150 Years Later Rat Turns into Goose...'मुंबईचें वर्णन' वाचा मुळातून

Friedrich Nietzsche, 278, 'The Gay Science', 1882:

"And all, all, suppose that the past has been nothing, or a small matter, that the near future is everything: hence this haste, this crying, this self-deafening and self-overreaching!"

Lee Sandlin, WSJ, October 27 2011:

"...There's a cryptic line of Sophocles (most of Sophocles is pretty cryptic, but bear with me) about the glories of Athens, which can be translated as "Superior horses, superior colts, the superior sea." William Butler Yeats once offered a rather stunning alternative version: "Horses and horses of the sea, white horses." Is that a satisfactory translation? Is it a translation at all? I have the feeling that it's more like the opposite of a translation: it's so striking and beautiful that it obliterates the original. Mr. Bellos's beguiling book never sufficiently explores the possibility that in any translation something essential might be getting lost..."

Frontline dated November 1 2013 has an article "Story of two riots" by A G Noorani. I read every thing Mr. Noorani writes for Frontline...Every single line.

This time I got more excited because the essay mentions one of the most enduring (and one of my favourite) books in Marathi  'Mumbaiche Varnan' (मुंबईचें वर्णन) by  Govind Narayan Madgaonkar (गोविंद नारायण माडगांवकर)
.
The book was first published, 150 years ago,  in 1863 and then it went out of print. The second edition/reprint came out only 100 years later in 1963!  (This must be a kind of world record for a very good book in a major world language.)


Historian N R Phatak (न र फाटक) 1893-1979 wrote a lovely introduction to its 1963 avatar. (Among other things, Mr. Phatak laments poverty of Marathi there: '...या पुस्तकाची ही नवी आवृती मुंबई मराठी ग्रंथसंग्रहालय या संस्थेने प्रकाशित करून महाराष्ट्राची उपेक्षावृत्ती घटविली असली तरी या साहसांत शंभर वर्षामागील दैन्याची साक्ष आहेच…')

To celebrate 150th anniversary of such an enduring book, I would have liked to see a Marathi periodical serializing the book, a chapter a week/ month, with  commentary/ annotations by experts from different walks of life, speaking all Mumbai tongues.

Hey, I am just fantasizing! The way view of 19th century Parel, below, looks to us in 21st century.

'Government House at Parel'

Artist: Sir Henry Darell, Bt.  Lithographed by Messrs. Day and Son   Courtesy: Frontline


I bought the book in November 2012 for a song (Rs. 50). I keep reading it from time to time. 

This is how Mr. Noorani introduces Madgaonkar's book in Frontline:

"...A Goan, Govind Narayan (1815-1865), came to Bombay in 1824 and soon established himself as an author. Murali Ranganathan has translated from Marathi into English his informative biography of the city (Govind Narayan’s Mumbai; Anthem Press, India, 2012)..."

I didn't like dropping of the surname from author's name by Noorani and  Ranganathan. I wonder what the late author would have thought.

Now, on to the translation quoted by Noorani.

"On 7 June 1832, the Parsis called a strike in Mumbai and rioted. The reason given is that the previous day, the dog squad had entered the houses of many Parsis and had taken away their dogs. The Parsis entreated them not to do so, as it was against government rules, and asked them to release the captured dogs. There were some skirmishes between the Parsis and the dog squad. It was then decided in a meeting of a hundred odd Parsis that all the food and grain shops would be closed on the 7 June, food supply to the English stopped, and a general strike be called. They indicated their programme to the shops inside the Fort and the bazaar outside the Fort. The only positive aspect was the rich Parsis were not with them and were in fact unaware of their plans. Most of the rioters were of the lower class like cooks and water-carriers; there were also some middle-class gentlemen. On that day, they closed the shops, and stopped the supply of roti and bread which was being sent for the soldiers at Colaba. Many of the Khatki people did not support the strike; when they were transporting meat, they were beaten up and the meat was thrown into the moat surrounding the Fort. The Portuguese Christians, who supplied bread to the English regiments, were intimidated and their produce spilt. In this manner, they continued till about ten in the morning." (bold and italics mine)

I did not understand what was meant by "the Khatki people"...Were they some kind of tribal people?

