Random jottings on a LitFest, celebration of languages

In the world of many literature festivals, sorry LitFests India hosts, some get noticed, some get written about, but many a times it is the brand and the association with particular media houses that gets them the coverage. Unfortunate though that a particular LitFest if not co-hosted or sponsored by a particular media house doesn’t get covered, or what is sponsored by one media house would be ignored by others.

I still rue the day I missed Ben Okri in Mumbai. He was here to receive a lifetime award, and well I didn’t see that listed in any engagement columns of the newspapers I bought. Two days later, when I read his interview in The Indian Express I cursed myself for not having followed the LitFest schedule independently.

Same way I also missed the first edition of The Gateway LitFest or the LIC Gateway LitFest that brings together the non-English or language writers of India. Luckily for the second edition my friend and ex-colleague Sabari called me, gave me the details and asked me to attend specifically because Jeyamohan was coming. He remembered our conversations about Jeyamohan and invited me. Little did I know that day Sabari was one of the main person behind this Mumbai’s LitFest that brought together writers from different corners of India.

Sabari and three of his journalist colleagues all hailing from Kerala have conceptualised and executed three editions of a great forum for regional language writing. I can say that because for two editions in a row I have heard first hand the happiness and satisfaction writers from different states in the country expressed about the festival.

This year by chance I got an opportunity to be involved in a small way with the Gateway LitFest. Since Kanimozhi who was scheduled to have a conversation with writer Salma and Cho Dharman had to drop out, unabale to travel to Mumbai I was asked to fill in for the show. It was a first for me, as I had not moderated any programme live, and not done live translations on stage.  But, it was a great experience, to have a quiet Salma who with a smile would put forth her disagreements with Cho Dharman, and a masterly story teller Cho Dharman painting a large canvas of stories before the audience.

Very rare to see writers like Cho Dharman who wanted to stay true to the topic given for the show and sincerely list the trend setters in Tamil literary scene from 1900s to present day. From the pre-independence influences like Meenakshisundaram Pillai to post-modernist Sundara Ramasamy, Cho Dharman neatly divided the list and their contributions. Despite having been a DMK follower in his younger days Cho Dharman expressed his views about where he placed the movement and their contribution to Tamil. “They came with the alliterative language, spoke eloquently, the language died, but they continue to rule”, he said in lighter vein on the continuation of political legacy of the Dravidian movement, but little it did to sustain the language.

Being a member of DMK, and office bearer too, Salma would vehemently oppose Cho Dharman. She wanted to emphasize on the importance of subjects DMK writings promoted, women’s rights, widow remarriage, fight for the language etc. Being a first woman writer from the Muslim community Salma is a trend setter in her own right. She believes that it is only someone from within the community would be able to write, express, articulate their stories.

Cho Dharman on the other hand was emphatic that he is a Dalit, but his writing is not Dalit writing. He doesn’t want literature to be branded and even in his earlier interviews has mentioned that writers don’t need reservations. He says, listen to my story, and decide for yourself if this is a Dalit story or universal. It was simple, touching story he narrated with an impactful ecological message. I want to read more of Dharman, for he writes about so many of the birds, and trees and weaves environment related tales.

I want to read more also because I want to see the picture of villages and small towns as they are today, which I may not get to see anywhere else. One sentence he told me haunts me, “gramathulu vayasaanavangalukku innaikku panam prachinai illamma, thanimaidaan” (villagers today are not distress by lack of money, but what troubles them is loneliness). I see that even in the cities, parents whose children live abroad, leaving the grandparents to live for the five or ten minutes of skype sessions with their grandchildren, or watching the facebook photos of daughters and sons holidaying in some exotic locales around the world.

To digress a little, I thought of Bhyrappa’s speech in Mumbai last year. When he said he doesn’t believe in Dalit, Feminist and the kind of ideological literature but only in “pure literature” it created controversy. But, I see a similarity in what Cho Dharman said and Bhyrappa said. To see literature as literature without segmenting as this or that literature.

LOST IN TRANSLATION

Translation is a big tool that takes writers to readers beyond the realm of their states, countries transporting their stories. K.R.Meera in a session very clearly said why she wants to be a Malayalam writer and not become a writer in English. She said as a writer in Malayalam she comfortably strides two worlds, one in Malayalam and the other in English through translations. Why should I get into English and lose this, she asked. But, for many the problem is getting their works across in letter and spirit.

How does one translate the nuances of a dialect like Cho Dharman’s ‘Karisal kadu’ or the black soil land or bring out the cultural contexts of a Tamil Muslim household in Salma’s books. Salma whose works were translated by Lakshmi Holmstrom, a fine translator was in a way twice removed from the author’s milieu. Lakshmi was a Tamil Brahmin, and one who lived in England, so Salma’s language as well as her culture could have been tough for the translator to capture.

As a reader I look forward to translations even if some nuances, flavors are lost in translation, how else can I read an Assamese writer, a Gujarati writer ... 

Before reading translations, even a peep into the origin of these languages, an introduction to the languages can be fascinating.

We had a session on languages that don’t have a script of their own. The session had speakers from Maithili, Kosali, Khasi, Konkani, Ahirani, and Bhojpuri. That was one session I liked very much, it was too short for in an hour’s time we can’t cover all the languages.  Over the years hope each one of these languages get their own separate session.

Coming from Mithila, Chandana Dutt started Maithili with reference to their famous daughter, Seetha. Got goosebumps when she said “Seetha ne jis bhasha me boli woh Maithili”.  I would like to do a full transcript of their speeches when the video is available, but for now just a few lines. Dutt said the language did have a lipi once called Tirutha. Like the famous daughter Seetha, the other lady she recalled from her land was Bhamati, Vachaspati’s wife who ran a school for girl children even as her husband was immersed in writing for 20-long years, forgetting he even had a wife.

Closer home, Konkani has problem of not just having no script, but problem of being written in multiple scripts. They sometimes have to use online translators to get a Konkani work in Kannada translated to Devanagari to read! Konkanis had to overcome during the period of Portugese rule, dictat banning Konkani even inside the closed doors at home. The first printing press printed Konkani, but in Roman script as the story was the ship that was carrying Devanagari script sank and didn’t reach Goa’s shores.

Haldar Nag, an amazing Kosali poet from Odisha who can recite each one of the poems he has written enthralled all of us with his musical renditions of few over two days of the LitFest. Enjoying the lyrical quality of his “boli” I missed out on the content. Just a few words I captured were, reference to Kosali, Kausalya, Ram’s mother.

Next came Bhojpuri, and it is lovely to hear a crisp sounding “Bahut vistar basha”, widely spoken language which once upon a time had khyati script, that Kayasths had started.

Fascinating of course was the story from the moderator of the session on how Khasi language lost its script. Two men were summoned by their reigning Goddess to gift them scripts, did go and receive a Khasi and a non-Khasi script. Imagine Cherrapunji and its legendary rains. It rained so heavily as the two men were on their way back and they had to cross a swollen river. The non-Khasi script holder had a long hair, he bound the script up on the head with his hair as he crossed the river. The Khasi script holder, either bald or with short hair couldn’t do the same, and clenched the script in his teeth as he crossed. Breathless mid-way he swallowed the script and that was the end of Khasi script. We definitely want a full session for Khasi stories, don’t we?