Title: The Greatest Indian Stories Ever Told: Fifty Masterpieces from the Nineteenth Century to the Present
Editor: Arunava Sinha
Publisher: Aleph Book Company
The Indian subcontinent has had a long tradition of storytelling that is referred to as ‘contes’ or tales, by the French. ‘Kathasaritsagar‘ by Somdev in Sanskrit compiled in the 11th century CE is a great example of this. Flavourful folk tales can also be found in renditions after the 11th Century CE — like the ‘Singhasan Battisi’[1].
Various Indian languages soon adopted this genre, gaining popularity throughout the country. Over the past 150 years, hundreds of memorable and popular stories have been written in more than 20 different languages. There are many ways in which they have become cultural cornerstones. Even those who do not read books often quote from a Premchand story or refer to a Tagore character in conversation. There are more people who know about our recent history as a result of Manto’s stories than any other history book published.
The Greatest Indian Stories Ever Told: Fifty Masterpieces from the Nineteenth Century to the Present edited by Arunava Sinha, is a welcome addition to the genre.As an English translator, Sinha specialises in translating Bengali fiction and non-fiction from Bangladesh and India into English, including classic, contemporary, and modern works. More than seventy of his translations have been published so far in India, UK, and USA. He has twice won India’s top translation prize, the Crossword Award for translated books. He teaches at Ashoka University, where he is also the co-director of the Ashoka Centre for Translation.
This anthology contains stories that draw inspiration from a wide range of Indian regional dialects, languages, literature, and cultures, and includes early masters of the form, contemporary stars, and brilliant writers who came of age during the twenty-first century.
Among these authors are some of the most revered in Indian literature and have, between them, won almost every major literary award, including the Nobel Prize for Literature, the Jnanpith Award, the Sahitya Akademi Award as well as numerous other honours at the state, national, and international level.
There is a plethora of literary delights in this collection, from Tagore’s evocative prose to Amrita Pritam’s emotional depth, from Ruskin Bond’s enchanting stories to Mahasweta Devi’s thought-provoking stories. It is a treasure trove of narratives translated to or written in English. If all these weaving the colours of the diversities in India are to be savoured across all the Indian states with diverse languages, they need to be in English. Collections of some of the best literary short fiction written by Indian writers began to emerge in the country at the end of the nineteenth century. And now in the twenty first century, the trend has been retained by this collection.
A must-have for any Indian literature enthusiast, The Greatest Indian Stories Ever Told provides a literary journey that explores space and time, which makes it a precious collector’s item that will become a valuable over time. Anyone who is interested in India’s rich cultural heritage as well as the rich tapestry of Indian storytelling should definitely read this anthology in order to gain some insight into the country’s rich cultural heritage. It promises to be an exciting and enticing literary feast, leaving readers awe-struck and enriched by the depth and beauty of Indian storytelling whether you are familiar with these eminent authors or are new to them, regardless of whether you know their work or not.
.
[1] Collection of ancient Indian folk tales; Literally, 32 tales of the throne, compiled after the 11th century CE
.
PLEASE NOTE: ARTICLES CAN ONLY BE REPRODUCED IN OTHER SITES WITH DUE ACKNOWLEDGEMENT TO BORDERLESS JOURNAL
WAKEFUL STAYS THE DOOR
Fear—a lustrous ring
gleams in a moment
and fades in the next.
The wind sweeps through
the streets and alleys.
When silence clings to one’s feet,
voices echo into existence.
After all, how long,
how long can dogs bark?
The moment, the heart regresses,
eyes make a retreat.
Just a while before they withdraw,
a shred of cloud appears beside the moon
and veils the ring.
Dreams hold the
whole world in a pledge.
Wakeful just stays the door.
Night waits for the moment
when the maidservant drifts to sleep.
From collar to sleeves
down to the edge of the lap,
whispers of her robe float in the wind.
But who would hear that?
Mountains fly like birds,
but who would see them?
Lamps go down into the graves of eyes
and whispers entwine around the hands.
Onlookers who bear witness cease to exist.
Without any aim or purpose,
Wage or greed,
Words or vow,
wakeful stays the door.
