However, in the case of Gurdial Singh, this particular relationship takes on a very specific form; it surfaces as an unfailing insistence upon the spoken word. Being firmly rooted in the soil, he never fails to bring alive the natural rhythm and resonance of the spoken word. While this lends to his portrayal of situations and characters a rare authenticity and dramatic urgency, it also imparts to his fiction a certain quality of earthiness, even classical charm and simplicity. Largely recognized as one of the strengths of Gurdial Singh’s art of fiction-making, it is this quality that may often turn out to be a major source of anxiety for his translator(s).

  In my early encounters with Gurdial Singh’s fiction, it was this challenge of having to render into English the speech of his rustic characters, with all its inflections and tonal qualities, that both enthralled and teased me. Had it simply been a question of finding English equivalencies for the local idiom used by his characters, it wouldn’t have mattered so much. Translation, as any translator worth his salt would easily concede, is not merely a game of finding linguistic equivalencies at the semantic or the syntactic levels. Often the local idiom is so deeply embedded in the cultural layers that any attempt at a simple rendering could, at best, turn into a contraction or a reduction, and at worst, a deflection, if not a total loss of meaning. Besides, the syntactic structures in the two languages, viz., Punjabi and English, operate so very differently that often the process of transmission from one to the other may threaten to become obfuscating, even non-communicative.

  Whichever way we choose to think about it, the loss is invariably of those cultural specificities that are intrinsically and inherently resistant to any act of translation, howsoever shrewd or strategic. While self-reflexivity is an inescapable fact of any translator’s job, it doesn’t always become a route to self-awareness. Even in those cases where it does become so, the practise of translation may often throw up challenges, which no amount of anticipation or awareness might help tide over. Faced with some of these limitations, the task of a translator, especially if he is seeking to capture the ‘spirit of the original’, may actually become all the more difficult, even formidable.

  Often the ‘purists’ among the readers tend to question my translations on the grounds that they are heavily interlarded with the original Punjabi words and expressions. While some view this tendency as an expression of a lack of imagination or taste, or both, on my part, others choose to interpret it as an expression of my aesthetic failure, a desperate attempt to save the face by biting off the nose. All that can be said here is that in all translations of Gurdial Singh’s fiction, long and short, I have consistently taken recourse to the original Punjabi words as a matter of conscious policy and strategy; not as the last manoeuvre to find a way out of the impasse. Kinship markers, forms of salutation, exclamatory words, and sometimes names of plants, trees, seasons, rituals and ceremonies, etc., are so deeply embedded in the specificities of the source culture that all efforts to render them into the target language prove self-defeating.

  At this juncture, we ought to remind ourselves of Walter Benjamin’s famous words, that not just translation, but rather all forms of writing are necessarily a deflection from ‘the purity of the original’. Seen from this perspective, translation is never completely done in the target language, as is often assumed, but in what George Steiner describes as the ‘third language’ and often in what Homi K. Bhabha calls the ‘third space’. If it is the search for the ‘universal’ in specific human experiences that makes translation possible, then it is the cultural specificity, often eminently untranslatable, that adds to the innumerable woes of a translator.

  Hamstrung by such situations, a translator may find himself up against an impenetrable wall or an insurmountable cul-de-sac. Gayatri Spivak, an eminent critic and a distinguished translator herself (among other works, she translated Jacques Derrida’s Of Grammatology), has pointed out the need to recognize the whole area of ‘untranslatability’ embedded in the archaeology of each seemingly translatable text. This is particularly true of Gurdial Singh as he often writes in what is popularly known as the Malwai dialect, which is heavily interlarded with local and regional specificities and therefore, is extremely difficult to render into standard English. What makes it all the more challenging is the fact that often, Gurdial Singh creates (as he does in Anhe Ghore Da Daan) a ‘polyphonic novel’ with a variety of registers, styles and voices. While translating different dialects into homogenized English, I have tried, as far as possible, to alert the reader about the distinctness of dialects by taking recourse to para-textual strategies. This is how I have tried to circumvent, or rather negotiate, the problematic area of ‘untranslatability’ while working on Gurdial Singh’s fiction.

