered me a tragic news, ―My brother passed away and my family pressurised me to marry my widowed sister-in-law. I had to give in. Now I am the father of those two children...... ‖

After a few days, Anil went back.

Often I read about him in newspapers. Whenever he had a new book published, he would always send me a copy.

After many years, I happened to go to Delhi. I took along my wife also because I wanted her to meet my writer-friend.

It was evening. Under the same jamun tree, Annu had given his shoes to Ghaseeta to polish them...... It was still his favourite haunt. Again, our conversation veered towards story and story-writing......

―The biggest challenge of the modern story is the changing aspect of the reality. Reality is not only what we see rather actual reality is that which we don‘t see with our eyes. Story does not mean a reasonable thing only, rather story is the name of that feeling which occurs in the unconscious of its characters...... ‖

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With gaping mouth I was listening to him. Anil went on, ―In the last fifty years, a big change has occurred in our stories. Our stories have developed so much in these fifty years that in any corner of the world...... ‖

Pushing the shining shoes forward, Ghaseeta said, ―Whose story are you talking about, Bhai Saab? The people about whom you write stories have seen no progress. I have replaced my father just as you have replaced your brother. So which story has progressed...... ?‖

Ghaseeta started stitching another slipper.

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An Interview

Lakshmandas: A Young Performing Baul

Interviewed by Aju Mukhopadhyay

An Image of a Baul

A scene floats in my mind: A Baul in ochre alkhalla or robe playing ektara, a one-stringed drone instrument in hand, dancing with rhythm of the anklet, singing in full throated voice reverberating in the banks of the flowing river and the vast paddy fields blessed with paddies half-ripe, while the half clear golden- scarlet sky of the dawn above the earth witnesses the self-forgetting action of the man; rarely seen by other humans. Soon the scene shifts to another: a Baul apparelled in the same way, dancing in a crowded train occupies his place. He too is self forgetting except when someone wishes to drop a coin or two into his begging bowl. After some stations he gets down and another of his ilk enters the compartment singing another song to be patronized by the passengers. This happens in certain stations where live the Bauls, people of a sect free from usual religious boundaries, worshipping God in simple ways untouched by or not sanctioned by shastras. Bauls have resemblances with the Sufis, a sect having relations with Islam but not bound by it.

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Lakshmandas Baul lives in Tamaltala Ashram, a small Vaishnav Akhda, situated within the vast Kadamkhandi cremation ground in Jaydev Kenduli or Kedubilva village where a three-day mela with a vast gathering of five to six lakh people is held on the last day of the Bengali month of Paush that falls in January every year in the bank of Ajoy river at Kendubilva. It coincides with the greater gathering of pilgrims at Ganga Sagar Mela at the confluence of river Ganga as it falls in the sea, the Bay of Bengal. Time being auspicious Kumbha Mela is also organized at this time at intervals elsewhere, Allahabad. Born at Aroa village at a distance of 15 km, Lakshmandas came and settled in Jaydev Kenduli Ashram at the early age of seven years. Now he is 39 years old and is de facto in-charge of the Akhda or the ashram founded by his Guru, late Sudhirdas Baul, where lives his Guru-ma or wife of his late Guru. With high pitch melodious voice and agility to move round at every turn of his musical cadence, dancing with laughing face, absorbed in his own song, Lakshmandas spell binds his audience. His performance promises further perfection to higher and greater heights.

Q- Are you a family man? Do you think of marrying if not yet married? Ans- Yes I am married for some years. Q- How many children do you have? Ans-I have a son of seven years. Q- How did you get married? Was it registered?

