MADURAI: Assamese Poet Bijoy Sankar Barman set a new trend in the Indian literary world by translating select poems of 3rd century Tamil classical text Kuruntokai for the audience in his home State.
After he read the English version of Kuruntokai, he was mesmerised by the richness of the poems, and their lucid, simple style. This prompted him to translate the poems into Assamese.
“It took nearly ten years to translate 66 poems from the anthology,” Bijoy told Express over phone.
Bijoy, a prominent young poet in Assam, whose poems has been translated into languages such as Bengali, Hindi and Kannada, had come across the translated work of Kuruntokai by prof A K Ramanujan in a book entitled ‘The Interior Landscape’. “The expression of love, emotions and the texture of the poems fascinated me. The more I read the poems, I also found the ecology, love and human relationships described in them very similar to our own,” he said.
Since then Bijoy, who is employed in postal department in Guwahati, started collecting works published by Sahitya Akademi on Early Indian Literatures to understand the commonalities and differences between cultures and social relations in Indian society.
“My visit to Madurai to participate in the Northeast and Southern Young Writer’s Meet organised by Sahitya Akademi in April 2013, helped develop a relationship with Tamil scholars Ravikumar and S A Vengada Soupraya Nayagar,” he said.
Though Bijoy relied on Ramanujan’s book for most of his translation, he frequently interacted with Tamil scholars, particularly Vengada Soupraya Nayagar, to understand the deeper meanings of certain parts. “Nayagar has experience in translating the Kuruntokai into French. So whenever I found it difficult to understand some part of a poem, I would immediately contact him for clarifications,” he said.
Appreciating Bijoy’s effort, Vengada, associate professor of French in Kanchi Mamunivar Centre for PG studies in Puducherry, said, ”Bijoy joins us in fulfilling the our modern Tamil poet Bharathi’s dream through the present translation.”
According to Bharathi, ”If we have any great works in our language, great men from other lands acknowledge them and pay tribute to them. I thank Bijoy for opting to play the role of the cultural ambassador .”