Author Series
Alka Saraogi and John Vater
in conversation with Out of Print
Out of Print: Hello, Alka and John. Thanking for agreeing to have this conversation around the chapter ‘Shyama Dhobi, Where Are You?’ from your novel in translation, Register Me as Kulbhushan. We are so pleased to have reproduced the chapter in Out of Print 60. It makes such a good introduction to the novel, situates us in time and place and conflict, and introduces us to the protagonist, Shyama, with nuance and clarity. And thank you, John, for the translation that we can sense is so deeply connected to the original text and brings the work to whole new readership.
My first question is to you, Alka, and revolves around construction of fiction, narrative structure and storytelling. It is evident in this chapter that your engagement with conflict works on different levels. We are introduced to the larger reality of the violence, the displacement, and the disruptions that are part of the creation of Bangladesh. At the same time we are drawn into the intimate, familial levels of the clashes around food that drive Shyama to keep secrets about life experiences and choices. My question then is whether the decisions around the positioning of these narrative strands are conscious and deliberate choices you make, or whether they evolve naturally while developing the story?
Alka: Hi Indira!
When I started writing the second chapter of the book, on Shyama Dhobi, I immediately imagined him to be on the bank of the Gorai Ganga with the gun, in his new avatar as a liberation soldier.
The river, or rather the separation from the river, symbolises the displacement of the people from the land of seven hundred rivers. This is also the place where Shyama used to meet Kulbhushan, the place where he hid himself from the world to ponder over his identity as an adopted child, and also the place where his father was gunned down by the Pakistani army.
The Bengalis are a fish-eating people. I think it would be rare to find a vegetarian Bengali. I know from people in Kushtia that Gandhi had stopped at the station on his way to Noakhali and addressed the crowd. I imagined Shyama turning into a vegetarian on meeting him. His friendship with Kulbhushan Jain, perhaps, needed this non-conformity with his own people. The abstaining from killing birds, too, I imagined as part of the bond. Also, their visits to the shrine of Lalon fakir together and mingling with Muslims.
You see, historical facts and imagination weave a complex web in the mind and pictures emerge there as if you were witnessing them happening. I was reading a book on the Dhobi caste and knew a dhobi who looked like Shyama. There are migrant Dhobi families in Kanchrapara near Kolkata.
Out of Print: John, I was very curious about the extent to which you engaged with Alka when translating this novel. But before you answer that, I was thinking about word choice. In ‘Shyama Dhobi’, for example, you use ‘grannies and aunties’ rather than alternatives such as grandmothers and aunts. Why those words? Was it the original text that suggested them, or did you make the decision based on other considerations.
John: I had a couple different reasons for choosing ‘grannie’ and ‘auntie’ over ‘grandmother’ and ‘aunt.’ In the Hindi, to give the readers some context, the words are dadi-tai. The full passage in the English reads: ‘Shyama recalled how Kulbhushan’s grannies and aunties often wagged their tongues and spouted this same kind of nonsense at his house, simply because of his skin’s burnt, baked colour.’
My translation decisions are often based not merely on the basic meaning of the words but also my interpretation of what is happening in and around the narrative, as well as in the character’s psychology. You had asked about my creative collaboration with Alka: this excerpted passage is actually an interesting example of adaptation in translation. This mental aside had belonged to Gobindo in the Hindi original, as he cautions Ma to stop giving Shyama such a hard time about his looks and marriage prospects. During the editing process, Alka had passed me a note shifting the rumination into Shyama’s perspective. So I translated accordingly.
Probably the biggest reason I chose ‘grannie’ and ‘auntie,’ rather than ‘grandmother’ and ‘aunt,’ is due to how I heard the tone of the line in my head – my third ear. Alka’s writing style has a light, colloquial quality: the echo word dadi-tai is itself echoed by ulat-sulat a short ways down the line. ‘Grannie’ and ‘auntie’ captured this parallelism and the playful repetitiveness of the complaint better than the more formal ‘grandmother’ and ‘aunt.’
Secondly, my translation of specific words is also sieved through how I read the character. For instance, Shyama was described in a recent review of the book as ‘loyal’ and ‘sensitive.’ But in his voice – especially during his turbulent, adolescent years – I also picked up notes of jaded dissatisfaction, even teenage rebelliousness. Since his early boyhood, Shyama is beset by hardship – from being reminded of his ugliness by his mother, to witnessing the recognisable, syncretic cultural world of East Bengal collapse around him, to losing his father to a cannabis stupor after Gobindo’s economic patron, the cinema-hall-owning Tulsyan Babu, ‘betrays’ him by abruptly migrating to Calcutta. Later, Shyama also receives the rude awakening that his identity as a Hindu Dhobi may itself be a lie, since he was delivered into his parents’ lap by a wandering fakir.