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Ans- Usually in our Vaishnav society marriages are vowed by exchanging mala and pasting chandan or sandalwood paste on our face and body. But I was married as usual following the Hindu rites. It was not registered. Q-Is your wife initiated in the line? Does she too perform? Ans- No. She isn‘t. She is a housewife. Q- Tell me about your parents and childhood Ans-My father was Radhapada Das, a peasant. He sang Vaishnav padas. My pet name is Lakhi. I lived with my parents for seven years only. We belonged to Aroa village, 15 km away from my place of settlement at Joydev Kenduli. This famous place on the bank of Ajoy has a distance of 30 km from Durgapur and 20 km from Shantiniketan. Q- Which religion do you belong to? Is the life of Baul independent of any other religion? Ans- In broader sense I belong to Hindu religion but of Vaishnav sect. Bauls are beyond the strict clutch of any religion or sect. Usually Vaishnavs sang and begged as Bauls though Kali sadhaks too so sang and some of them accepted the Baul path voluntarily. There are Muslims too who are Bauls and live with us. Baul is a way of life. We learn everything from our Gurus whose utterances are mantras to us. We serve them to get their blessings and overall help. Q- Are you one of the Baul families in the village being influenced by some of your ancestors, family members or neighbours? Or else how have you come into this life? Please tell us your life from the beginning till this date. Ans-It‘s a very simple life. It was simpler up to my seven years. My father sang and danced like some other elders of our sect. I was attuned to this way of life from my childhood without any one asking me to do it. Sudhirdas Baul was the founder of Tamaltala Ashram. Both my parents were his followers and used to

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visit the ashram. And I too accompanied them. From my childhood I felt intense attraction towards this life of Baul, or singing and dancing freely, of worshipping the God and Goddess, Krishna and Radha. Q- Why have you chosen this life? Ans- There‘s a freedom in dancing under the sky without any prearrangement. Freedom percolated in me from my childhood. The choice was imperative as I grew up. Yes, I loved to be a Baul. Q- Are you deeply involved in this life and livelihood? Are you involved into the intricacies of this life? Ans- Yes, I am involved but there hasn‘t much of intricacy in it. I was involved but have not been a brahmachari or celibate doing sadhana. Frankly speaking, such lifelong devotees, giving up everything for the sake of God, living the life of itinerant mendicant on begging like our elders Purnadas Baul, Sanatandas Baul, Kartikdas Baul or Phulamala Dasi has become rarer now. Q- Do you think it a profession? Do you earn from your profession? Or just it‟s a way of your life? Ans- That I cannot say exactly. I don‘t go begging though my juniors go singing from door to door for raising funds for the ashram. I live the ashram life of a grihi with family. We have our separate rooms in the ashram compound. I have been performing for the last ten years. I go for performing sometimes as invited and get some honorarium, not fees exactly. That‘s my way of earning. Q- Did you ever move in trains or village paths or elsewhere begging from the public for earning your livelihood? Ans- I sang in groups even on roads but not in the sense of begging and not alone. Q- How and from whom have you learnt the songs and dance? How many Gurus have you come across?

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Ans- I learnt dance performance mainly from Sudhirdas Baul and sometimes from Bnakashyamdas Baul. I sing the songs of renowned mahajans or composers like Lalan Fakir, Haure Goswami, jadubindu Baul, Radhashyamdas Baul, Nilkantha Mukhopadhyay and Madan Goswami. Q- What are the instruments you usually use? I use both Ektara and Dotara or one stringed and two stringed instruments. I also use Khamok for drumming and Anandalahari for bringing finer sense into the whole. Q- Do you feel utmost pleasure in living like this and performing? Ans- Of course I feel fulfilled in performing, moving round and living the life of a Baul though I admit that ours is not that perfect Baul life as expected. However, I strive for perfection, as much possible. Q- What are the places you have performed so far? Ans- I have performed in towns and villages of West Bengal and some major cities like Mumbai, Delhi and Kolkata. I also performed at places in the province of Rajasthan. I have done it in Morocco, Switzerland, London and Singapore. Q- Are there more people in your group or are you alone? Ans- I am alone but when I go places I find others too presenting their performances. I find somewhere more Bauls. Sometimes I am invited in groups. I must here mention that Parvathy Baul whom I call didi, has immensely helped me in my foreign tours. Without her help I would not have been able to go to such places of international repute. Q- What are your plans for future? Ans- What else than living in Tamaltala Ashram and working for its development and expansion?

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Cultural mediation in the translation of The God of Small Things to Brazilian Portuguese.

Sandra Keli Florentino Veríssimo dos Santos

Date of birth: 09/18/1967

Nationality: Brazilian

E-mail: [email protected]

Education: Degree in Letters ( English-Portuguese) Master and PhD in Translation Studies from Universidade Federal de Santa Catarina (2018) Professional experience: English teaching and translation

This work presents a review on the translation of the book The god of small things (1997) by the Indian writer Arundhati Roy, into Brazilian portuguese, O deus das pequenas coisas (1998), by José Rubens Siqueira, on the perspective of the post-colonial studies. It focus on the marks left by the Brazilian translator, in which was observed to have ―paratexts‖, absent in the source text, that explain the meaning of words in Hindi, Malayalam, Tamil, Urdu and Turkish. It aims, briefly, to raise questions regarding on how the translator´s choice valorize the source text, considering post-colonial theories. The discussion will be based on the light of the scholar Peter Torop´s concept of culture (1995).

