Translation adda

DU: It seems to me that translation, either Bangla-English or English-Bangla, must aspire to blend into the social milieu of the language it is being translated in. I remember some of the exquisite translations of English (a lot of them translations themselves from German and French) poetry into Bangla by Buddhadeb Bosu and Sudhindranath Dutta, where they translated some very Western mythic allusions into some comparable Indian/Bengali mythology that retained the spirit and the meaning of the original but cannot be called a "translation" in the strict sense of the term, though that is what they were trying to do. It seems to me that the translator must get to the spiritual heart of the text rather than try to convey the typical cultural intonations or local differences. Yes, something will be lost. But it is upto the translator to make up for that loss in terms of his/her knowledge of the social milieu of the language into which the translation is being made by rendering the untranslatable into another untranslatable. The translator is the bridge. A bridge helps you to cross from one side to the other, but does not merge one side into the other.

DE: I fully agree, but translating prose and verse are obviously so different. We all know about Rabindranath's description of poetry translation as expressing love through an attorney. William Radice has turned out to be a pretty good attorney though. But some bridges can very nearly merge both sides, figuratively and otherwise.

AD: I prefer Snoopy as an attorney!



PR: Some of the Old Man's translations of his own work make one cringe (like when you have a long wait at the Rabindra Sadan metro station!

DE: I agree with both of you. Our poet/singer/painter minister should do something about it. Looking forward to Snoopy's attorneying. Playwright grandnephew CM should recommend.

DU: Yes, I agree that translating prose and verse are different. I was talking more about the spirit of the act of translation itself. A translator is just like an anthropologist. An anthropologist can never render the "truth" of the other culture, only his/her representation of it in another language by using tropes of that language. Or how would they reach their audience? Ultimately the moral responsibility of being "truthful" has to be borne by the translator/ anthropologist alone.

RA: Can habitual liars be translators / anthropologists?! What about story-tellers?

DU: Anthropology as a discipline has defined itself as different from story-tellers. There is that all important issue of empiricity. A habitual liar can for all professional purposes be an anthropologist, and unless caught lying, may even be a very successful one. But Anthropology does not identify with story-telling.

There have been immense debates in the Western Anthropological circles about Margaret Mead's not-so-truthful ethnography of the Samoas. That is where self-reflexive anthropology - which then degenerated into near-soliloqui or just an exchange among people who know the jargon - got its start. Not that anthropologists have ever been anything but self-reflexive, or even could be, but "self-reflexivity" came to be publicly recognized as almost a genre at this point of time.



RA: Ok, now if an anthropologist is studying a story-teller (like a griot) - we have two levels of mediation! By rules of probability, the likelihood of "truth" is multiplicatively reduced!

DU: Yes, true :-) And then the Anthropologist will have to make the truth of the untruth explicit through her writing.

AD: I believe it has been observed that in Italian a Translator = Traduttore, which is quite close to a Betrayer =Traditore.

DU: Retelling, in whatever mode, always contain the possibility of a betrayal. The Italians are wise people.

RA: Are the Italians wise ... or merely truthful (about their lying)?

PR: I propose to print some T-shirts saying, THE LIE IS THE TRUTH OF OUR TIME. Am open to selling shares in the undertaking. Sell it online and at plenary sessions of all political parties, scientific and technology associations and religious rallies.

RA: And is HONESTY the greatest LIE of our time (or all time)?

DE: Its all MAYA!

AD: Could you please make some T-shirts with the line: "... eat the same".

Why? Well, on Bishnupur rail station, which is the jumping off point for the Ramakrishna - Saradamoni Tour, an enthusiastic station master once had large translated quotations carved in cement; the most famous being "Aam khete eyechis, Aam kheye jaa!"

Being a dedicated bureaucrat, on one platform he translated: "You have come to eat mangoes", and on the other: "Eat the same"

DE: Sadly, this time in South Africa, the Italians' wisdom failed miserably, or was it a case of traditore?

RA: The Italy team failed to translate potential into victory ... were they honest about their failings?

DE: Maybe it depends on whether those tears were honest?

India erupts

For some years now, I have been concerned about the situation in India, and the possibility of the eruption of blind, destructive violence against the system and all its vested interests.

We have Maoist insurgency in various parts of the country, which the prime minister of India had described as independent India's most serious security threat. But the Maoist insurgency had not yet been expressed in destructive violence against the system at large. The so-called Jehadi violence in India has been of the latter character. Maoist violence had not yet become like Jihadi violence. Maoist action had also become enmeshed in mafia operations, the latter being a general feature of India.