I looked up the original Marathi book (Chapter 7, page 118)...it says "… कित्येक खाटकी लोक यांस अनुकूल नव्हते,… ".


Now, it became clear...it's 'khatik'...'खाटीक'  in today's Marathi… butcher! I wonder why Mr. Ranganathan did not translate it.

Mr. Noorani's quote continues:

"Their actions spread terror amongst the English. The Magistrate wrote to the Town Major asking him to send some troops as the Parsis were rioting. He however did not respond for a long time. The white regiment in Colaba did not receive the bread they were supposed to on that day. The English who were going to their offices were waylaid. They obstructed the vehicle of Sir John Awdry, the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court, and threw some garbage and a dead goose into his vehicle..." (bold and italics mine)

'Goose' reminded me of Christmas dinners. Did ordinary rioting Parsis take trouble in killing a goose for Your Lordship? Were they waiting on  or protesting? They must really respect the Chief Justice of the Supreme court!

Perturbed, I turned to the original.

"...त्यांच्या गाडीस अडविले आणि रस्त्यांतील कचरा व एक दोन मेलेल्या घुसी त्यांच्या गाडीत फेकून दिल्या..."

So it's Ghusi ('घुसी')...in today's Marathi 'Ghushi' (घुशी)… rats/ bandicoots and not just one probably more!

Even today when I walk about in Pune, I invariably find dead rats near every big pile of trash. (do they die of indigestion or brought there dead?)

So no special treatment was meted out to the Bada Saab by Parsis...just a couple of dead bandicoots for an early lunch!

Now, in 150 years, Mumbai property prices might have gone up 15000 times, Parsis in Mumbai are probably less in number than they were then, there might be more mobile handsets in Mumbai than humans but dead rats sure don't turn into dead geese even today. 

This English translation has been published in 2012 and I could locate two glaring errors in less than ten lines!

 Artist: Alan Dunn, The New Yorker, 19 April 1952

"No, no! घूस as in rat not duck"

Hamlet of G G Agarkar, H N Apte and of Lego...हा मिल्ल का मोठा मल्ल?

The Economist, November 2013:

"After a strong 2012, Lego's sales to Asian consumers have risen by 35% so far this year, outperforming the Asian toy market by a factor of five. Sales have grown by 70% in China, 35% in South Korea and 20% in Singapore. The company will start building its first factory in China next year. Anything associated with Lego seems to flourish in Asia at the moment..."


Ashok Shahane (अशोक शहाणे) says in his book 'Napeksha' (नपेक्षा):

"...टिळकांनी तुरुंगात 'गीतारहस्य' लिहल. अन नेहमी ठाम बोलणार्या आगरकरांनी मात्र 'हॅम्लेट'चं रुपांतर केल. 'विकारविलसिताबद्दल मात्र महाराष्ट्र आगरकरांच्या ऋणात राहील… "

("...Tilak wrote 'Gitarahasya' in prison. And Agarkar- who always spoke with firmness- translated 'Hamlet'. Maharashtra will always remain in Agarkar's debt for 'Vikarvilasit'...") 

[Page 41, 2005/2008, Lokvangmay Gruha]

'Vikarvilasit' ('विकारविलसित' अथवा शेक्सपीअरकृत हॉम्लेट नाटकाचे भाषांतर '), 1883 is a translation of 'Hamlet'.
 
I have already written on this blog about J S Mill's iron-like grip on Agarkar's (and many others who followed him) intellect.  Read for instance the post "R D Karve, Skepticism Not Included...जो शंकाच घेत नाही त्याला ज्ञान कसे मिळणार?" dated August 25 2013.

So how did Shakespeare, for Agarkar,  fit in Mill's 'utilitarianism'?

I was carious about it. It was not just the love of great literature. There was more to it. Shahane's statement only implies irony.

