An indefatigable translator

Kasukhela Narasimha Rao telephoned me a year back seeking permission to translate one of the stories of my father. That was the beginning of my contact with him and ever since much water has flowed under the bridge and now he is a translator credited with three anthologies.

The very first thing that made me fascinated of him is the extraordinary enthusiasm he has and the remarkable industry he had put in and let me remind you that he is a nonagenarian, 92 years old to be more precise. His son K Krishna Rao is also to be complimented for assisting his father reverentially.

Later, I learnt that he retired as a lecturer in 1983 from DG Vaishnavi College, Chennai, after putting 36 years of service. When the centenary of Telugu short story was celebrated in 2010, he, as an avid reader of Telugu literature felt sad due to the lack of Pan-Indian recognition to the illustrious Telugu short story writers.

Brooding over the remedial measures and worried of the negligence of the duty of translations by the state universities, he himself took up the responsibility of translation of Telugu Short stories instead of resorting to blame and to accuse others. An anthology of the English translation of 12 Telugu short stories published in February 2015 was only the first among his strenuous effort.

As he lives in Chennai, he couldn’t have access to the important anthologies of Telugu short stories and so he mostly depended on Kathasagar, an anthology brought out long back by Kalasagar, a Telugu cultural association based in Chennai. But the first story of it, Sri Sri’s Aswamedha Yagam, was published in Swathy Monthly and three more were selected from other sources like that.

Translation is always a compromise and the translator’s calibre can be determined in the way that he chooses the equivalent terms for those words, which are deeply rooted in the culture of the original language. The translation of some of the titles of the stories reflects the skill of Rao as a translator. For ‘Aswamedha Yagam’ he used equestrian sacrifice and for ‘Maroprapanchamlo Lakshmana Rekha’ he selected Rubicon. He preferred the spirit of the story than a word to word mechanical translation.

After the successful completion of the first project, he told me that he wanted to translate at least a dozen stories of my father and to confess to you the truth I didn’t take that seriously in the beginning. But he began to telephone me umpteen times regarding various things. First it was about the selection of a dozen from nearly 300 stories.

I evaded that problem saying that every reader would have some of his favorites and no two people would have the same choice as he wrote many kinds of stories. Then he used to enquire the meanings of some words of the dialect. He sent me the translation of five stories and even before I could read them the others followed with unexpected succession.

My father was a typical Telugu short story writer, who was deeply rooted in the native language and culture and so it is not easy to translate many ideas and words. The problem starts right from the title. The anthology is named as ‘A Whiff of Fragrance’, which is a translation of ‘Kammathemmera’ and ‘Sthreenancha Chttam’. ‘Purusasya Bhagyam’ is translated as ‘As She Sows, He reaps’. ‘Bhagavanthudi Jaabitha’ as ‘Allah’s File’; ‘Divyoushadam’ as ‘Medicine Nonpareil’; ‘Rathilo Thema’ as ‘Moisture Trapped in a Stone’ and ‘Yedari Koyila’ as ‘Homing Pigeon’.

Some parts of the translations of Rao are really amazing. For example have a glance at a beginning passage of the story ‘A Whiff of Fragrance’:

“However, the drummer monopolized the moment. That drum was no ordinary drum. It was made of the dewlap of the mount of Lord Siva, Nandeeswara. It was as if Lord Siva himself was on the scene, dancing away. And this drummer! The gold chain on him dazzled as it swirled and jumped up and down.

His beats now rose, now fell bringing to one’s mind the waves of the ocean. He let his drum play every role in married life: throw your heart to her, coax and cajole her, touch her cheeks lightly first and then kiss her hard on the lips a moment later and finally find your happiness in a gesture of total surrender to her. The drummer hardly stopped: the pipers lifted their pipes skyward as if directing the looks of all men and women in the procession towards the bridegroom, sitting on horseback.”

In his preface to that anthology, he avows, “I am a lover of Shakespeare and Herman Hess: whenever I want to relax I read ‘As you like it’ or ‘Siddhartha’. If I choose to go to Telugu, Rajaram comes to my aid. On reading a story written by him, I tend to close my eyes and mull over the story, like I do with Jacques of ‘As you like it’.

Then he told me that he would translate a representative collection of Telugu women writers and within a few months he sent me the published book, ‘Sister Speaks’. It has 18 stories of renowned writers like Kalyana Sundari Jagannadh, Vasireddy Seethadevi, Dwivedula Visalakshi, Volga and Mrinalini.

Above all the most heartening thing is that all these three books are published by him and he says that he is extremely happy because he did what he could towards expressing his love for his mother tongue and its literature. Now he telephones me now and then to find out the avenues through which his books will reach the suitable readers and I am struggling to tell him the truth that the readership of Telugu people has gone dwindling down, it has become difficult to find a thousand book-buying readers among the so called 18 crore of Telugu people.

And the plight of a self-published translation is more precarious. But let me conclude with the words I wrote in my preface to his anthology: “This anthology is an extraordinary tribute of a nonagenarian reader par excellence to his mother tongue. His translations are not only faithful to their originals but also retain their spirit and earthly fragrance. I am sure that the posterity would not allow this book to go unnoticed and it would receive accolades from the connoisseurs of literature.

My salutations to KN Rao.”

By:Madhurantakam Narendra