Munir Momin is a contemporary Balochi poet widely cherished for his sublime art of poetry. Meticulously crafted images, linguistic finesse and profound aesthetic sense have earned him a distinguished place in Balochi literature. His poetry speaks through images, more than words. Momin’s poetry flows far beyond the reach of any ideology or socio-political movement. Nevertheless, he is not ignorant of the stark realities of life. The immenseness of his imagination and his mastery over the language rescues his poetry from becoming the part of any mundane narrative. So far Munir has published seven collections of his poetry and an anthology of short stories. His poetry has been translated into Urdu, English and Persian. He also edits a literary journal called Gidár.
Fazal Baloch is a Balochi writer and translator. He has translated many Balochi poems and short stories into English. His translations have been featured in Pakistani Literature published by Pakistan Academy of Letters and in the form of books and anthologies.
.
PLEASE NOTE: ARTICLES CAN ONLY BE REPRODUCED IN OTHER SITES WITH DUE ACKNOWLEDGEMENT TO BORDERLESS JOURNAL
Recently, a realisation dawned – it has been over a year since I have watched an adaptation of a Jane Austen novel as a film or television series. My earliest memories of watching them go back to 1995, when the BBC’s version of Pride and Prejudice was released – I would watch the DVDs, or episodes on YouTube, with some enthusiasm. Over the years, I didn’t lose a chance to watch others: Sense and Sensibility, (film), Emma (BBC television series) Pride and Prejudice (film) and so many others. Looking at the comments on YouTube, it was evident that the Jane Austen adaptation fandom was large, and on a global scale. The seamless way in which the adaptations were consumed in so many Indian homes, including mine, puzzled me. I was familiar with the novels, as I had been a student of English literature in postcolonial departments in India, but that could not be true of so many others.
I fretted about the fact that my literary moorings were not so much in my own mother-tongues, but in English. Middle-class India was forgetting its own languages. English has crept in slowly, unnoticed. We could of course, think like Chinua Achebe, the Nigerian novelist, for whom writing about our own cultural contexts, our histories, landscapes, and memories in English, changes the texture of that language, and diminishes its colonizing weight. It is also the attitude, conscious or unconscious, of so many Indian writers in English. Curiously not many Indian producers have picked up on the idea of serializing the novels of these writers – either in English or in an Indian translation – which should be easy to do. It was the BBC that first produced an Indian novel – Vikram Seth’s novel, A Suitable Boy as a television series (for a global audience).
The Kenyan writer Ngugi wa Thiong’o has a much more radical perspective than Achebe – that it is not enough for people in previously colonised cultures to write in English, nor to claim it as their own. The very process by which English was acquired was violent and repressive. “(So) wherever you look at modern colonialism, the acquisition of the language of the coloniser was based on the death of the languages of the colonised. So it is a war zone.” Unless previously colonised cultures begin to train to think in their mother tongues again, he says, we will never really be able to shake off the mantle of colonisation.
This is a compelling, if daunting prospect – the work of decolonizing our minds perhaps begins within the education system which, in India, shows little inclination to change – it continues to lie in the shadows of the Anglo-American system, as it has for centuries. I draw comfort from Achebe’s attitude to English, which is the reality of many Indians. I don’t have to give up on Austen. But how do we rescue ourselves, and Austen? A critical and self-aware engagement with Austen – both the novels and the adaptations – seems to be a good place to begin. Reading Austen is arduous for those not born into English: I could hear my mother tongues tiptoe away as I read her. Reading is a solitary activity that connects us with the worlds of others, through the imagination. Watching an adaptation, on the other hand, can be solitary, or not. The visual text communicates through the senses rather than the imagination, although it does not mean it is not involved here.
It was not difficult to identify signs of England’s colonial links in either Austen’s novels, or the adaptations. Distant colonies such as the Caribbean and India were mentioned not infrequently in the novels: much of the income of the vast estates owned by the gentry was obtained from the colonies. Watching BBC’s Pride and Prejudice – and not for the first time – I spotted the tea, drunk in fine cups, the cigars that the men smoked, the cotton print dresses that women wore. I mentioned to a friend that some of the fabrics looked like the double-shaded handloom weaves from Andhra Pradesh, or Tamil Nadu. She agreed. Sometimes, the dresses also had paisley designs – these hugely popular prints were adaptations of Mughal mango motifs on textile. We, the global audience, need to train our gaze to the material roots of the English imagination, and be critical of it, rather than unreflectively consume its creations. Scenes of opulent country manors would appear repeatedly in many of the adaptations, and it was hard not to notice a kind of nostalgia for the glories of Empire. So much of the popularity of the adaptations seemed to be the result of clever packaging of Regency era settings and countryside.