H N Apte (8 March 1864- 3 March 1919)  (ह. ना आपटे) answered it for me. 

Apte has written reviews of a few Marathi/ Sanskrit plays. One of them is Agarkar's 'Vikarvilasit'. The review was first published in 1883-84.

"...त्याची (शेक्सपीअरची) नाटके म्हणजे, विकारविलसितकारांच्या मताप्रमाणे केवळ मनोरंजनार्थ नाहीत, तर ती त्यांच्या योग्यतेप्रमाणे वाचून त्यांचा अभ्यास केला असता आपणास जीर्णारण्याप्रमाणे भासणार्या जगात उपयोगी पडणारी वर्तणूक शिकवणारी आहेत.…"

["...his plays (Shakespeare's) plays, according to the author of 'Vikarvilasit'- are not for entertainment alone. But if they are studied as per their merit, they may teach us useful conduct in this rickety-forest like world..."]

[from 'Nivadak Hari Narayan Apte', Sampadak- Vidyadhar Pundalik, Sahitya Akademi, 1991/2013

'निवडक हरि नारायण आपटे', संपादक - विद्याधर पुंडलीक]

So there you go....Hamlet has a utility and hence you should read it and perhaps translate it!

"How now? A rat? Dead, for a ducat, dead!" --Hamlet from "Hamlet" (Act III, Scene iv)

Hamlet using  Lego

courtesy: FB page on Shakespeare

 Even H N Apte was deeply influenced by J S Mill more than any other contemporary social reformer. [Note- Later V D Savarkar वि दा सावरकर too would be an ardent follower of Mill's utilitarianism (उपयुक्ततावाद)]

Vidyadhar Pundalik informs, in the book quoted above, that the protagonist of Apte's incomplete novel 'Ganpatrao' (गणपतराव) takes an oath of social reforms on the copy of Mill's 'The Subjection of Women ', 1869 (quoted wrongly as 'Subjegation of Women' in the book).

Not just this, in year 1991, Pundalik adds his own testimonial to Mill:

" ...इथे हे सांगितले पाहिजे की, मिल्ल हा आजच्या स्त्रीमुक्तीवाद्यांनासुध्दा प्रेरक आणि मौलिक वाटेल असा असामान्य प्रज्ञावंत होता..."

("...it must be stated here that Mill was such an extraordinary intellect that today's proponents of women liberation would find him inspirational and valuable...")

I wonder what Agarkar and Apte would have thought of 'Hamlet' using Lego... And what did they think of the ghost in 'Hamlet'?

 courtesy: Getty Images

"Materialism - the philosophy, not the perennial human tendency to pursue and accumulate material things - sees the universe as a physical system. Everything that exists in it must be some sort of matter, or something that emerges from matter. In a fully scientific view of the world, only material things are real. Everything else is just a phantom. Materialists would see the ghost in Hamlet as a figment of the imagination." 

(John Gray, 'Ghosts in the material world', BBC)

I have another thought on Agarkar's Hamlet.


Tim Lott says: 

"...You can’t get away from jealousy and rivalry when you’re brothers and that, taken to the extreme, is what happens in Hamlet. It’s about how brothers sometimes really fucking hate each other. I know there are times in my childhood when if I’d had a gun in my hand, I would have shot my brother dead. That dark impulse, although suppressed and effaced by what we want to believe about ourselves, is very deep and dark.."

When Tilak and Agarkar, once almost like brothers,  fought a bitter wordy duel in public in 1893, documented on this blog here,  did Agarkar remember Hamlet?

त्यानंतर शंभर वर्षांनी !...'Pride and Prejudice' in Marathi

Year 2013 is 200th Anniversary of Publication of 'Pride and Prejudice'

दिलीप पुरुषोत्तम चित्रे:

"...मराठ्यांचा पाडाव होऊन ईस्ट इंडिया कंपनीचा प्रभाव भारतभर पसरण्यापूर्वीच जेन ऑस्टेनसारखी महान स्त्री कादंबरीकार इंग्लंडमध्ये होऊन गेली होती..."