But some recent incidents have thrown up the question of whether Maoist insurgency has now turned into blind violence. A passenger train was derailed in West Bengal, allegedly by the Maoists, and a goods train came and rammed the derailed train coaches, resulting in a massive loss of life. In another incident, an entire bus was blown up in Chhattisgarh, because some of the passengers were security personnel. Here too, a large number of civilians died. Hence, I have been preoccupied with this question, of whether the violence of poverty, disparity and exclusion is finally going to cause a volcanic eruption of destructive violence against everything.

From what I see around me, living in Calcutta, it seems we are living under the shadow of looming violence. A civil war, where the have-nots finally turn against the haves. Once something like that erupts, we are in for successive rounds of ever more ferocious blood-letting. No good will come of all that, and India's future as a pluralist democracy would be under severe risk. Life in India would become like what life is like now for people in Afghanistan and Iraq.

But the question is, can the necessary changes that must take place in India, which have NOT taken place in the 63 years since India's independence - can such change happen, before the destructive violence erupts? Things like education, healthcare, housing, drinking water, sanitation, public transport. Equal opportunity for all irrespective of their socio-economic circumstances.

I do not see that on the horizon, quite the reverse actually. Neither the govt, nor the private business sector has any such inclusive vision. The civil society is weak and fractured, and divided by caste and religion. It has no influence in public policy. I do not see the possibility of civil disobedience, of a non-violent uprising by the country's educated section, the middle-class and the intelligentsia, to compell the state to act in favour of the poor and marginalised, and to put in place in the system the means for a basic level of equity.

Those of us who have a vision of a more equitable and truly democratic India, and know that only a non-violent social revolution can realise that, and that this means an inner awakening in every individual - we shall do and keep doing whatever we can towards that goal, whatever the odds. We have no other alternative, in the sense that this is the only thing we are able to do. Like ants.

Rahul has written a fitting "song of the ant".

Farewell, Saramago

Jose Saramago, the Portuguese novelist and Nobel Prize winner (1998) passed away yesterday, at the age of 87.

I first read Saramago only in 2006 (his novel Blindness). But in the four years since then, I have read seven more of his novels. I have not read so many books of very many writers. The last one I read, only recently, was The Gospel According to Jesus Christ. Born in a family of landless peasants, Saramago was a late bloomer as a novelist (a first novel, published when he was 23, was followed by 30 years of silence). He became a full-time writer only in his late 50s, after working variously as a garage mechanic, a welfare agency bureaucrat, a printing production manager, a proofreader, a translator and a newspaper columnist.

Every book of Saramago's is a delight to read, though the subjects are not so delightful: an epidemic of blindness (Blindness); the destruction of community by commercial development (The Cave); human obsessions and behaviour in bizarre circumstances (All the Names, The Double); citizens' ballot-box revolt against the system (Seeing); the suspension of dying (Death With Interruptions); the separation of the Iberian peninsula from Europe (The Stone Raft); or the story of a human Jesus Christ. In every book, Saramago looks unflinchingly at life, with his unique gaze and diction. Reading a book of Saramago's is an elevating experience, a journey exploring the geography of the human spirit.

Farewell Jose Saramago!

Read the obituary in The Economist here.

Read Saramago's autobiographical essay in the Nobel Prize site here.

Cycling

London World Naked Bike Ride event, in London,
on 12 June 2010. Photograph: Leon Neal/AFP/Getty Images

D: This is really lovely!

R: India te-o erom jodi hoto - taley activism e onek lok ashto!

D: Shudhu cheshta korar dorkar - lok aashbe. kintu amader 'activist-neta' praani eto bheetu ki shob kothay boley "lok toiri noy", jokhon ki sotyo kotha to ei ki ora neejerai toiri noy...

R: Kichu ta hochhey o, recently, Bombay te ekta cycle rally holo, young people der, shobai super-hero costume porey cycle korchhilo. Mojaar ghotona, with a message. Amaar ek chaatri, o passionate "active transport" and cycle-related public policy niye lorey jachhey, and besh kichu accomplish korey jachhey. Ekebare "non-political" meye ta, tobu o...

Neta-netri ... joto kom bola jaay, toto bhaalo!

D: Kolkatar ghotonar opor jodi kono report achhe to pathiye dao. Kaaje aashbe. Ekhaneo lokera cycle rally korechhe. BRT niye lorai cholechhe.

