Charudutta Panigrahi introduces us to to the eighteenth century literary giant, Upendra Bhanja, who gave up his crown for the love of words. Click here to read.
Ravi Varmman K Kanniappan highlights the contemporariness of Sangam Literature with discussion about a narrative based on trust and power politics. Click hereto read.
Five poems by Hrushikesh Mallick have been translated from Odia by Snehaprava Das
AFTER THEY LEAVE
After they leave, The tree in the midst of a bare field Stands forlorn. Not a single bird, Nor the sound of chirping anywhere Not a leaf flutters in the breeze, No one speaks a word After they leave.
The world is a meaningless void When they are not there. Flowers bloom and wither aimlessly. Festive seasons come and depart. The privileged and the poor come and go Without making an impact. Silence reigns everywhere and around When they are not there.
Living in a pattern, Like, in every moth-hour ‘Chhatu bhai’ riding back From the village market, ringing the bicycle bell, Or, farmers sitting on a platform in the evenings And deciding which patch of the land Would be plowed next morning, Like, the moon coming up routinely At measured intervals, And discussions centering around How ‘Gaya-bhai’ Escaped the wrath of the village-goddess Last night by a sheer miracle. Routine life continues Like rice cooking tender in the kitchen-hearth While cow-dung cakes are put To smoulder in the cowsheds. The regular pattern of living Is dull and cheerless In their absence. Who are they, then? Who indeed? They are the fragrance of the paddy-buds In the farmlands by the hillside, They are the Siju bushes that Grow under the eaves in the backyard, They are the sound of the clearing of throat That inspires courage in a fearful heart On a dark pathway, They are the drumbeats floating in In gentle waves from the neighbouring village, They are the pallbearers that twine ropes To make a pyre; And, after they leave life loses its meaning!
WHEN THERE IS NO GOD
Once you join your palms sitting on the bed while going to sleep or, as you wake up, worries stop disturbing your calm. You are assured of the presence of someone called God who might break your fall. But these are the bleak days of God’s absence, these days the headless bodies saunter down the streets of the night whispering to one another. The dogs howl in a chorus. The sounds of sermons or devotional songs do not float in from the mandapa, the air throbs instead with the siren of ambulances. As such belief is that the God that holds the trident and the mace is omnipotent. Why does that God stand dull and lifeless in the temple now? Does an idol in any temple have the power now even to chase away the stray dogs? Is there a God in any shrine who can hold open its closed doors and by some miracle turn auspicious all that is ominous? In these dark days when God is not there, if we take a fall, we have to get up on our own. We have to lean on our own mettle and our own merit in the moments of death or survival. In the absence of God, we have to commit ourselves to the service of the distressed, to feed the hungry and nurse the sick, give shelter to the homeless. It’s time we repented our indulgences without religious extravaganza. It’s time we stopped pinning blind faith in the figures of stone.
THE LONE GIRL
The lone girl has nowhere to go, She sits alone lamenting her loss; Once upon a time she had a country like we all have, it was called Syria. Its lofty national flag soared to the clouds. It had a national anthem that sparked the spirit of martyrdom in its people!
In the evenings, perched on the shoulders of her babajaan, she watched the moon in the sky of her homeland; heard stories from her mother that set her eyes rolling in wonder; that country, her homeland is now in ruins a vast, barren expanse, littered with severed limbs. Its air is sick with the smell of tons and tons of explosives there lay piles of disfigured childhood in pathetic abandon to tell the tale of a country that was!
No one had ever warned the girl that her tomorrows will be spent in makeshift shelters under the tents, nor did she know that her palms would join to make begging bowl, and there would be merchants to trade on the perfumed void in her. No one predicted that she would grow up believing in hatred instead of love! And when she would learn to ask the whereabouts of her parents the whole civilized world will keep mute.
EYES
Just as I believed that all poems which could have been written on ‘eyes’ are already written your ‘eyes’ flashed before me and what an amazing lot of trees laden with fruits and flowers and birds, they held! I wondered where did you flick your deep, boundless glance from the corridors of the hospital like a handful of floral offerings. The anguish that glance held was like the lost look in the eyes of a kid who was rudely denied a father’s lap, like a fresh bloom shying away from the eyes of a honeybee or, a streak of lightning flashing in the overcast noon-sky like a poor man’s last hope. Your eyes are like the lines of a poem that unfold a new meaning at every other reading. Your eyes, like a strange horizon captures the crimson of the dawn and the gleam of a red silk sari in a perfect balance! Your eyes could transform a waste land to a paddy field in luxuriant green, at times they are moist with muffled sobs, or, like a spear smeared in blood, at others! What is more beautiful -- the bright loquacity in your eyes or the rain-washed sunshine, the mysterious mutter in your eyes or a village enveloped in a wispy darkness?