('पुन्हा  तुकाराम ', पॉप्युलर प्रकाशन, 1990/1995)

[Dilip Purushottam Chitre:

"...Even before the defeat of Maratha's and the spread of influence of The East India Company across India a great female novelist like Jane Austen had already lived in England..."

('Punha Tukaram', Popular Prakashan)]


The Hindu, 'Not for arranged marriage', October 6 2013:

"...We blamed the khap panchayat for its constant diktats against same-gotra love, same-village love; we rightly blamed the parents and they were arrested for this never-in-a-million-years-will-we-forget lesson against love; we blamed the politicians who silently encourage these khaps; but I think, that much of the blame lies with us, for still treating love marriage as abnormal and arranged as the norm. And every time one of us, educated, supposedly independent, individuals agrees to marry someone not of our own choosing, someone we don't love, we are silently condoning those who kill to oppose the concept of love marriage...."


The Times of India, October 14 2013, a headline on page 2 of Pune edition:

"Marathi translations of English titles gain readers..."

'Pride and Prejudice' has more than 2,50,000 'likes' on Facebook and, as per Wikipedia, to date has sold some 20 million copies worldwide.  Jane Austen is not just a very popular writer today, she remains highly relevant.

The latest Helen Fielding's book in the series of Bridget Jones- 'Bridget Jones: Mad About the Boy', 2013- is, like the previous two books, is also loosely based on Austen's work.

Reneé Zellweger as Bridget Jones

Photo courtesy: Allstar


'Pride and Prejudice' starts with these opening lines:

"It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune, must be in want of a wife.

However little known the feelings or views of such a man may be on his first entering a neighbourhood, this truth is so well fixed in the minds of the surrounding families, that he is considered as the rightful property of some one or other of their daughters..."

David M. Shapard says about them:
  
"The famous opening line, with wonderful economy, accomplishes two main purposes. It indicates the novel's central subject of marriage, along with the financial considerations usually involved in it. It also sets the tone of irony that will pervade the book, for in fact, as we immediately see, it is the single women in this society who are truly in want, or need, of a man of large fortune. The term “acknowledged” adds to this effect, for it suggests the possibility that this supposed truth about single men may be more valid in people's beliefs than in reality. "

Now, I discovered only recently to my delight that Ms. Austen's book has been translated into Marathi.

It is titled  'Aajpasoon Pannas Varshannee !' ("आजपासून पन्नास वर्षांनी !") by Krushnaji Keshav Gokhale (कृष्णाजी केशव गोखले). It was first published, a hundred years ago,  in 1913. It has 61 chapters, the same as the original.

Just for the record, the book was earlier translated as a play 'Vicharvilsit' (विचारविलसित) by Gopal Chimnaji Bhate (गोपाळ चिमणाजी भाटे). [ Had this title to do anything with G G Agarkar's (गो ग आगरकर) translation of Hamlet into Marathi called 'Wikar Wilasita' (विकारविलसित)?]

The publisher admits that Gokhale has added to the original at some places.

But I was confused with the Marathi title itself- "Fifty years from now !". How does "Pride and Prejudice" translate into that? And why exclamation mark in the title?

Author explains it thus:

Did that day arrive in India by 1963? I don't know.

In 2013? I still don't know.

How does the translation begin? How does it handle the famous opening lines quoted and commented upon above?

 Marathi translation starts with:

 "The concept that gets created in mind by the word marriage is so enchanting that it's very dear from the heart to everyone from the children to the adults..."  

It's a disaster!

Ms. Austen says nothing like this- enchanting, dear, heart- in her opening para. How can she praise the institution of marriage so unabashedly at the start? How can she be so opinionated in the beginning?

Marathi translation, in the process, also loses the 'economy' that Mr. Shapard talks about: 120+ Marathi words for about 70+ words of English.