Key words: The god of small things. Arundhati Roy. O Deus das pequenas coisas. Brazilian portuguese translation. Post colonial studies.

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Post colonial studies, among other perspectives, open space for the intellectual production of the people of the ex-colonies, whose visibility was, or still is, obscured in comparison to the vast cultural legacy of the hegemonic systems. Furthermore, they contribute to a re-reading of the civilizations which, for a long period, were described unilaterally from a point of view centered on Europe. In other words, the main contribution of the post colonial theories is to bring to light the writings of those who, whether from force majeure or not, kept themselves on a peripheral position, condemned to occupy a position of ―minor literature‖. The post colonial point of view identifies the relationship of power and in which way these ties leave tracks of the destruction or reconstruction of identities.

Works which portray how the impact of imperialism perpetuates in the customs, language and the social-family relationships of a decolonized country, contribute to broaden the critical vision of the reader, making him see from the eyes of the ‗Other‘, who was dominated and excluded from the political, social and intellectual processes. In this case, the differences among the people, formerly in the relation of colonized and colonizer, are related from the perspective of the dominated people, decentralizing the discourse of the hegemonic literature which quite often conceals the relations of the domination.

For these and other reasons, I chose the Brazilian translation of the book ―The God of Small Things‖, in Portuguese, ―O Deus Das Pequenas Coisas‖ (1998), translated by José Rubens Siqueira, as a relevant object of study from the perspective described above. The book, published by the Indian writer Arundhati Roy in 1997, portrays partially the social intercourse between the various languages spoken in India, among them Hindi, the second language listed among the twenty two recognized by the Federal Government, and English, relegated to the second official language in 1965. The work won the author The Booker Prize, in 1997.

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The story has among its principal characters two children, the twins Estha and Rahel, whose lives are transformed by an incident, and who, from then on, realize that ―Things can change a life in one day‖5. The twins´ cousin, Sophie Mol, coming from England, personifies the differences in linguistics and customs between two cultures that coexist but at the same time in conflict. The metaphor used to represent the superiority of the English people is revealed in the constant repetitions in the words and thoughts of the twins, from Kerala, about the episode of the arrival of Sophie Mol. She is described as the one who had the color and the gestures of those who deserved admiration. On the other hand, the twins and their mother, Ammu, and Velutha, the untouchable, represent the victims of prejudice and exclusion and at the same time the voices of defiance. Occasionally, the inadequate use of the English language by the twins is used as an excuse to break the rules. Forced to promise to speak only in English, as well as being led to believe that English sounds better than the Malayalam language, they pronounce the words back to front, under the reprimand of the patriarch of the family. Possibly, a metaphoric form found by the author to reproduce a subversive act or the refusal by the colonized to assimilate the culture of the colonizer.

This attention to ‗the Other‘ from the perspective of the colonized made me reflect about the importance of the translation of this work as an intercultural exchange and, in addition, stimulated my curiosity about the marks left by its rewriter, in this case, the Brazilian translator. And it was from this suspicion point that I started a search for traces of the contribution of the translator to the enrichment and valorization of the linguistic content which permeates this story of ups and downs.

The first point observed in the Brazilian translation of the work was the importance given by the translator to the terms in Hindi, Malayalam, Tamil, Urdu

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and Turkish quoted diffusely in the source text, where they are presented in italics, at random, and their meanings are not explained, counting on the research of the reader. In the Brazilian version, however, foreign terms are always highlighted and when they are not translated in the text, they are defined in the glossary at the end of the edition. This paratext, among others, presented in the target text facilitates a closer contact between the reader and the work, insofar as it amplifies the reader´s understanding of the original culture and permits the construction of concepts on more solid bases.