  All along I have been conscious of the fact that far from being a mechanical activity (or simply a matter of finding lexical and/or semantic equivalences in two different language systems), which is how popular minds understand it, translation is a highly self-reflexive, political act. The politics of translation is inevitable in a situation where the source and target languages are as highly differentiated as Punjabi and English, even inequitably placed and distributed against each other in terms of their reach, spread, power and dominance. Being a dominant, global language, English is inherently privileged and if a translator, by accident or design, begins to collude in this process of domination by adopting a ‘domesticating’ rather than a ‘foreignizing’ method, the resultant de-culturation of the source language/culture is almost inevitable. And this, in turn, is bound to defeat the very purpose for which translations are often undertaken. By scrupulously adhering to the ‘foreignizing’ method and stubbornly refusing to make egregious concessions to English, not only have I tried to be partial to my own language, Punjabi (for which I am not in the least defensive), but I have also demonstrated the way in which my ‘politics’ essentially functions.

  Though theorists like Lawrence Venuti have done their utmost to interrogate and problematize the much-abused notion of ‘translator’s invisibility’ (there is an attempt to reassert and establish the rights and prestige of the translators, something that history has stoutly denied them), I do believe that the translator is quintessentially a medium and not a source. If he has to find a new garment for the body of an old text, it is not only important for him to hide behind the skin and mask of the author, but also equally important to share in the worldview, perspective and/or ideology of the author. After all, the translator has to walk in step with another, tune into another’s rhythm and grace and if possible, even create a world that is neither entirely his nor anyone else’s.

  Had it not been so, I probably wouldn’t have returned to Gurdial Singh’s fiction with the kind of unfailing religiosity that I have. Translating Gurdial Singh’s fiction has been an eminently gratifying, though no less challenging an experience, for that reason. Perhaps it was so gratifying only because at every juncture, it threw up new and entirely unexpected challenges. His fiction has this unerring tendency to knock a translator completely out of his complacence. There is something about Gurdial Singh’s fiction that doesn’t submit itself readily to an act of translation, and least of all, to an English translation. In a way, the challenge is inherent in the fact that Punjabi and English do not merely represent two distinct, not necessarily antithetical, languages or linguistic systems, but two different cultural worlds as well.

  All odds notwithstanding, if I continue to translate Gurdial Singh’s fiction, it is only because across the barriers of age, time and space, I somehow feel a deep sense of kinship and affiliation with him and his work, which is as hard to explain as it is difficult to decipher. Perhaps it has something to do with the Punjabiyat we have inherited or a common dream we both share, albeit tacitly, that we must ultimately leave this world a better place than we found it; he, through his stupendous creations, and I, through my naive attempts at translating them.

  Rana Nayar

  March 2016

  Anhe Ghore Da Daan

  Tête-à-tête

  It was a freezing winter night. The cold outside seemed endless, but inside lay steeped in a long, sprawling darkness. Crouching near the dim light of a deeva, two ‘unhoye’ were wrapped up in their own intimate chat. Tayya Bishna was narrating an ancient story to his nephew, Maghi.

  ‘When the devtas and the rakshasas took sides in the churning of the ocean, one of the ratnas they managed to churn out was the nectar. The rakshasas were the first to get hold of it. The devtas started preparations to wage war against them. Just about then, a miracle happened, when Vishnu bhagwan, disguised as Mohini, suddenly appeared on the scene. So ravishingly beautiful was she that everyone was completely dazzled. The rakshasas, too, were mesmerized. Handing over the pot of nectar to Mohini, they said, “Now it is entirely up to you to do whatever you wish to.” Mohini said, “Since both groups have played an equal part in the churning, both have an equal right to it.” The rakshasas agreed.’