Vilas Sarang (विलास सारंग) in his essay- 'Mhatara ani samudra - ani barke barke shark' ('म्हातारा आणि समुद्र- आणि बारके बारके शार्क')- has dismantled the late P L Deshpande's (पु ल देशपांडे) translation- 'Eka Koliyane', 1965 (एका कोळियाने) -of Ernest Hemingway's "The Old Man and the Sea". [The essay is part of Sarang's book 'Akshrancha Shram Kela' ('अक्षरांचा श्रम केला'), 2000]

English may have been our closest foreign language for a while but looks like its translation has always remained a challenge.

I Will Try to Remember Interesting GPD...गो. पु. देशपांडे

G P Deshpande (गो. पु. देशपांडे) died on October 16 2013.

My father knew him reasonably well.

One day a few years ago, I went up to him at Pune airport and introduced myself as my father's son. He warmed up immediately. Then we traveled together on adjacent aisle seats to Delhi.

Earlier my attempt to meet him at Kolkata had failed because I didn't show up at the theatre, after fixing the appointment, where his new play - 'Chanakya Vishnugupt' (चाणक्य विष्णुगुप्त)- was being performed. I had seen the earlier show of the play and found it verbose and boring. I had wanted to leave it halfway!

We kept chatting on all kinds of subjects en route to Delhi via Mumbai and kept quiet only to eat the lunch.

 I praised R B Patankar's (रा भा पाटणकर) "Apoorna Kranti' (अपूर्ण क्रांती). He had not liked the book. He had debated it with the author himself. He was surprised to learn from me Keshav Meshram's (केशव मेश्राम) praise for Shripad Krushna Kolhatkar (श्रीपाद कृष्ण कोल्हटकर). (He had no view on Kolhatkar.) He requested me to send him a copy of the article.

However, he and I agreed on how great T S Shejwalkar (त्र्यं शं शेजवलकर) was and how neglected he remained in Maharashtra/ India. He once wanted to translate Shejwalkar into English but the project (for Sahitya Akademi?) did not come through.

He spoke about his own family- he was going to his daughter's place in Delhi- and asked me about mine.  At Delhi, once we gathered our baggage, I touched his feet and asked him if I could drop him at some place on my way to Noida. He hesitated but declined the offer in the end.

(I cannot share here all that- on Marathi speaking national leaders, main-stream Marathi newspapers etc-  he said to respect his privacy even after his death.) 

I kept reading his columns in Economic & Political Weekly (EPW)  but found them boring most of the times.

I have his 'Udhwastha Dharmashala' (उध्वस्त धर्मशाळा). I find it verbose and boring. I have still not finished it.

He was a 'committed' writer like most of the 'reformist' (सुधारणावादी) and 'realistic' (वास्तववादी) writers in Maharashtra today are. For me, they all are boring. I can't assess them as writers because I can't finish reading their books or blog pages or newspaper articles or stand (sit?) their TV debates!

But occasionally GPD became interesting such as in the article from EPW I quote  below (note- NRM means Non Resident Maharashtrians):

“…The NRMs have decided to celebrate the language that they rarely if at all speak. But they cannot be blamed. Their relatives and friends do not speak it either…

… A number of them went to modest schools in Pune, Nagpur or Mumbai. They perhaps read some books then. Most of them must have read the grand icon of the middle classes, P L Deshpande. They would remember a few of his jokes and witticisms. They would have seen some DVDs of his one-man performances. Whatever little Marathi they might speak there would be for telling each other PL’s “jokes”. Not for any reason is he called “Maharashtrache Ladke Vyaktimatva” (Maharashtra’s icon). Of course there is no reason why they cannot or should not celebrate their icons. And, after all, “PL” was no ordinary writer.

But then the point is that it amounts to nostalgia for those years of lower middle class living. The NRMs do not give the benefits of being cyber slaves. An occasional return to culture and tradition leaves them in peace with themselves and with their past…

… Most of the NRMs are cyber slaves in the Silicon Valley. They have no clue as to what is happening in the world of Marathi letters…”

(EPW Issue : VOL 43 No. 28 July 12 - July 18, 2008)

The other interesting thing, for me, he did was scripting 'Mahatma Phule' episode- number 45- of  Shyam Benegal's TV serial 'Bharat Ek Khoj' , 1988. It was warm and brilliant.