Even as the lavish settings seemed to engulf Austen’s ingenious stories at times, a great deal of effort went into modernizing them. When Colin Firth came striding out of the lake in dripping wet shirt in 1995, the scene seemed to set the tone for other serials and films to become more inventive – as long as it created a stir. Almost every adaptation slipped in new scenes to suit their own narrative. They brought about a kind of visual cohesiveness to the series or films. Informal and relaxed body language, and facial expressions, and the manner in which emotions were expressed were adopted – rather than the stiff, stylized ways of the past. What we watched on screen was a hybrid text. I had no problem with this, unlike many die-hard Jane-ites the world over, who are perhaps purists at heart. Modern informality is, after all, a sign that the boundaries of class have become less rigid.
When Austen’s world in the novel became too distant, and removed from my own, I would turn to the adaptations. They became relatable on screen. Besides, the adaptations were open to emotional expressiveness, where in the novels, emotions are sub-textual: I have lost count of the number of times I watched Elizabeth Bennett’s (Jennifer Ehle) fiery rejection of Darcy (Colin Firth) in Pride and Prejudice (1995, mini-series) or Elinor Dashwood (Emma Thomson) fall in love with Edward Ferras (Hugh Grant) in Sense and Sensibility (1995, film).
One of the main features of modernisation is the highlighting of the romantic plot. Love, is of course, central to Austen’s concerns, but on screen, it is difficult to see the larger moral order of which it was a part. Often, the biggest obstacle on the individual’s path to win over the object of their love is a moral flaw within themselves. Instead of Austen’s ironic, witty voice showing us the complexities of the individual, and of their interactions with society, we have to rely a lot on dialogue, and the point of view of the main character. Rather than the multiple layers of narrative in a novel, we have a linear effect in an adaptation. Everything is propelled towards a rather sentimental ‘happily ever after,’ which is not necessarily the point of a Jane Austen novel.
We do not – perhaps cannot – get to know the thoughts of Elizabeth Bennett or Elinor Dashwood on screen, independently of others. If emotions were more readily expressed on screen, we also had to contend with the loss of inner worlds, which a reader has access to. Action is all-important in an adaptation. The expression of physicality was thought to be enough to drive it, making up for our inability to know anything else. This seems to be the view of Andrew Davies, one of the most prolific adapters of Austen to the television screen. According to him, sexuality was already a major driver of the novels – his only task was to flesh it out. “Don’t be afraid (to represent) physicality… these are young people full of hormones and they are bursting with energy,” he says, when asked for pointers on adaptation.
In the novels, we also see how a character is separated from, or unable to communicate with the object of their love, until a morally satisfying solution is found. In Pride and Prejudice, Mr. Wickham’s true character had to be exposed, and Elizabeth could overcome her pride, and could accept that Mr. Darcy was right. In Emma, the eponymous heroine had much to learn in order to fully grow up: to be more self-aware and free from vanity, and realize she loved Mr. Knightley. Austen’s dislike of melodrama and writing that was overly invested in emotion is well-known. And so, it seems logical to think that she would not have liked mere ‘feel-good’ romanticism in the productions of her writings.
Morality as a force was more vivid on the page rather than the screen. It was arguably, an imaginatively constructed entity that was contemporaneous with the white man’s burden of colonization. Austen’s depictions of the world she lived in make her a ‘quintessentially English’ writer that is difficult for others to understand. But over the years, I learnt to understand her from my vantage point in post coloniality – the world is constituted of multiple identities and historical contexts, and being curious and open about others is a reasonable way of engaging with my own existential and sociological identities.
Austen was an insider to her world – she deferred to the fact that women were very dependent on male approval and protection in order to survive. Most of the women in her novels were teenagers when they began their rounds of courtship, and often subjected to severe scrutiny by the world at large. But her women also used wit and rationality to make themselves seen and heard. Elizabeth Bennett (Pride and Prejudice) and Emma Woodhouse, (Emma) for example, challenged the existing model of the ‘superior,’ rational man.
Within the psychological worlds of men and women, Austen sought to describe the play of feeling, will and reason. Post-feminist critiques of Austen have been critical of her acceptance of these opposites and their implied gendered roles. Many adaptations exist, such as Lost in Austen, Pride and Prejudice Zombies, that satirize and parody Austen to a degree that ‘faithful’ adaptations do not aspire to. The comparisons and defenses could go on.
