BENGALURU: When Vanamala Viswanatha first read Kuvempu’s magnum opus, Malegalalli Madumagalu, she never dreamt that one day, she would translate it. “I was completely stunned by it – the sheer canvas, depth and expanse, everything was absolutely stunning. It was like reading [Gabriel Garcia] Marquez or [Leo] Tolstoy, someone big like that. But you see, it was not something I could ever dream of translating. It was like a gagana kusuma (a jasmine flower in the sky) which you can’t reach,” she says.
Bride in the Hills (`799), her translation of the epic novel was recently published by Penguin Random House.
Forty years later, after translating Raghavanka’s Harishchandra Kavya and works of Kannada literary icons like Poornachandra Tejaswi, Vaidehi, UR Ananthamurthy, Sara Aboobacker and
P Lankesh, she felt that it was time to attempt a modern classic. “One moves beyond the personal to also look at the cultural aspect. If one of the best works in Kannada has not come out in English, then what are people like me doing?” she asks.
When she started working on it three years ago, an English translation of the novel did not exist. However, before she was finished, another translated work was published. Nevertheless, she pursued work on her translation.
Bride in the Hills is set in 19th century Malnad and follows Gutthi, a landlord’s vassal as he walks from village to village in the forested region, the relentless rain following him. Three love stories emerge – all striving to exist in the backdrop of a caste-ridden society working against them.
“These are all stories of young people in love, wanting to make their own decisions and wanting to marry the people they care for. But there are different levels of constraints on them. This is a story of the audacity and hope that they exhibit in the face of all these roadblocks. It’s an inspirational story,” Viswanatha explains.
Saying that her primary allegiance is to the flavour and texture of the original text’s language, she explains, “What I have done is break the standard practices of English to reflect these very fine distinctions and tonalities…I find that to be an important decolonising of English that we need to do in translation.”
Since the hierarchical nature of society heavily influences the speech of the book’s characters, Viswanatha has tried to ensure that caste differences come through in translation, often retaining words like ‘Gowdre’, ‘Akka’ and ‘Ayya’ that reflect intimacy or caste location. She says,
“When translating a text from a less powerful language into a more powerful language, there is a certain kind of cultural responsibility and sensitivity I need to bring to this. Should I just make the text read fluently in English, wiping out all local differences or should I keep those differences?”
“Here, nobody is important; nobody is unimportant; nothing is insignificant,” reads the epitaph of the book. According to Viswanantha, it is this all-inclusive quality that has ensured its continued relevance. The advent of climate change has lent new meaning to it. “I think we are rediscovering the text for ourselves in the context of climate change because the book is seeped in a lifestyle that is ecologically very conscious,” she says.
“The downpour of rain that starts with Gutthi’s journey is a vein that has impacted every character he meets. The balance between the life of human beings in that life of nature – that consciousness informs the text and should speak to us today when we are so traumatised by the devastation wrought by climate change.”