R: Kolkatay cyclists der obosthya ekhon bhishon jotil. Onek jaygay cycling banned, dhorey niye jaay. Ami kono din gaari chaalai ni, onek bochor cycle e ghora-phera kortam. Ekhon sheyta korte partam na, raastay jayga nei, gaari eto beshi, jiboner risk prochur. Dekhi, didimoni-ra ashaar por, ebong ekhon thekei, notun mayor ke diye, ki kora jaay.

This India is not incredible

Bhopal news leakage disaster

by Rajinder Puri

The Statesman

In Bhopal, leaking gas killed people. From Bhopal, leaking news is killing reputations. Arjun Singh ordered the release of Warren Anderson after earlier arresting him. Why did he do that? He is under a cloud. Prime Minister Manmohan Singh asked his ministers to consider the Dow Chemical proposal to waive its financial liability in lieu of helping obtain foreign investment in India. He is under a cloud. Chief Justice Ahmedi who reduced the criminal liability in the Bhopal case later headed the hospital trust set up by the accused. This was gross violation of judicial propriety. He is under a cloud. Chidambaram and Kamal Nath lobbied for Dow Chemical with the government to write off the compensation for Bhopal victims due from it in return for promised foreign investment. Both are under a cloud – but enough! There is little point in mentioning names. Why pick on a few individuals? The entire political class is under a cloud.

However Rajiv Gandhi is not under a cloud. No Congress leader dares to name him. Rajiv was Prime Minister when Anderson was released in Bhopal. He was Prime Minister when Anderson was allowed to fly from Delhi to the USA. He was in Bhopal with Arjun Singh on the very day and at the very time when the latter reversed his earlier decision of arresting Anderson to order his release and fly him to Delhi in a State aircraft.

Rajiv Gandhi alone could have been responsible for the release of Anderson. The PM’s principal secretary PC Alexander has confirmed that the Cabinet meeting convened soon after the Bhopal gas tragedy did not refer to Anderson’s release. Congress spokesperson Jayanthi Natarajan said: “I categorically deny involvement of the then central government.” She is right. Anderson’s release was not ordered by the Central government. It was ordered personally by Rajiv Gandhi who sat next to chief minister Arjun Singh in Bhopal when the latter addressed the press confirming Anderson’s arrest.

Rajiv Gandhi must bear ultimate responsibility for allowing the government’s claim for settlement of US$ 3.3 billion from Union Carbide to be whittled down to a paltry US$ 470 million that was eventually paid. The Supreme Court directed the final settlement of all litigation in the amount of US$ 470 million to be paid by 31 March, 1989. Both the Indian government and Union Carbide accepted the court's direction for payment of US$ 470 million. In May, 1989 the SC offered its rationale for the settlement. It stated that the compensation was higher than ordinarily payable under Indian law.

Did the honourable Judges pay any attention to international law? In the same year 1989 Exxon Valdez spilled 10.8 million gallons of crude oil in the waters near Alaska. Exxon had to shell out US$ 5 billion for a disaster in which no human lives were lost! Given our recent history it is legitimate to ask: was any amount in the huge gap between 3.3 billion US$ claimed by the government, and 470 million US$ received by it, pocketed by any politician? And let us not be surprised by the SC settlement. After all, the Supreme Court just months earlier overcame its doubts to sentence innocent Kehar Singh to death in the Indira Gandhi assassination case.

Let us not miss the wood for the trees. This issue is not about Rajiv Gandhi or the Congress. All our past political icons deserve scrutiny by scanner. The issue is no longer about the Bhopal gas disaster. The victims are no longer the 500,000 disabled or the 20,000 dead of Bhopal. The issue is the independence of India. The victims are the one billion plus citizens of India. They do not need compensation. They need revolution. They need liberation from the corrupt, venal ruling class that enriched itself by bartering the nation’s independence and self respect during the past six decades.

Yes, six decades! The time has come to recall all the disgraceful betrayals of the national interest since 1947 by those who have ruled us. The time has come to revisit history. The exposures of the Bhopal gas disaster present a defining moment. If India seeks remedy for its decadence and decline the diagnosis must be based upon truth. There is a generation of Indians ignorant of our history. It will need to acquaint itself with the truth. It is available for all those who seek it. If India’s new generation wants a future it will have to fight for it. It will have to fight for the future of the nation. Who knows, it may surprise history by doing just that.