After years of reading Austen, my sympathies have recently begun to shift, imperceptibly – from the ‘wild and rational’ women of Austen’s novels, as Mary Wollestonecraft might have described them, to the quiet and introspective ones – more precisely, to Anne of Persuasion. Austen’s final novel seems to have achieved an introspective appeal that the other novels lacked. Anne’s deeply reflective and melancholic acceptance of her situation – a single woman stranded amidst a family that often exploited her situation – is the culmination of all of Austen’s literary prowess, and she herself seems to be on new ground as she explored Anne’s silences. A little into the novel, when she meets Captain Wentworth after eight years, there is some halting dialogue, as Anne comes to terms with her lost love, perhaps for the millionth time. Through these silences and halting dialogues, Austen seems to be testing the waters of what it means to be deeply self-aware. I’ve also read the dialogues to be a way in which words could be used to establish equality between them. It is through friendship that an egalitarianism of sorts is reached, that grows only gradually in strength.
The 2007 film adaptation of Persuasion portrayed the silences and the hesitant relationship between Anne and Wentworth admirably. It is difficult to portray interior worlds effectively on screen, and Sally Hawkins played the brooding, inconsolable Anne sensitively, particularly in the early scenes. Rupert Penry-Jones was striking as the embittered Captain Wentworth, seeking love elsewhere. The tension in their silences was palpably thick.
The letter Wentworth writes to Anne — “I am half-agony, half hope” — is a study in vulnerability: he is the flawed man who has to let go of his own stubborn refusal to acknowledge his feelings. The letter also indicates the difficulty of speech between them; writing is his only recourse. Men’s points of view are rarely presented in the novels. The adaptations turned this around – nearly all of the men have moments of vulnerability. This is a major breakthrough in modernization. Women all over the globe suddenly came upon visible evidence formen’s struggles with their feelings. This single factor alone, may be the reason for the huge popularity of the adaptations – men suddenly, were human and relatable.
When I learnt in 2022 of Netflix’s release of a new version of Persuasion, I began to watch it excitedly. But only a few moments in, I was sorely disappointed. The character of Anne (played by Dakota Johnson) was nothing like Austen’s – she was talkative and answered back. The key shortcoming of the film was the loss of Anne’s interior world. When Anne and Wentworth (played by Cosmo Jarvis) meet, in the film, they engage in banter, from their very first meeting. Nothing much is left unsaid. The absence of speech between Anne and Wentworth, which gives rise to one of the main tensions of the novel, and the earlier adaptation, is completely missing. They have finished saying a lot to each other in the very beginning. We cannot help wishing they hadn’t. Many of the characters were changed beyond recognition, and the sense of many scenes changed.
We know, early on, what the end is going to be. Austen plays words out in the final letter not coldly, but without a trace of extra emotion — that Wentworth’s maudlin show of tears were not for her. Perhaps, that was the final straw that drove me away from the film. I have not gone back to watching a film or adaptation after that. Something within me had died.
References
Language is a ‘war zone’: Conversation with Ngugi wa Thiong’o, The Nation, Rohit Inani, March 9, 2018
Adapting Emma for the 21st century: An Emma no one will like; Laurie Kaplan, Jane Austen Society of North America (JASNA) V.30, no.1, (Winter 2009)
How to adapt Jane Austen to the screen, with Andrew Davies: Guardian Culture, YouTube, 2018
.
Deepa Onkar has degrees in English Literature from the Universities of Madras and Hyderabad, India. She was a teacher at Krishnamurti schools in Bangalore and Chennai, India, and a journalist at The Hindu. Her articles and poems have appeared in The Hindu, Punch magazine, The Bombay Literary Magazine, and The Lake, among others.
.
PLEASE NOTE: ARTICLES CAN ONLY BE REPRODUCED IN OTHER SITES WITH DUE ACKNOWLEDGEMENT TO BORDERLESS JOURNAL
In the contemporary world, with its multiple environmental crises, conflicts, and violence, persisting poverty, and social exclusion, the question about the role of arts in general, and of literature specifically, must inevitably arise. Do they have any positive role other than entertainment and distraction, or are they merely the icing on a rapidly decaying and disintegrating cake?