  ‘So bhai! Mohini started distributing the nectar among the devtas first. One of the rakshasas, in the guise of a devta, sneaked in and sat among them. The moment he partook of the nectar, both the Sun and the Moon, seated on either side of him, recognized him and reported him to Vishnu bhagwan. Using his khanda, Vishnu sliced that rakshasa into two parts, but since he had already drunk the nectar, he didn’t die. Converting him into Rahu and Ketu, Vishnu lodged both the parts permanently in the sky, and after finishing his job of distributing the nectar among the devtas, vanished from the scene.’

  ‘Tayya, does it mean that the poor rakshasas were deprived of their share, then?’

  Pretending to ignore Maghi’s mischievous comment, Bishna kept up the tenor of his narration.

  ‘Now, Rahu-Ketu became the sworn enemies of the Sun and the Moon. They say, bhai, that whenever there’s either a solar or a lunar eclipse, it is nothing but an appearance of Rahu-Ketu, who come charging in, riding their chariot, pulled by blind stallions. They come back periodically, they say, to claim the share they were denied in the first place.’

  ‘Share?’

  Maghi’s insolence had offended tayya to such an extent that he discontinued his story.

  Maghi smiled. Peering hard into tayya’s eyes, he said, ‘All right tayya, just tell me, when will this conflict end?’

  Tayya glowered at Maghi. Picking up an axe to cut off a few branches of a tree to light the chulha, he heaved himself up to go out, and as he did, he spoke in a harsh, grating tone, ‘When you decide to end it!’

  Maghi, too, was not one to rest easy. Following tayya, he said, ‘All right then, I’ll prove to you that I can actually settle it.’

  Surprised, tayya turned around to look at him, peering to the left and right, but all he could see was the flicker of Maghi’s grimy turban, swaying in the darkness that lay sprawling all around. Despite himself, tayya broke into a spontaneous smile.

  As soon as Melu stepped inside the kothri, he shut the door behind him and went and lay down on the manji, without even bothering to put the light on. When he heard a sudden knock after a while, he got up with a start, mumbling, ‘Who’s it?’

  Staring wildly at the door, he waited for a response but there was none. As he made an effort to heave himself up, he broke into a cold sweat. He felt as if the strength was ebbing from his limbs; so turning his back to the door, he lay down again, this time, his head resting towards the wrong end of the manji. For quite some time, he lay there, weak and dispirited, his eyes tightly shut. On opening them, he found himself face to face with a frightening spectre flickering on the wall opposite; the shadow was that of a kite cut loose, entangled in a mesh of electricity wires. As the kite lay hung, limp on one side of the electricity pole, its shadow was clearly visible, peeping out of the small holes and crevices in the wooden planks. The razor-sharp wind had blown holes through the waxed paper of the kite, leaving its bushy, long tail, like the fluff of a grimy cloth, hanging from the skeletal frame. (Even though he had known it for over a month-and-a-half now, each time he set his eyes upon this shadow, his heart would almost jump into his throat.)

  When the tension became almost unbearable, he got up and came out of his kothri. Removing the lid and adjusting the earthen pitcher up against the wall, he poured himself some water in his cupped palm, and drank. Slithering down his elbow, the drops of water formed a small pool by his feet. Suddenly feeling the cold water about his feet, he sprang back in horror, almost as if he had stepped on a snake; and as he did so, the pitcher fell and broke into smithereens. The mud on the floor of the kuccha kitchen mingled with the clear water, turning it into slush. For a long time, he kept staring at the potsherds of the broken pitcher and then turned his gaze towards the bushy, long tail, the fluff hanging off the skeleton of the kite. Knotted up almost like a serpent, the bushy long tail was tossing freely in the wind. Stunned as before, he went back inside, and without so much as bolting the door, he lay down again, his eyes shut tightly.