Farewell Anjan

Anjan Ghosh, social scientist, passed away suddenly on Saturday, 5 June 2010. He was 59. He had been diagnosed for leukemia about a month ago and was in hospital for chemo-therapy. He suffered a cardiac seizure early on Saturday morning. He leaves behind his mother, wife, Sweta, and daughter, Ragini.

Anjan was a professor at the Centre for Studies in Social Sciences, Calcutta (CSSSC), one of the premier institutes in the country. But more than that, for over 30 years, Anjan had been a public intellectual in the true sense, and a supporter of people's struggles. He has written, but perhaps more significantly he also worked to keep alive well-known activist journals, like Frontier and Annya Artha.

Anjan graduated in English literature from St Xavier's College, Calcutta, and then did his MA and MPhil in sociology from the Jawaharlal Nehru University in Delhi. He taught at the Indian Institute of Technology, Delhi and at the Indian Institute of Management, Calcutta, before joining CSSSC in the early 1980s. He completed his doctorate from the University of Michigan in the mid-90s.

It is also a personal loss for me. Anjan was a friend and also my wife, Rajashi's, uncle. Such a host of memories ...

I had received his spontaneous warm acceptance as a prospective newcomer to the family and to the domain of public activism in Calcutta. He had encouraged Sandip Bandyopadhyay and me when we wrote a report on the working conditions of labour on the Calcutta Metro project in 1985. It was from him that I learnt about the book Orality and Literacy, by Walter Ong. He was one of the few friends of mine who attended my marriage ceremony. When I was trying to ensure that the ceremony be a simple civil one, shorn of rituals and customs and the usual expenditures, Anjan had supported me wholeheartedly, He attended the house-warming get-together in 1986, when Rajashi and I first moved to rented premises in the city fringe. For several years I used to drop in at his house on 10 November, his daughter Ragini's birthday, whether invited or uninvited. We travelled together to attend a memorable seminar on "Development & Displacement" in 1987, organised by Prof RS Rao, at Sambalpur University. We both attended the farewell party hosted by a friend in 1988 for his CSSSC colleague, MSS Pandian. He also attended the important seminar on "Development Not Displacement", in Bokaro, in 1990, which I had helped to organise. At my request, he gave a talk to a group of students from Hong Kong University on a study visit to Calcutta in 1990. More recently, he had encouraged me when I took up translating the Bengali writer, Subimal Misra. He too had actively participated in two recent conferences organised by the CSSSC which I'd attended, one on "Migration, Diaspora & the City" and the other on "Muslim Situation in India".

So many common friends, shared jokes and hearty laughs, unforgettable discussions ...

Anjan was much loved as a teacher and friend, and was a mentor to many young researchers. A condolence meeting was organised at the CSSSC today afternoon. His colleagues and students, all of whom are still in a state of disbelief, spoke about his unique and endearing qualities. Anjan was a bibliophile, with a bibliographic-encyclopedic memory, which his colleagues came to rely on. He was totally committed to the CSSSC, as a knowledge institution, and served it as a loyal foot-soldier. He exemplified the Socratic tradition. For him, pursuit of knowledge was essentially a collaborative endeavour. He personified the engaged intellectual. The Bengali word aantorikota - intimate nature - describes him. Like a good Bengali, he loved adda (relaxed, free-flowing discussion). He was a scholar and a gentleman, a good and decent man, a caring and affectionate person. He was always ready to help his students and fellow-scholars. He was accessible and disarmingly friendly, with a generosity of spirit and warmth. A team man. A genuine and authentic person, with a love of humour, mirth and banter, a mischievious twinkle in his eyes.

He leaves behind a large number of teachers, friends, colleagues, fellow-activists and students who deeply mourn his untimely and shocking demise.

There will be a condolence gathering in memory of Anjan Ghosh on Sunday, 20 June, at 5 pm, at Jadunath Bhavan, Lake Terrace, Calcutta (former location of CSSSC).

Read Ramachandra Guha's tribute to his former teacher here.

Fire in Calcutta

(AP Photo)

Su: From the frying pan to the fire??? Let's just hope it can't get much worse!!!

Ba: What are you talking about?

Su: Our 'state' of being :-)

Ra: With due respect, such notions need to be criticaly examined. For instance, why it was "alright" to have the people who were there so far, and what was so spectacularly superior in them? Second, as I learnt, much to my discomfiture, sitting in Calcutta (or elsewhere in India) one cannot have the remotest dea of what things are like in rural West Bengal, in particular the real face of the grassroots support, participation, membership and leadership of the TMC. Citizens can be justifiably proud of this.