Without naming the problem in exactly this way, much of Chittaranjan Das’s work was devoted to implicitly answering this question, for he clearly recognised that a merely functionalist approach to trying to identify the role of the arts in society would be totally inadequate and theoretically shallow. Rather, to answer the question more fully, we should ask what constitutes a society’s self-understanding, its modes of self-representation, and its internal hermeneutics, and how, methodologically speaking, we can gain access to this deep cultural grammar of a society. Das’s original professional career was as a rural sociologist and teacher of the subject in Agra and elsewhere. As a sociologist he would have been aware that such questions arise not only in the sociology of the arts, but equally in relation to such intractable subjects as religion, suicide, and the emotions.[1]
The year 2023 is the centennial birth anniversary[2] of the thinker, educationist, critic, pioneer of Odia non-fiction writing and one of the finest translators, Professor Chittaranjan Das. Chittabhai — as he was known throughout Odisha — was the most prolific writer, with numerous diaries, essays, reviews, autobiographies, memoirs, columns, textbooks, and monographs.
Many eminent writers were born in Bagalpur village in Jagatsinghpur district. Chittaranjan Das was one of them. He was the third child of five brothers and three sisters. He attended Punang School after schooling in his native village. Afterwards, he attended Ranihat Minor School and Ravenshaw Collegiate School. In 1941, he passed the matriculation examination and enrolled at Ravenshaw College, Cuttack, for higher education. However, he became involved in the independence movement. His inspiration came from Manmohan Mishra[3].
During his Ravenshaw student days, he was an active member of the Communist Party of India. In 1942, he joined the Quit India Movement and was imprisoned. During his jail term, Das acquired many skills, including learning languages, particularly French. In 1945, he was released from prison and attended Santiniketan. During his academic career, he was exposed to a wide variety of intellectuals, thinkers, and writers. He was deeply influenced by their works.
His studies in psychology, sociology, and cultural anthropology continued in Europe and abroad in the years that followed. He was trained in clinical psychology at the Vienna School established by Sigmund Freud. It was here that he met philosopher Martin Buber. He continued his studies at Santiniketan and later at Copenhagen University, Denmark.
He returned to Odisha in 1954 and joined the Jibana Bidyalaya, a school inspired by Gandhi’s ideals on education, established by Nabakrushna Choudhury and Malati Devi. Later on, he became the headmaster of this institution. He left after four years and took a teaching assignment near Agra.
Sri Aurobindo’s philosophy drew Das to the revered sage’s teachings. Upon returning to Odisha, he taught at the Institute of Integral Education in Bhubaneswar, based on Sri Aurobindo’s values. This was in 1973. While he did not stay for long, he remained associated with this movement until his death in 2011.
Das considered the whole world to be his home. He was proficient in a wide range of languages, including Hindi, Urdu, Bengali, Assamese, Sanskrit, Danish, Finnish, French, Spanish, and English. His vast studies covered many areas of social and human sciences like philosophy, psychology, religious studies, and linguistics as well as school studies. His knowledge is reflected in 250 books he wrote or translated into Odia.
He was a regular contributor to newspapers and his columns appeared in major Odia dailies like Dharitri, Pragativadi, Sambad, Samaja and more. These short pieces have been compiled into books that give insight into his views on contemporary issues. His first writing was an article in a school magazine. The article ‘Socrates’ appeared in 1937 in the Ravenshaw Collegiate magazine, Sikshabandhu.
Das travelled widely around the world. During his travels, he closely examined the social, cultural, and political life of the countries he visited. He wrote books describing his impressions. He has translated many books into Odia from countries he visited. His translation work is vast. His understanding of the topic and the translation of the books make for a pleasant reading experience.
He was an excellent diary writer. These captured his feelings about many incidents. The autobiographical diary entries have been published as Rohitara Daeri[4], a series of over 20 volumes. His love for the mother tongue was unparalleled. Despite excellent command of more than a dozen languages, including German, Danish and Finnish, as well as Sanskrit, Pali, Urdu and Bengali, he wrote mostly in his mother tongue, Odia.