 

Artist: Peter Arno, The New Yorker, 29 September 1928

 

Elephant in the Room?

October 14 2013 is 60th Death Anniversary of  R D Karve (र धों कर्वे).



Jonathan Jones, The Guardian, March 11 2013:

"...Europe's great artists were making pornography long before the invention of the camera, let alone the internet. In my new book The Loves of the Artists, I argue that sexual gratification – of both the viewers of art, and artists themselves – was a fundamental drive of high European culture in the age of the old masters. Paintings were used as sexual stimuli, as visual lovers' guides, as aids to fantasy. This was considered one of the most serious uses of art by no less a thinker than Leonardo da Vinci, who claimed images are better than words because pictures can directly arouse the senses. He was proud that he once painted a Madonna so sexy the owner asked for all its religious trappings to be removed, out of shame for the inappropriate lust it inspired. His painting of St John the Baptist is similarly ambiguous.
This was not a new attitude to art in the Renaissance. As the upcoming exhibition of ancient Pompeii at the British Museum will doubtless show, the ancient Romans also delighted in pornography. Some pornographic paintings now kept in the famous "Secret Museum" of ancient erotica in Naples came from Pompeii's brothel's – which makes their function very clear. In the Renaissance, which revered everything classical, ancient Roman sexual imagery was well known to collectors and artists. A notorious classical erotic statue owned by the plutocrat Agostino Chigi caused the 16th-century writer Pietro Aretino to remark, "why should the eyes be denied what delights them most?"..."

Chris Petit:

“Shopping also functions like pornography, another form of accelerated desire with an emphasis on repetition.”

(bronze 'dancing girl' from Mohenjo-daro in Sind, Pakistan c 2000 BC)

John Keay, 'India: A History', 2000/2010:

"Although probably not dancing, the ‘dancing girl’ is unquestionably ‘a pleasing little thing’. Naked save for a chunky necklace and an assortment of bangles, this minuscule statuette is not of the usual Indian sex symbol, full of breast and wide of hip, but of a slender nymphet happily flaunting her puberty with delightful insouciance. Her pose is studiously casual, one spindly arm bent with the hand resting on a déhanché hip, the other dangling so as to brush a slightly raised knee. Slim and attenuated, the legs are slightly parted, and one foot – both are now missing – must have been pointed. She could be absent-mindedly surveying her wardrobe, except that her head is thrown back as if challenging a suitor, and her hair is somehow dressed into a heavy plaited chignon of perilous but intentionally dramatic construction. Decidedly, she wants to be admired; and she might be gratified to know that, four thousand years later, she still is... "

Are some of  Khajuraho sculptures pornography in stone? I don't know. But I sure was turned on watching them in early 1990's.

The late R D Karve would have been delighted to learn that the Guardian, one of the leading and probably the most respected newspaper in the world,  has announced the launch of  Porn Studies – the world's first peer-reviewed academic journal on the subject- next year. He might have even contributed to the journal.

On the subject of porn, I have hardly seen any discussion in Marathi media  that is NOT  moralistic. For them porn is like liquor, cigarettes, pan-masala, rape, corruption etc. 

The Guardian has a section "Pornography" under "Culture"!


 Carole Cadwalladr writes in the Guardian:

"According to some estimates, 30% of all internet bandwidth is used to transfer porn. Each month, porn sites get more visitors than Amazon, Twitter and Netflix combined. And yet, says (Feona) Attwood, in her own field, cultural studies, it's been mostly ignored. "Television, film, magazines have been studied from all sorts of angles. Something like the BBC has been investigated to death by historians, by people who analyse labour conditions, everything from accountancy to filming, but there's never been anything like that for porn."..."

Porn, even in India, deserves more serious attention.

Artist: J B Handelsman, The New Yorker,  April 14 2003

‘It’s shocking: all that porn on the internet and we have no idea how to access it.’

 Artist: Unknown, Spectator