  Whenever such dread overtook him, sleep simply vanished. Even tonight, the moment he shut his eyes, it was as though something was trying to knock him out of sleep. And when sleep came fitfully, huge palaces and minarets, seven-storeyed, castle-like houses appeared to crash into ruins. Among half-broken walls, the twisted, gnarled girders of the roofs, the burnt-out beams and other debris, strange creatures, with heads of horses and torsos as big as an elephant’s or a rhinoceros’s would suddenly heave into sight, running amok in a wild frenzy. Standing back in trepidation and horror, hiding behind an uprooted column or a broken wall, he would stare fixedly as the demons went swishing around, raising endless clouds of dust amid the ruins…and then the thunder of the cannon balls would be heard, resounding all around. The dilapidated buildings would slowly vanish from sight, sinking into the haze of billowing smoke. And suddenly there would be a roaring crackle, a conflagration. And it was this menacing thunder of raging fire, reducing as it did a palace into cinders in the twinkling of an eye, which always shook him out of sleep. Inside the kothri, an all-enveloping darkness, overladen with swirling clouds of smoke, would pierce his eyes. He would feel his breath quicken, even become harder, and then he would sit bolt upright, staring abstractedly at the walls.

  In the small hours of the morning, when some such dream jolted him out of sleep, he found it hard to fall asleep again. Sitting up, his chin resting upon cross-legged knees, he began to stare at the shadow of the kite. A sudden pain stabbed his heart, brining tears to his eyes. Closing them, he tried to fight back the intensity of the pain. At that very moment, he heard the sound of a cough outside. Exhausted, he lay down once again. The coughing became louder and more insistent. He felt as though it was his own father. (Around this time, in the small hours of the morning, his father would often start coughing, and this lasted almost till sunrise. His sides knotted up, the cough would get worse by the minute, so much so that he could hear his father’s breathing get harder and heavier.)

  After some time, this sound faded, and as it became increasingly less obtrusive, images from the past became sharper and clearer. There in the backyard of the house, upon a wooden manji lay his father, hamstrung by ceaseless coughs…

  ‘Dyalo’s bebe, it’s time you got up and made a cup of tea for me…’ Melu’s bapu was heard saying, fighting to get his breath back; but unmindful of his pleadings, Melu’s bebe simply turned over to the other side and went back to sleep.

  Melu’s bapu heard the sound of her breathing get lighter, yet he couldn’t get himself to utter another word. (He was not in the habit of repeating his request a second time.) He knew that though she might take long to wake up, but once she did, she would immediately set about putting the water to boil, humming and hawing as she went about her work. As was her wont, even today she took her own time to get up. Pulling a khes over her shoulders and hobbling across to the chulha, she started grumbling in her characteristic manner, ‘The firewood is soaking wet and so are the dung cakes…Do I burn the chulha with my head? No one is bothered about anything in this house…The young and the old are all alike…Each worse than the other…What do I do now?…Start cursing the ones I was born to…That too when the dawn hasn’t cracked, yet?’

  Melu’s bapu knew only too well that any attempt on his part to intervene would simply add fuel to the fire. So, over the years, he had made it his practice to listen to all her recriminations in abject silence. Now, unlike before, he wouldn’t allow rage to simmer inside, as his heart had somehow inured itself against it.

  The cough persisted only so long as the tea wasn’t ready. Having somehow managed to light the chulha with the same wet dung cakes, she now made a big fuss while handing him his cup of tea, and sounded so grumpy as if to say that he ought to be beholden to her for whatever she had done for him. Once through with it, she turned around, now to pour her venom upon Dyalo and Shinda. No sooner had they pulled themselves out of the bed than she stormed out, two or three rotis tucked under her pallu, and her work almost half unfinished.

  ‘Bapu, where should I take the goats to graze?’ queried Shinda, stoking the fire in the chulha as he downed his cup of tea.

  Melu’s bapu didn’t react at all, almost as if he had failed to decipher the meaning of what had been said. Heaving himself up on the manji, he quizzed, ‘Why? What is it?’

  ‘In that grassland adjoining Mann’s fields, they are running a tractor. And Dhillon’s sons don’t allow anyone to come anywhere near their fields…they say, “Your cattle stray into our fields and ruin our standing crop…”’ Melu’s bapu looked thoughtful. After a while, he gathered his wits enough to say, quite abstractedly, ‘Take them to kassi for a graze, for a few days, at least. Then we’ll see what is to be done. Do you hear me?’