The Story of a Thrice-Born Book

Do you know a book can be thrice-born? Yes, you heard it right. Thrice-born!

Once born (obviously) means a book birthed from the womb of the author’s mind.

Twice-born: when it is translated from its source language, into a new tongue, a tongue which speaks a new language. The book’s essence — characters, plot, argument, even the settings, broadly remain the same, but the language-dress it wears, even the skin it wraps around itself, is a new one, another one. But it is still the same book, you say. I reply, yes and no. And you say, why not!? And I say, because a man eavesdropping on his wife cheating with her lover in Sinhala is and is not the same as in Hindi. You sigh, not convinced, though curious.

And what does thrice-born mean? It means, the same angry man who was turned into a guseel aadmi is now being turned into something else, into say, kōpayaṭa pat minisā, or an angry man in Sinhala. You dismissively remark, it’s the same thing. And I say, yes and no. You throw your hands up in exasperation.

I poise myself, slowly saying, yes they are the same, but there are variations, subtleties, and nuances the one doing the re-birthing needs to know. Re-birthing? Your eyes turn wide. Yes, the one taking the man from one language and re-birthing him into another. The person doing this, needs to know more than the mere meaning of individual words. He needs to know how they sound, flow, and combine to make meaning, atmosphere, and mood when put together. He needs to know the parts, and the interrelations between the parts to put together a whole faithful to the original. And what if he doesn’t know! You ask, a last-ditch effort to shut me up.

I pause, and say, then the man we met who just discovered his wife with her lover in Sinhala is lost to us as the man in Hindi, or any other language (this being one of the most striking scenes in Kaushalya’s novel which comes up later).  

And has such a thing happened? You ask.  

Yes I say, many times. But most recently that I know of, on my last trip to Colombo, I blurt, I met a sweet, soft-spoken man of average built and understated demeanour, named Kaushalya Kumarasinghe, a scholar and a Sinhala fiction writer. He wore these rectangular specs, smoked thin cigarettes, and preferred tea in a kettle to machine-made Cappuccino. He had written a novel in Sinhala. When he was pursuing his PhD from South Asian University located in Delhi, he made friends with Ajmal Kamal, a Pakistani author and scholar. Both Kaushalya and Ajmal were in the same class. Your eyes widen. When Ajmal heard about Kaushalya’s novel during their initial introductions, he decided to translate it.

But here is the catch, I say, sensing your rousing interest. Ajmal didn’t know Sinhala. The re-birther didn’t know, had no logical way of knowing, the thing he wanted to re-birth. Quizzically, you look. So they mutually decided they will do one page a day, with Kaushalya describing each scene line by line in English, their common tongue, and Ajmal would translate it into Hindi. Since they had decided this over (guess, guess) Old Monk, the next morning, Kaushalya had dismissed all of it as an overeager do-gooder’s enthusiasm. But in the evening, Ajmal called a surprised Kaushalya, and reminded him about the night before.

And so they began. Kaushlya going over each Sinhala line, explaining Ajmal the context, and setting, and Ajmal rendering that verbally translated version of everything that makes the novel, into Hindi.

Over many cups of tea (and sometimes rum), the two would sit together in their sparse hostel rooms, taking breaks from their PhD coursework, and sink so deep into the novel’s crevices and turns, that the veil of language would blow up in cigarette smoke, and for many, many luminous moments, Ajmal clearly saw what Kaushalya’s text had truly intended to show.

But it wasn’t as if a sentence once cast in Hindi was a finished thing. They spoke about it, discussed each word of it, until they both were so in-sync that there was no difference between the man eavesdropping on his wife and her lover’s conversation in Hindi as it was in Sinhala.

I take a breath, waiting for a question from you, but apparently, you don’t have any. You are twiddling your thumbs the way you do when you have much to say, but don’t know how to. So I continue.

I don’t know what to call this process. To me, it wasn’t merely translating a text, but rather, collaboratively reconstructing it, as a shadow of the original. And that does and does not sound as a translation. And you suddenly light up, ok, so I understand the twice-birthing you referred to. Where does thrice-born figure in this?

Ah! Delightfully I look at you, knowing full well you have caught my bait. I say, that now, as we speak, Ajmal is translating the Hindi text of Is Chupi Hui Khidki mein Jhanko into English. That is what I meant by thrice-born. You absorb this. Why? Your mouth wants to ask. And then you don’t because you know already.

Yet I respond to your unvoiced query. Because the English version of Is Chupi Hui... will reach its English readers (obviously). More importantly, as a text, it would have travelled from Sinhala to Hindi and now to English. It would leap and jump over the boundaries of language. In fact, I want to add, this process of collaborative reconstruction would have rendered redundant those boundaries itself. But what I say is, now too, the author and the re-birther are following the same process. And this time you don’t ask why, because you know that the man discovering his wife and her lover in English is and is not the same as that in Hindi or Sinhala.

You seem delighted at this insight you have arrived, perhaps believing, all by yourself.

So Ajmal keeps translating books from one language to another? Your voice carries not the edge of doubt, but the softness of wonder. Yes maybe he does, I say. But this one, this specific thrice-born one is happening because he was asked by someone to do it.

Someone who believes that language should be the least of the barricades impeding a story’s movement from one mind to another, one tongue to another, especially in the fractured times live in. I sense I have charmed your doubt into curiosity.

So I continue, a literary magazine based out of India, Usawa Literary Review started, in 2023, a Translation Grant which supports translation of contemporary literature from present-day countries of Pakistan, Nepal, Bhutan, Myanmar, Bangladesh, and Sri Lanka, originally written in their vernacular languages into English.

I want to tell you so much more, about how Usawa isn’t the only one, there are many more, such as The Bombay Literary Magazine, Aainanagar, and Indian Literature which publish quality translations; about how in India’s contemporary literary landscape today, a bunch of these magazines have emerged as minor heroes, unhindered by commercial considerations, whose greatest strength is their single-minded focus and commitment to showcasing ‘good writing’; about how these magazines, run by activists, white-collared professionals, academicians, students, insurance professionals, and lawyers, are powered by only and only love and commitment.

By now, you are looking away, distracted, perhaps imagining Ajmal and Kaushalya sitting in their hostel room, trying to find an appropriate equivalent of a Sinhala term in Hindi, and then in English.