THE HONEYBEE DOES NOT KNOW
The son writes poems. His mother does not know. ‘You are rotting yourself through writing,’ She complains, ‘Did you write them?’ A girl-friend, looks at him in wonder, ‘Can you swear to that?’ she asks. The boy writes poems The street where he lives does not know it, Nor does the village! His young face does not sport a beard, Nor have the creases appeared on his forehead. There was not that distant look Like the faraway stars in the eyes, How could then he be a poet? Who would believe that? A man who picks up a quarrel with the fisherwoman Could recite the brajabuli, Or, the fellow weaving clothes at the loom Can sing lines from Tapaswini
A poet is not supposed to have a home. He sits under the trees Amidst the anthills. A poet hacks off the branch he sits on. He does not have that worldly intelligence. A poet is not pragmatic. He begins a line at the wrong point And ends it at a wrong one too. A good poet forgets the right way of chanting The mantra that would protect him from dangers While actually facing them.
The mother does not know that Her son is a poet; nor does the father. The owner of the hut where the poet takes shelter Does not know his tenant to be a poet. The poet’s voice does not know It belongs to a poet. The reflection has no idea it is the poet’s image. The lizard exploring the shelves Does not know the ‘Award of Padmashree’ Carefully preserved there, Was won by the poet. The honeybee that circles the graves Does not know that The lines engraved on the tomb Were the epitaph for the poet.
Glossary: Mandapa is a pavilion. Brajabuli is a dialect based on Maithali that was popularised for poetry by the medieval poet Vidyapati. Tapaswini: A famous long poem by the 19th century Odia poet Gangadhar Meher.
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Dr Hrushikesh Mallick is a reputed Odia poet and writer. He has 13 Poetry collections. His first book in 1987 heralded a new era in Odia poetry. He has received Odisha Sahitya Akademi Award (1988), Sarala Award (2016) and Central Sahitya Akademi Award (2021).He is also an eminent literary critic and fiction writer. He served as President of Odisha Sahitya Akademi (2021-2024). He has been a professor of Odia language and literature from 2012.
Dr.Snehaprava Das, is a noted writer and a translator from Bhubaneswar, Odisha. She has five books of poems, three of stories and thirteen collections of translated texts (from Odia to English), to her credit.
PLEASE NOTE: ARTICLES CAN ONLY BE REPRODUCED IN OTHER SITES WITH DUE ACKNOWLEDGEMENT TO BORDERLESS JOURNAL
Translations are like bridges. Three years ago, we decided to start a bridge between Tagore’s ideas and the world that was unfamiliar with his language, Bengali. He has of course written a few pieces in Brajbuli too. We started our journey into the territory of Tagore translations with Aruna Chakravarti’s Songs of Tagore. Now we have expanded hugely this section of our translations with many prose pieces and more translations of his lyrics and poetry by writers like Aruna Chakravarti, Fakrul Alam, Radha Chakravarty, Somdatta Mandal, Himadri Lahiri, Ratnottama Sengupta, Chaitali Sengupta and Nishat Atiya other than our team’s efforts. To all these translators our heartfelt thanks. We share with you their work celebrating one of the greatest ideators of the world.
Prose
Stories
.Aparichitaby Tagore :This short story has been translated as The Stranger by Aruna Chakravarti. Click hereto read.
Musalmanir Galpa(A Muslim Woman’s Story): This short story has been translated by Aruna Chakravarti. Clickhere to read.
One Small Ancient Tale: Rabindranath Tagore’s Ekti Khudro Puraton Golpo (One Small Ancient Tale) from his collection Golpo Guchcho ( literally, a bunch of stories) has been translated by Nishat Atiya. Click hereto read.
Bolai: Story of nature and a child translated by Chaitali Sengupta. Click hereto read.
Baraf Pora (Snowfall) : This narrative gives a glimpse of Tagore’s first experience of snowfall in Brighton and published in the Tagore family journal, Balak (Children), has been translated by Somdatta Mandal . Clickhere to read.
Himalaya Jatra( A trip to Himalayas) :This narrative about Tagore’s first trip to Himalayas and beyond with his father, has been translated from his Jibon Smriti (1911, Reminiscenses) by Somdatta Mandal. Click here to read.
Library: A part of Bichitro Probondho(Strange Essays) by Rabindranath Tagore, this essay was written in 1885, translated by Chaitali Sengupta. Click hereto read.
Book Excerpts
The Parrot’s Tale: Excerpted from Rabindranth Tagore. The Land of Cards: Stories, Poems and Plays for Children, translated by Radha Chakravarty, with a foreword from Mahasweta Devi. Clickhere to read
Rabindranath Tagore Four Chapters: An excerpt from a brilliant new translation by Radha Chakravarty of Tagore’s controversial last novel Char Adhyay. Click here to read.
Farewell Song :An excerpt from Radha Chakravarty’s translation of Tagore’s novel. Click hereto read.