His contribution to Odia literature was huge because he translated the works of many prominent writers — Bengali writer Ashapurna Devi, polymath Albert Schweitzer, French novelist François Mauriac, British-Indian anthropologist Verrier Elwin, Danish poet Karl Adolph Gjellerup, French writer Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, Lebanese-American poet and writer Kahlil Gibran, Russian poet Boris Pasternak, former President of India Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan and the iconic Mahatma Gandhi. Sri Aurobindo’s principal philosophic work, a theory of spiritual evolution culminating in the transformation of man from a mental into a supramental being and the advent of a divine life upon earth, Life Divine, is Chittranjan Das’s significant work.
Many awards have come his way. In 1960, for his essay ‘Jeevana Vidyalaya’[5], he was awarded by the Odisha Sahitya Akademi. He was given the Sarala Award in 1989 for his essay ‘Odisha O Odia’. He was conferred with the Sahitya Akademi Award in 1998 for his book Biswaku Gabakhya[6]. He bagged more accolades from Prajatantra Prachar Samiti, Gangadhar Rath Foundation, Utkal Sahitya Samaj and Gokarnika.
Chittaranjan Das’s works incorporate both creative experimentation and a transformative philosophy. He has worked in education, literature, cultural creativity and artistic criticism. During his lifetime, he was instrumental in the growth and development of numerous social action and development groups. Throughout his writings, he discussed self-development, social change, and mankind’s evolution. His Odia autobiography Mitrasya Chakhusa[7]is an extraordinary work in the genre.
A scholar of eminence, literary commentator and author of numerous books in Odia and English, he was known as ‘Socrates of Odisha.’
.
[1] John Clammer (The Essays of Chittaranjan Das on Literature, Culture, and Society/Ed. Ananta Kumar Giri and Ivan Marquez)
Bhaskar Parichha is a journalist and author of Unbiased, No Strings Attached: Writings on Odisha and Biju Patnaik – A Political Biography. He lives in Bhubaneswar and writes bilingually. Besides writing for newspapers, he also reviews books on various media platforms.
.
PLEASE NOTE: ARTICLES CAN ONLY BE REPRODUCED IN OTHER SITES WITH DUE ACKNOWLEDGEMENT TO BORDERLESS JOURNAL
In your final rest
on a rope-cot,
were you still dreaming
of a piece of bread?
Beloved one,
we the people
of this country,
of that country,
can make anything
but a piece of bread
for you.
--Evening with a Sufi: Selected Poemsby Afsar Mohammad, translated from the Telugu by Afsar Mohammad & Shamala Gallagher, Red River Books, 2022.
These lines send shivers down the spine and recreate an empathetic longing for immigrant souls in search of succour. They also swiftly draw an image laced with poignancy — a loss, a regret, the economics that deny innovative young men their keep and force immigration in search of sustenance. Would the poet have been one of them?
Travelling from a small village in the South Indian state of Telangana, Afsar Mohammad has journeyed across continents and now teaches South Asian Studies at the University of Pennsylvania. Known as a trendsetting poet and literary critic for post-1980s Telugu literature, Afsar has brought out five volumes of poetry, one collection of short stories and two volumes of literary theory essays. He is also a distinguished scholar of Indian studies and has published extensively with various international presses, including Oxford and Cambridge. He is currently working on a translation of Sufi poetry from Telugu to English. In this interview, we trace his growth as a writer and editor of the webzine, Saranga, which now seems to be transcending linguistic barriers to give voice to multiple cultures…
Tell us about your journey as a writer. When and how did it start?
It’s a long story, but to cut it short — the beginnings were somewhat puzzling… Inspired by Shakespearean sonnets, I first wrote some sonnets in English, and then switched to free verse. Since most of my friends in my high school started pushing me to write something in Telugu, I had to migrate to Telugu. Quite surprisingly, I was first published in English, and then it took me a while to get something published in Telugu. I had hard time getting published in Telugu due to its newness in expressions and most editors felt that there was nothing “Telugu” in that kind of writing. So, my early writings quite naturally found their home in some English journals!
Your poetry rings with the pain of distance, the pain and struggle from others’ suffering transcending your own self. What is the source of your inspiration — is it your past or your present?What affects you more — your being an immigrant or a Sufi?
We’re distanced by many things — not just physically! We live in many shattered and scattered worlds, and sometimes we fail to reflect on those worlds. I feel like I’m a constant immigrant — despite my formal citizenship and legal boundaries. Sufism is merely a segment of this expansive realm. Both past and present define our destiny, right?! Of course, I try to live in the present rather than in the past, but never deny the baggage of the past.