What does this have to do with choosing ‘grannie’ and ‘auntie’ over ‘grandmother’ and ‘aunt’? A lot, to my mind. I imagined a voice embittered by such experiences, in a context like this one, as being slightly pejorative and dismissive. ‘Grandmother’ and ‘aunt’ are neutrally descriptive nouns, the kinds of kinship terms a person might use if he were formally addressing a relative or reporting a situation objectively. Having a character say ‘his grandmother’ versus ‘his grannie’ is obviously tonally different: the latter is more personal, perhaps less respectful; it also hints at the speaker’s relationship to the person in question. Here, I wanted to signal curtness and exasperation. Shyama is recollecting Kulbhushan’s relatives’ cruel treatment of him, an experience Shyama identifies with. I also wanted this flippant-sounding diction to act as a clear screen into Shyama’s values: he doesn’t like this mean-spirited, frivolous talk, and feels protective of his friend.
Just quickly, a few adjacent considerations. The episode Shyama recollects is also one that Kulbhushan specially mulls over in Chapter One. I consciously chose the words ‘grannie’ and ‘auntie’ in this chapter to fit Kulbhushan’s ostentatiously wry and ironic tone. By replicating the same diction here, I was able to amplify the connection between these familiar episodes and the overlaps between the two characters – as well as to suggest, faintly, that Shyama may be recollecting the exact words Kulbhushan imparted to him. Personally, I also found that the sharp ‘ie’ of these words gave the sentence a faster-moving sonic energy, which I preferred for the narrative pacing.
Out of Print: Thank you so much, both of you, for your careful and thoughtful responses that offer us windows into your creative thought processes. Alka, the idea of the picture forming as the story and character develop, a picture that carries forward, or at the very least, walks along with the narrative is fascinating and important.
And John, very much appreciate the complexity of thought, and the balance of emotional and psychological that goes into making word choices. I was also very interested to hear about how the translation feeds back into the story – an additional layer of refinement.
I know that you have had many conversations with each other but I wondered if there was something you would like to ask each other that we could share with our readers.
John: Hi Alka. The question I’d like to ask you is this:
Fiction writing and literary translation are, in some ways, artistically similar. For example, they both pay special attention to shared stylistic factors – characterisation, tone, register, pacing, internal resonance, the rhythm of sentences, and of course placing oneself in new, imagined perspectives. And yet, the creative approaches guiding both art forms are different.
In my head, I’ve sometimes compared translation to pacing down the ‘sleeper’ boards on a railway track and figuring out how to redesign their engineering purpose. If any element of my parallel track is shoddily built – screws loosely bolted, a ravine not bridged – then the long, bumpy ride in English could make my readers bored, grumpy, or aware they're riding on the ‘translation ticket.’ One could liken the successive sleeper boards, linguistically, to words and sentences; or from a narrative perspective, to scenes and chapters. They secure the track so that the rails don't sag, the train wheels don't slip – the whole novel doesn't derail!
American writer George Saunders, speaking on the technical craft of storytelling, describes a story as a ‘linear temporal phenomenon’ and ‘system for the transfer of energy’ that ‘makes its meaning at speed, a small structural pulse at a time.’ He asserts that the writer's job is to make ‘stations around the track’ that serve as ‘manifestations of writerly charm…. Bursts of honesty, wit, powerful language, humor … a swath of dialogue’ that pulls the reader forward through the narrative. As a translator, my task is to rebuild those stations and retain that energy. But I wonder: how do you go about creating this ‘track of stories’ in the first place?
Within the Hindi world, you are regarded as a master storyteller who consciously innovates on form. In interviews, you’ve extolled the joy of writing novels because of the freedom it offers ‘to say whatever in whichever way.’ Interestingly, there also seems to be significant overlap between your novel and short story writing; Kalikatha via Bypass and Register Me as Kulbhushan were originally inspired by earlier short stories you had written. The individual chapters in Register Me as Kulbhushan also read like long stories or novellas, with smaller story cycles inside. How would you describe the mechanics of your storytelling process? How do you guide the train across a multidimensional terrain to its final destination?
Alka: Interesting question, John! I am looking at my storytelling through your eyes as a train hurtling down to its destination crossing bridges and mountains, soaking in all the air, mist, and dust all the way.
I think the mechanics of my storytelling are an unpredictable blend of facts, surmises, imaginations, and even fantasy. Once I start writing, they all curiously combine together to lead me on. Many a times, it’s like seeing something happening before my eyes as I write it.