Su: Of course, I can only see it for myself. The goons who live next door from where I live; all of whom have 'grassroot' membership! Who build a huge house and a garage in someone else's land and get away with it ... no amount of complaints to the police and the municipal authorities gets us anything!

I am a selfish common man, bothered about us in 'Calcutta'

And please don't get me wrong. It was not alright to have the people who were there so far, which doesn't mean the 'paribartan' that has come is a welcome change either!

Ra: The party's face in Calcutta may be as you say, and I do not doubt that, that's also what I can see, but it was a revelation to me that this in no way defines the party. So I am hopeful that the process of change that's taking place in the party will bode well for the future. But there is a huge gulf between Calcutta and the rest of the state; Calcutta is a mess, in a rut, ungovernable, thanks to the political culture established by the other, and simply mirrorred by all else. Being in the districts is distinctly cheering compared to living in Calcutta. And finally, whether one likes to hear this or not, Calcutta is a parasite, its doomed, its nice folk are likely to be done to death by bloodthirsty mobs.

Su: I hear a little justification there! As I said, I am a common man, and only bothered about the 'state' of our being! Which is Calcutta ... and I can only speak from my experience.

And if the change is a mirror of the already established political culture (I quote you here) then may be it's not a 'poribartan' after all. Its only a change of face!


(AP Photo)

Ru: Sometimes getting into the fire is better than stewing in the frying pan. I'm hoping this is one such time.

Su: We all are hoping for the same Ru. Don't forget I have suffered the worst of the left! I went to a Bengali medium school when English was taken away from the course!

I also happen to spend a little more time here. So ... let's hope the fire would make us all become purified!

Ra: Good metaphor, of purifying fire, agni pariksha, agni path etc etc. Everyone who has lived in Bengal in the last 40 years has had to live in fire. Su, no justifucation at all. There are no two ways, there is only one right way. But there are millions of dualities and conflicts in our apartheid, disparity-ridden society. Looking only at Calcutta - yes, those living here can only see what's there around them. But which Calcutta? Babu/bibi Calcutta? Jhupdi-bashi Calcutta? Muslim Calcutta? Dalit Calcutta? ...

CPM solidified lumpen raj in the state, done intentionally as a ruling strategy. Lumpen-ism is a feature of the city, like its air pollution, which affects all. Even the sushil "bhaw-dro" babu somaj has become highly lumpen in its make-up (just observe the civic sense of smart young things zipping around in their a/c cars on Calcutta's roads). The challenge is to oust the lumpenism. Even at this moment, there are more CPM lumpens in Calcutta then there are TMC lumpens. And the former are earning hundreds of crores for their lumpen party everyday.

I hope we can have a discussion, in which I can fill you in with a crash course in sociology/politics, while taking in your refined aesthetic sensibility, and come to a shared understanding and vision. More fundamentally, there is a profound sociological / political phenomenon happening in Bengal right now, for now connected with the TMC, but its something larger than that or any party. That will never be caught by the bhaw-bhaws or the wonderful, smert media. Once you discern that, you will also inevitably be filled with gentle hope.

Khoma korun didimoni, aar bhaat bokbo na, promise.

Uj: Su, I think Calcutta/Bengal woes have bottomed out in the last 3 decades. There is not much else that can go wrong. So in a situation like this, probably the worst we will see is the same ole ... let's pray for the best :-)

Vi: I could not resist ... The present communist government is getting it's just desserts. I hope the party of Lakshman Seth, Rabin Deb, Binoy Konar, Subhas Chakraborty and the bunch of the most organised violent and intolerant goons who ruled and laid waste an entire state is consigned to the funeral pyre, agni cheeta if you like. Good riddance, or should we actually keep your fingers crossed till the vampires are actually put back in their coffins.


Photo: William Vandivert, Time & Life Pictures/Getty Images

Calcutta, Tilottama

"Kolkata ek din kollolini tilottoma hawbe."

Jibananda Das

Calcutta shall one day be a swaying Tilottama.


Tilottama: the sum total of every iota of all the beautiful elements on earth, pieced together to every last bit. The line is from Jibanananda Das' poem "Suchetana", written in the late 1930s. The poet says that all the bloodshed and warfare and material advancement are not the last thing, and expresses hope for a transformation towards eternal truths .