Why do you subscribe to the Sufi school of poetry? What is Sufism all about?
I come from an extremely local rural setting where such Sufi mystical practices openly defined my everyday life. It’s not about the technicalities and theories or institutionalised Sufi schools of their philosophies, this is more about what I learned from my childhood, and its physical surroundings dotted by several hybrid shrines. I’ve described this cultural setting in my 2013 Oxford University Press publication, The Festival of Pirs: Popular Islam and Shared Devotion in South India. This version of Sufism has more to do with everyday life rather than a spiritual domain.
You have lived away from your country for long, and yet the past seems to still haunt you. What is the identity you seek as a poet? Is it necessary to have a unique identity or can one be like a drop that flows and moulds as per the needs of the vessel?
In a way — physically– I’m away from my birth place, but in many ways, I’m also closer to my homeland than in my past. When I moved away from the actual picture, I see many dimensions from a new lens. Each dimension contributed to my rethinking and reconsidering the idea of India. As I wander around and meet totally different places and people, I learn more about my birthplace and moved a little closer to it. I totally understand this as a process to reconcile with the past and connect it to a new present intensified by many factors, not just personal. We’re living in a virtual world, which also looks like “real” in its sounds, colours and words. Every moment it makes me realise that I’m actually not that far. On the other hand, I also see the people in my homeland who are far more removed by their immediate reality and everyday experiences. We need to read this conditionality more in terms of perspective rather than physical distance.
You are fluent in Telugu, Urdu and English. You started writing in English and then moved to Telugu. And all your poetry collections have been in Telugu. Why? Would the outreach of English not have been wider? What made you pick Telugu over English?
Great question! My literary graph is neither linear nor simplistic. When I look back and reflect on it, it’s a quite messy roadmap — actually, there’s nothing like a map to get its contours. Yes, I started writing in English and then suddenly stopped sending out the poems to magazines. In fact, I write more in my personal journals rather than in print journals. Theoretically, I saw poetry as a personal diary for my experiences for many years. Due to financial concerns within my family, I had to start working very early on and left most of my journals at home. Then, my friends found them by chance and put them together that became my first collection of poems in Telugu. The collection was an instant success for its innovative style and then that opened up my career in Telugu rather than English which was my first language of literary expression.
You are now bringing out a bi-lingual online magazine, Saranga? What made you think of a magazine in two languages?
Before entering into teaching career, I worked as an editor of the literary supplement and Sunday magazine for a largest circulated Telugu newspaper. When we moved to the USA, I thought it would be better to have some outlet to engage with my home language and literature. In the early phase, Saranga was primarily a Telugu webmagazine. When I started teaching South Asian literature, then I realised the importance of making Indian literary texts available to contemporary generation in the USA. That was just one reason, but there’re were many factors as our team saw a rise in the Indian diaspora writings in the new millennium. Luckily, we got wonderful support from writers and poets in various Indian languages. The humble beginnings have actually ended up as a rewarding experience.
What is it you look for in contributors from two languages? Is it the same guidelines or different?
We’re still learning how this works! As it appears now, these two sections require two different approaches and guidelines. Since the English section has been now attracting writers from various languages, it’s moving more towards a multi-lingual base. We’re trying to accommodate more translations into English from different Indian languages. We still need to do lots of work there.
Is the journal only aimed at South Asian diaspora or would you be extending your services to all cultures and all geographies?
Saranga, as we see it right now, is more about South Asia and its diaspora. As you know, we need more such spaces for South Asia and its diaspora. Not sure about its future directions at this point, however, if the situation demands, we will extend its services further.
You have number of essays and academic books in English. But all your creative writing is in Telugu. Why? Would you be thinking of writing in English too because proficiency in the language is obviously not an issue?
Most of my academic writing came out of my teaching experience. As I started teaching new courses, I then realised that we need more material from South Asia. I started focusing on producing such materials primarily for my courses and then gradually, they became useful for many academicians elsewhere too. I still believe creating writing as a more personal space — that enables me to articulate more about myself. However, the publication of Evening with a Sufi, brought a new change — as I’ve been getting more requests for more writing in English for the last two years. As you know pretty well, I’m an extremely slow writer.
How do you perceive language as a tool for a poet?