I was told by a 90-year-old man from Kushtia that he had seen Gandhi on the station in 1946 as the train had stopped on its way to Noakhali. It was easy to find the picture of Gandhi at Kushtia on the net and to find out what he had said to the public.
So you see, my imagination took me to Shyama Dhobi abstaining from eating meet and killing migratory birds as his other relatives did after Gandhi whispered something in his ears. That would also make his friendship possible with a strictly vegetarian Jain like Kulbhushan.
Kulbhushan has appeared or rather someone like him has appeared in my first published story. Basically both persons belonged to the marginalised category – marginalised due to some physical or mental defect or even business failure – part of the group who survive, in India, on the charity of close relatives. They go about doing all kinds of errands for the family they live off of, with a perpetual smile on their faces.
My question to you is: How did you cross so many linguistic, cultural, historical and political boundaries to translate with so much energy?
John: A complex question – I think my answer about ‘energy’ has several components. It helps that I majored in South Asian Studies in university, which gave me a sort of broad, background knowledge of India – supplemented, of course, by my own fascination with the country! Secondly, I’ve also had a lot of direct experience living there; I spent several months at a time in different Indian cities, like Jaipur, Lucknow, and Delhi, while strengthening my Hindi and Urdu at intensive language programs, not to mention research I did on a Fulbright. At a basic level, I guess you could say that my antennae have been primed to pick up on certain linguistical and cultural signals, lowering some of the normal barriers to translation.
The signals come in different types. Sometimes, they are plot-related – such as the particular shade of abandonment Gobindo feels, after Tulsyan Babu clandestinely flees Kushtia, and how this relates to dharma, and his personal beliefs in patron-client relations. These notions are reflected a bit in the story he tells Shyama about the duty Raja Ram owes to his subjects; and, conversely, the fealty loyal subjects owe to their king. The betrayal Gobindo is subjected to is therefore more than economic. It is also, in another way, cosmic, impacting a whole way of being: with the flight of Kushtia’s patron class, his entire moral, social philosophy – underpinning his views of society, what people owe one another – collapses.
Recognising this dynamic is one form of energy. Elsewhere, energy dwells in the music that is created from cadence and language, such as in your natural, colloquial narration, which at times resembles oral storytelling and, at others, the moods and cogitations of the characters, as the narration slips in and put of their perspectives. A small punch-up of energy may be contained in a joke, a clever turn of phrase, or a combustible doubling of Hindi compound verbs. Essentially, whatever generates an ’oomph!’ in the original Hindi text, the English is asked to imitate. Energy can also be latently stored in cultural context that is perhaps in need of coaxing out. What number of Kushtia’s residents, for instance, would have viewed Gandhi as an almost supernatural ‘Baba’ holy figure, in addition to being a leading Independence leader? Other translators might not have expended energy trying to retain the spiritualistic texture of the darshan, which I’m somewhat familiar with from deities in temples. For me, these small nuances are deeply embedded in the ‘placedness’ of translating, which is another way of saying the fine details.
I’m reminded of a meta-fictional conceit in Japanese novelist Haruki Murakami's famous novel, IQ84, which operates, I suspect, as a sort of analogy towards how he imagines his own creative process. In the novel, there is a mysterious, beautiful teenage girl who has a powerful story she wants to share with the world. The problem is she lacks the means to do so, and a young cram school teacher is enlisted, who is also an aspiring novelist, to help her tell the tale. Within the metaphysical system Murakami establishes, the girl is labelled a ‘perceiver’ able to supernaturally grasp and intuit the fundamentals of the story from another world. The teacher's (or translator's) task, in my analogy, called the ‘receiver,’ is to write it.
I don’t know why, but when I first read the book in college around 2013, I had always imagined that Murakami was somehow allegorizing his relationship with his own English translators, though it is probably more likely that he was meditating on his creative writing process as a whole.
The ‘perceiver’ possesses the ability to tap into invisible frequencies that shape the raw form the story will take – what the girl in the book hands over and dictates to the teacher. You could perhaps compare these sensations to what unfolds in the translator’s mind while reading. The artistic challenge for the teacher, or translator, is how to embody that story in language – make it animate and concrete – so that its internal resonance and power can be shared with others. The ‘receiver’ must rely on his own literary craft, and relative mastery over language, to bring it into reality.
I should mention that I had seldom come across the cultural geography of Bengal, East Pakistan, or Bangladesh in my work or travels before undertaking this translation. For any translator – but more so, the Western one – there will be subtle cultural cues he will miss or misconstrue; nuances that he will fail to pick up. I remember that in the case of my first book translation, a former university professor told me that she was relieved I had decided to co-translate the book with somebody else. She really didn’t mean this as a slight; rather, it was an acknowledgment of a reality. We Western translators who work from languages with fewer fraternal commonalities with English – Chinese, Hindi, or Arabic, say – probably have more hurdles to cross than someone translating from the European Romance languages. Daniel Weissbort, the former director of the Iowa Translation Workshop, called this twin linguistic-civilizational dilemma the ‘double labyrinth.’