Oikotan(Harmonising) has been translated by Professor Fakrul Alam and published specially to commemorate Tagore’s Birth Anniversary. Click hereto read.
Monomor Megher O Shongi (or The Cloud, My friend) has been translated by Professor Fakrul Alam. Click here to read.
Professor Fakrul Alam has translated Tomra Ja Bolo Tai Bolo, Hridoy Chheele Jege and Himer Raate — three songs around autumn from Clickhere to read.
Tagore’sAchhe Dukhu, Achhe Mrityu, (Sorrow Exists, Death Exists) has been translated from Bengali by Fakrul Alam. Click hereto read.
Tagore’s long poem, Dushomoy (translated as Journey of Hope though literally the poem means bad times). Click here to read the poem in English and listen to Tagore’s voice recite his poem in Bengali. We also have a sample of the page of his diary where he first wrote the poem as ‘Swarga Pathhe'(On the Path to Heaven).
Deliverance by Tagore: ‘Tran’by Tagore, a prayer for awakening of the subjugated. Click here to read the translation.
Abhisar byTagore: A story poem about a Buddhist monk by Rabindranath Tagore in Bengali. Click here to read the translation.
Amaar Nayano Bhulano Eledescribes early autumn when the festival of Durga Puja is celebrated. Click here to read the translation from Bengali.
Morichika or Mirage by Tagoreis an early poem of the maestro that asks the elites to infringe class divides and mingle. Click here to read the translation from Bengali.
Pochishe Boisakh(25th of Baisakh) is a birthday poem Tagore wrote in 1922 and from he derived the lyrics of his last birthday song written in 1941. Click here to read.
Chhora or Rhymes, a poem describing the creative process, it was written in 1941. Click here to read.
Okale or Out of Syncgives a glimpse of how out of sync situations are also part of our flow. Click here to read.
Mrityu or Death dwells on Tagore’s ability to accept death as a reality. Clickhere to read.
Songs of Tagore: Seven songs translated by Aruna Chakravarti from a collection that started her on her litrary journey and also our Tagore translation section. Click here to read.
Vincent Van Gogh written is different scripts. Courtesy:Creative Commons
The whole world opens up in the realm of ideas that have existed wafting and bridging across time and space. Sometimes they find conduits to come to the fore, even though they find expression in different languages, under varied cultural milieus. One way of connecting these ideas is to translate them into a single language. And that is what many have started to do. Celebrating writers and translators who have connected us with these ideas across boundaries of time and place, we bring to you translated writings in English from twenty eight languages on the International Translation Day, from some of the most iconic thinkers as well as from contemporary voices.
Prose
Tagore’s short story, Aparichita, has been translated from Bengali as The Stranger by Aruna Chakravarti. Click hereto read.
Nadir Ali’s The Kabbadi Player has been translated from Punjabi by Amna Ali. Click here to read.
Kamaleswar Barua’s Uehara by has been translated from Assamese and introduced by Bikash K. Bhattacharya. Click here to read.
S Ramakrishnan’s Muhammad Ali’s Singnature has been S. Ramakrishnan, translated from Tamil by Dr B. Chandramouli. Click here to read.
PF Mathews’Mercy, has been translated from Malayalam by Ram Anantharaman. Click here to read.
Road to Nowhere, an unusual story about a man who heads for suicide, translated from Odiya by the author, Satya Misra. Click here to read.
An excerpt from A Handful of Sesame by Shrinivas Vaidya, translated from Kannada by Maithreyi Karnoor. Click hereto read.
Writings from Pandies’ Cornerhighlight the ongoing struggle against debilitating rigid boundaries drawn by societal norms. Each piece is written in Hindustani and then translated by a volunteer from Pandies’ in English. Clickhere to read.
Rakhamaninov’s Sonata, a short story by Sherzod Artikov, translated from Uzbeki by Nigora Mukhammad. Click hereto read.
Of Days and Seasons, a parable by the eminent Dutch writer, Louis Couperus (1863-1923), translated by Chaitali Sengupta. Click here to read.
The Faithful Wife, a folktale translated from Balochi by Fazal Baloch. Click hereto read.
An excerpt from Ramy Al-Asheq’sEver Since I Did Not Die, translated from Arabic by Isis Nusair, edited by Levi Thompson. The author was born in a refugee camp. Click here to read.
Poetry
Two songs byTagore written originally in Brajabuli, a literary language developed essentially for poetry in the sixteenth century, has been translated by Radha Chakravarty. Click here to read.
Rebel or ‘Bidrohi’, Nazrul’s signature poem, ‘Bidrohi‘, translated from Bengali by Professor Fakrul Alam. Click here to read.
Banlata Sen, Jibananada Das’s iconic poem, translated from Bengali by Professor Fakrul Alam. Click here to read.