I see language working many ways since I dwell in multiple languages. I started my elementary education in Urdu, and my middle school was in Telugu, and the subsequent studies were in English. Through the last day of her life, my mother was extremely particular about me learning Arabic and Farsi. So, I believe that helped me so much to understand how language works in a poem. When I published my first poem in Telugu, the immediate critique was it was a not a “Telugu” poem. Telugu literary critics labelled me as a poet who thinks either in Urdu or English, then writes in Telugu. Of course, most of them were also fascinated by the new syntax of my Telugu poems and the new images and metaphors—that totally deviate from a normative or mainstream Telugu poem of those days. The uses of language in a poem varies for each poet. If you’re reading, writing and thinking in just “one” language, that might be a safe condition. A contemporary or modern poet, however, belongs to many languages and cultures. We also migrate from one language to another in our everyday life.
Do borders of nationalism, mother tongue and geographies divide or connect in your opinion? Do these impact your writing?
The response to this question might be an extension to the above conditionality of a person. Anyway, I’m not a big fan of those ideas of nationalism, mother tongue and singular geographies. They don’t exist in my world. Most of my writings both creative and academic contest such boundaries and borders. To describe this in a single term- borderless. In fact, I believe we’re all borderless, but unfortunately, many boundaries and borders are now being imposed on our personalities.
(The online interview has been conducted by emails by Mitali Chakravarty)
Afsar Mohammad teaches at the University of Pennsylvania, and he has published five volumes of poetry in Telugu. His English poetry collection is forthcoming. He has also published a monograph with the Oxford University Press titled, The Festival of Pirs: Popular Islam and Shared Devotion in South India. His current work, Remaking History: 1948 Police Action and the Muslims of Hyderabad, has been published from Cambridge University Press. His poetry collection, Evening with a Sufi, was published by Red River.
PLEASE NOTE: ARTICLES CAN ONLY BE REPRODUCED IN OTHER SITES WITH DUE ACKNOWLEDGEMENT TO BORDERLESS JOURNAL
ECLIPSE
Sometimes I pencil an octave across
the sky, when it grows blue, I sense
the sea burn and blisters on my skin.
When I was younger, I used to wonder
why seagulls in certain oceans had to
sound like falcons toward the onset
of autumn. I belong to that ocean where
Odysseus returned to Ithaca slaying
the lotophagi. Borne of thought,
in the cast of Pallas, we could persuade
Neptune without a disguise or Ravan
without burning the island. Yet a woman
has to grow into a blood moon sometimes,
grow an arc to leap across the tides.
At one point she would cross the boundaries
of Earth and eclipse the shadows lurking
around the horizon. On the last day
of spring, hyacinths grow by the lagoon of
rancour in the promise of redemption. I wonder
how the female dragonfly deals with the times
she feels the need to rise beyond the lake
and go right into the moon’s cold breath.
Frozen in her words, I wonder how the female
centipede meets with an earthquake,
in deep meditation inside the hollow of the oak tree.
Smitha Sehgal is a legal professional in Govt of India CPSE and a bilingual poet who writes in English and Malayalam. Her poems have been featured in contemporary literary publications such as Usawa Literary Journal, EKL Review, Madras Courier, Ink Sweat & Tears and elsewhere.
PLEASE NOTE: ARTICLES CAN ONLY BE REPRODUCED IN OTHER SITES WITH DUE ACKNOWLEDGEMENT TO BORDERLESS JOURNAL
envelopes never arrive, the inbox isn’t loaded with emails
it’s time to live with the lonely shadows.
.
The archipelago of hospitals empties sad memories,
patients fighting for life with short breaths
trip letters in social distancing,
no flowers, no relatives or friends
a virus attacks inside in a different trajectory.
.
The first layer of darkness hides the melody of stars
in alleys, in streets, in subways,
rewind the scene of weaning the ventilators.
many dead mothers have left their smiles over the corridor
on the margins of the white washed wall.
.
Form the undulations of courage and fear
eyes stare at the distant light,
the whispers are carrying alphabets of the dead planets
lying beneath the disposable trough.
there will be another universe to live for.
.
Gopal Lahiri is a Kolkata- based bilingual poet, critic, editor, writer and translator with 20 books published 13 in English and 7 in Bengali, including three joint books. His poetry is also published in various anthologies and in eminent journals of India and abroad. His poems have been published in 12 countries and translated in 10 languages. He has been invited in several poetry festivals across India.
Borderless 