The second question to be emphasized is the fact that the translator, in many moments, has realized an ethno-centric translation, which is readable for the recipient culture, with adaptations of expressions to make them understandable for the reader from the target system. In this way at the same time that the foreign voice echoes constantly in the target text, because of the emphasis given to the words and expressions from the various dialects of India, it flows freely, without apparently seeming odd to the Brazilian reader.

In face of the above findings as well as other traces of differences between the initial text and the translation indicating a certain liberty of choice on the part of the translator such as, for example, inserting words, extending sentences or even finding other solutions to facilitate the understanding of the reader, I propose the following questions: To what extent does the emphasis given to the foreign terms in the translation as well as the paratexts, absent in the source text, represent a relevant role in the valorization of the original text, considering its characteristic as post-colonial literature, and therefore bringing it closer to a demystifying work about the Òther, the unknown, in which the perspective and the idiosyncrasy of colonized people presents itself more forcefully? In which way do some strategies of translation of ethno-centric character provide a better flow in the interpretation of the meaning of the phrases and expressions for Brazilian readers? How does the translation of a work realized by a writer of Hindu origin which addresses cultural aspects of an ex-colony, denouncing the marks left by the denomination, among them the loss of identity, the assimilation of a culture which is said to be superior and

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consequently the devaluation or erasing of their own traditions, contribute to enhance this type of literature?

The scholar Peeter Torop (1995) considers the process of translation inseparable from the concept of culture. According to Torop, knowledge of the language constitutes a very relevant element in understanding a cultural system. In this way it becomes important to deepen the analysis of the choices of the translator not only from a linguistic bias but also from the viewpoint of the post colonial theory. By providing an understanding of the terms in languages considered minor within the same socio-political system which exists in India, that is, putting them in a position of high profile within the text, among other translation decisions, the translator becomes the author´s accomplice. In the words of Tobias Doring (1995) this is the function of a ―get between‖, someone who intervenes. In this way, the existence of different translation strategies in the same text, quoting the example of those which are called ―foreignizing‖ and ―domesticating‖ can be digested by the principal of translation ethic provided that they are in harmony with the meaning of the source text. This possible coexistence, however, is not well accepted by some theorists, for example, Friedrich Schleiermacher (1813) when it refers to the two different methods of translation quoted above. According to the scholar, they are very different, therefore, the translator should choose one of them, otherwise the work will not be very reliable.

In fact, what really matter is that translations are one of the reflexes of the fortune that a work accumulates, because it is through them that the text lives and relives in different literary systems. The ways in which a work, at any rate, is transformed through its translation, might stimulate criticism or praise. Meanwhile, through the translation, masterpieces like The God of Small Things may circulate in eclectic spaces, transforming them or at least provoking a positive restlessness.

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I n d i a n Journal of Comparative Literature and translation Studies

References

DÖRING, Tobias. Translating Cultures?Towards a rethoric of Cross- Cultural Communication. Erfurt Electronic Studies in English, v.1, 1995.

GENETTE, Gérard. Paratextos Editoriais. São Paulo: Ateliê Editorial, 2009, 376 p.

GENETTE, Gérard. Palimpsestes. La littérature au second degré. Paris: Seuil. 1982.

HALLL, Stuart. Da diáspora: Identidades e mediações culturais. Belo Horizonte: UFMG, 2003.

ROY, Arundhati. The God of small things. New York: Harper Collins publishers, 1997.

ROY, Arundhati. O Deus Das Pequenas Coisas. Tradução de José Rubens Siqueira. São Paulo: Companhia Das Letras, 1998.

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I n d i a n Journal of Comparative Literature and translation Studies

SHLEIRERMACHER, Frederich. Sobre os diferentes métodos de tradução. Tradução de M.Von.Muhlen. In: Heidermann, W. (org). Clássicos da teoria da tradução: antologia bilíngüe, alemão-português (vol.1). Florianópolis: UFSC, Núcleo de tradução, 2001.

SOUZA, T. M. Lynn Mario. Hibridismo e tradução cultural em Bhabha. In: Benjamin Abdalla Jr. Margens da cultura e outras misturas. São Paulo: Bontempo, 2004.

TOROP, Peeter. Translation as translating as culture. Sign Systems Studies. Tartu: Tartu University Press, v.30, n.2, p. 595- 605, 2002.

Volume 4, Number 1, February, 2019, (IJCLTS) ISSN: 2321-8274, 175 http://ijclts.wordpress.com/