BENGALURU: Throwing a spotlight on Bhojpuri literature, Pandey Kapil’s Phoolsunghi (Penguin Random House, `399), is possibly the first Bhojpuri book translated into English. Academician Gautam Choubey, who translated the book, transports readers to a forgotten world filled with mujras and mehfils, court cases and counterfeit currency, and the crashing waves of the Saryu river. Excerpts from an interview:
Why did you choose this book by Pandey Kapil over his other books?
This book contests popular misconceptions and flawed discourses about the Bhojpuri world – notions which people from within the region are at times reluctant to confront and admit. At its core, it is not a culture that glorifies violence and sexual misdemeanours; it is humane, sophisticated with its own codes of honour and chivalry. The novel brings these aspects to the fore. For example, it celebrates the miraculous rise of a courtesan in a culture that is often considered doggedly patriarchal. Even though it was written during the days of Emergency and it depicts a colonial world in turmoil -- that moves between Banaras to the west and Calcutta to the east -- it celebrates gestures of reconciliation and assimilation.
When were you introduced to Pandey Kapil’s work?
I grew up in a Bhojpuri-speaking literary family: my maternal grandfather, Chandradhar Pandey, was a well-known Bhojpuri writer. I was somewhat familiar with figures like Mahendra Misir, Bhikhari Thakur, Rameshawar Singh Kashyap, and to some extent, even Pandey Kapil. However, it was only in late 2017, having completed my PhD from the English department at Delhi University that I turned to Bhojpuri. That too at the behest of a senior colleague.
A year later, when I finally read Phoolsunghi, I was quite smitten by the story and moved by the sentiments it invokes. I came to realise the emotive force of feelings expressed in one’s mother tongue. After this chance discovery, and based on my family’s personal relationship with Bhojpuri literature, I felt duty-bound to share it with the world at large.
What does the title mean?
Phoolsunghi is a flowerpecker: a tiny bird that is at its chirpy best when hovering free around flowers, but withers away if put in a cage. It’s a metaphor for Dhelabai, the courtesan from Muzaffarpur who is imprisoned in the Red Mansion by Haliwant Sahay, an ageing zamindar of Chhapra. The
cage on the cover of the book represents the mansion, and the bees suggests characters drawn to the creature it entraps: the flowerpecker or Dhelabai, that is.
How relevant is the book in today’s world?
Although set in a turbulent colonial world, and written during the discordant days of Emergency, the novel makes a compelling case for reconciliation and empathy -- values that we crave for in the divided world that we inhabit. It enacts sentiments we desire and also suggests ways to bring them to bear upon our world. And most important, it speaks of women empowerment: even though the story of Dhelabai begins with her abduction, the novel takes us to a point where she emerges as a powerful much-admired matriarch, that too in the household she was forcefully brought to.
Bhojpuri literature is less explored. What took so long to bring people’s interest to these works?
A number of factors: The dominance of Hindi literature, which, at its considerate best, appropriates Bhojpuri, but generally ignores it. The rise of Bhojpuri films and cinema created a flawed impression about Bhojpuri and its culture. Besides, the lack of a literary movement with concerted objectives, and unsteady or half-hearted state support are the other reasons for the language remaining neglected.
Did you face any challenges while translating the book?
I grew up speaking Bhojpuri with my mother and until a few years ago, believed that I knew the language quite well. However, when I started reading its literature, I realised that Bhojpuri in print is different from the spoken form, as is perhaps the case with all other languages. To begin with, the visual impression of Bhojpuri words, although written in the script that I was all too familiar with, was a little disorienting; for me Devanagari and Hindi were interchangeable, and I could not fathom the script being mobilised by another language.
Further, since there is no ‘standardised’ Bhojpuri, there are multiple registers within the language, causing words to have different meanings across different spaces and regions. This pushed me to connect with Bhojpuri scholars, writers and people in my village. In a sense, a larger community of Bhojpuri enthusiasts came together for this book.