HYDERABAD: Resonating the experiences of most Indians, Purnima Tammireddy says she was ‘kept away from books’ and asked to focus only on the school curriculum. “In my formative years, I did not have access to literature. It is only after I completed my engineering that I could buy books and started reading,” she said.
Tammireddy began her literary pursuits by starting a blog in 2008. She established a book review website called pustakam.net. After maintaining the site for 14 years, she transitioned into fiction writing. In 2022, she authored ‘Emotional Pregnancy’, a collection of short stories. Nine years ago, she also started translating Manto’s works into Telugu. ‘Siya Hashiye’ or ‘Vibhajana naati Nettuti Gayaalu’ in Telugu, was released in 2022.
“Contrary to the established practice within the Telugu publishing industry of picking up the most popular works of an author and translating them, I chose to dive deeper into Manto’s works. I went through all his partition-related writings and analysed how he saw communal violence right from the early 1930s till the end of his life. I have collected all the essays, short stories and micro-fiction around that and made it a thematic collection,” said Tammireddy.
She mentioned that it is difficult to convince publishers to take up the herculean task of translating an extensive body of work like Manto’s. Due to this difficulty, she started her own publishing company called ‘Elami’ in 2022. “I wanted to keep the freedom of articulation intact,” she said.
Emotional Pregnancy, Pinjaram and Siya Hashiye were released under this banner. Another work, ‘Hamid Dalwai Kathalu’, translated into Telugu in association with the Yali Project led by Arshia Sattar, was released on February 14 at the Hyderabad Book Fair. It includes 12 stories by Marathi writer, activist and social reformer, Hamid Dalwai. Dr Vempalle Shareef released the book in the presence of the translator Volga.
When asked about her ability to navigate various languages and effectively translate them into Telugu, she responded, “Manto’s work and its criticism is not available in Devnagri script easily, at least not in the public domain. So I had to be well-versed in Urdu. Amrita Pritam wrote in Punjabi but a Hindustani version of Pinjar was also released in her lifetime in 1956. We have used this version published by Penguin, which has been approved by Amrita Pritam’s estate. For Hamid Dalwai’s stories, Volga had to read the English version,” she said.
She added that she sought assistance from students at Punjab University and other experts to accurately translate references from Punjabi culture and folklore. “We need to understand that certain elements of that time referred to an amalgamation of multiple things. I had to get help from the elderly who could identify these folk songs and explain them to me,” she said.
Highlighting the significance of regional literature, she said, “There is a richness in our writers’ way of storytelling that is not influenced by the Western styles. Someone like Manto, who was not well qualified, has written stories that reflected the time he was living in. He highlighted the living conditions of human beings in a crisis when we were all going through a historical moment. Likewise, Hamid Dalwai is a beautiful addition to our catalogue in that sense. Where Manto ends, Dalwai begins. If Manto wrote about the pre-partition and during partition conditions, Dalwai wrote about post-partition scenarios. He talked about the 1950s and 60s: forced migration to Bombay in large volumes and how these people perceived Bombay as a city, how they navigated the socio-economic situations at that time.”
She also pointed out that it is often seen as easier to translate literature from English to regional languages and vice-versa due to its greater adaptability and market reach, but she believes the personal significance associated with the Telugu language takes precedence over other things for many people.
“No matter how much we believe that English is taking over, being the language of our communication; I strongly disagree with it because I feel it is an elitist or a privileged point of view. Many people have learned English for the sake of their livelihoods but when they want a story, they want it in Telugu. That is how they feel at home in the language. To bring these stories into Telugu matters a lot to me, both as a translator and a publisher,” she concluded.
Her work-in-progress projects include translation of Telangana Arms Movement leader, Mallu Swarajyam’s memoir to English; other upcoming translations into Telugu from Hindustani, Kannada and English and non-fiction books on everyday technology and mental health.