Indira, you had expressed interest, in your first set of questions, about Alka’s and my collaboration. I was privileged to have Alka as my author partner – both because our creative ‘frequencies’ are similar, but also because of her own accomplished bilingualism and command of English. She would carefully read the drafts I sent her and offer her considered suggestions, regarding words or phrasings, which were like stylistic nudges prodding the English to adopt her voice. Certainly, her veteran storytelling skills assisted in training and prompting the English, at times, to do the appropriately energetic somersaults! I also learned a lot about how to translate the story from observing her feedback, in conjunction with the source text.
If what I’ve described so far constitutes a ‘perceiving’ component, a form of close reading, then there is also the ‘receiving’ dimension, within which the translator casts the story in his own imagination and language. This stage involves a heavy engagement with words, clauses, and interpretations. My first stage of work maybe corresponds to what people imagine literary translation to be: I somewhat mechanically assemble chains of semantic meaning, one link at a time, often with the help of reference materials – I am not a native speaker. At this stage, I do my best to extract all the pertinent information and energy a line wants to convey. As I am laying the first draft of the text, I will experimentally rephrase a line three or four different times, with the view of going back later to select which parts of my mock-ups I liked best. Often, I circle parts of sentences that I prefer, and remix them. After I’ve produced several paragraphs, then a full scene in this way – which serviceably mimes the tone, voice, or atmosphere of the original – something magical occurs.
I think we are all familiar with the genie in the lamp. For translation, mine is the ‘genie of the track.’ Rather than rubbing a lamp, the djinn fantastically’ appears after I have conscientiously laid the boards of my track in a certain way. Once the fortuitous, magical pattern has been assembled, a djinn whisps up over the fragments of language and begins to offer his supranatural guidance on how the boards can be more effectively arranged. This is the translator’s second act of ‘perceiving’ – or maybe ‘receiving’ of instructions! The djinn will gesture and suggest, ‘Rewrite the sentence in this way, with these entirely new materials, because in English the character’s voice sounds like this. Only then will your wish be granted.’ Or, the djinn will fly over a misshapen, wonky stretch of track, stroke his beard, and complain, ‘This section is literally fine, but it’s too long; better you curve it, or break it up, for the train to maintain its speed.’ His wish is my command.
So I say, ‘Yes, boss,’ to this funny specie of djinn who unconsciously articulates for me the wish I did not know I had – only that he expects me to do the work required to fulfill it. So I go back to the drawing board and implement these high frequency changes. And that’s when the spell settles; you realize that what you have now written, somehow, is actually a closer, better translation than what you had written while slavishly adhering to the original language. The track is no longer a diagram or model, but a pulsing, electrified circuit for the transfer of energy; the djinn conducts the ghost train over that section of track you have built, gives you the thumbs up, and then poofs away until he is needed again.
I’d be remiss not to add that the djinn is a bit of a trickster. Since the voice of the translated text and the voice of the translator are so tightly interwound, the djinn will sometimes speak to you in the overpowering voice of your own creative muse, while whispering the artistic secrets of the original text more gently. The two overlapping voices, sometimes, can be difficult to distinguish from each other, and you have to be hyper-vigilant, or strain your ears. You go back and examine the original engineering blue-print you’d drawn up from the language, and scratch your head over where the track forked in the wrong direction, wondering how to bring it back. In some cases, this is achieved by restoring a less enchanting, more ‘literal’ line you had for whatever reason earlier discarded. Then something clicks, and slides into place; you’re back on track. But none of this would be possible if you had not entertained both the djinn’s good and bad ideas.
This is how the process works: back and forth, between the hovering spirit and the mechanical engineering plan. Interestingly, the title of Murakami’s book, IQ84, refers to the world that is created from the original 1984 into a shared reality with two moons. In my translation analogy, the new work is inherently a world of two moons, which binds it to the original but also gives it dual energy.
Out of Print: This is an extraordinarily special conversation. Thank you for being so generous, both of you. Alka, your voice was considered, restrained, focussed, insightful. While John, you plunged into sharing your thoughts around the process and complexities of translation with energy. I am thrilled that Out of Print has the opportunity to share your conversation with our readers.
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Cover image, Out of Print 60 A State of Unrest by Sangram Majumdar |
‘Shyama Dhobi, Where Are You?’ is excerpted, with permission, from Register Me as Kulbhushan, Penguin, 2026.
