For decades in Karnataka, the late K S Nissar Ahmed has been a household literary name. A geologist, he published a vast array of poetry that touched almost every genre imaginable, from critiques of American policy, an ode to Krishna, and his own thoughts on orthodoxy within his community.
And so it was no small task for writer Roopa Pai, a veteran author in her own right, to take on the task of translating a collection of his poems as her first formal foray into translating Kannada poetry, Every Day a Celebration.
Pai, who is well known for her children’s books, recalls that this journey began with a series of blog posts on sportspersons that went viral during the 2016 Rio Olympics. Building on the momentum, she decided to translate a few poems that year on the occasion of Karnataka Rajyotsava – and it so happened that she selected poems by Nissar Ahmed. Later, she got the opportunity to translate five of his poems for publication in a journal.
She said, “It is unique to Kannada that high literature was taken and set to music, and went out to the masses for everyone to understand. It became a product of the masses rather than remaining in an ivory tower. That’s what Kannada poetry was about.”
Roopa Pai’s translation journey
Pai later met Ahmed at an event at Sapna Book House, where he agreed to have a collection of his poems translated by the publisher Seagull Books.
Kannada poet K S Nissar Ahmed
Pai recalled, “I had gone to his house in 2018, and he had a handwritten list of 100 poems very neatly categorised from different collections….my biggest regret now is that I cannot find that paper. He was so sweet – he had brought a set of all his poetry collections and gifted them to me.”
Translating 100 poems was not an easy task — complicated by the fact that it had begun on something of an impulse and now had to share calendar space with Pai’s other book commitments– sometimes to Ahmed’s impatience. Finally, in 2020, Pai managed to finish the final set of poems – and the final product met with the great poet’s approval.
However, Ahmed, an icon of modern Kannada poetry and author of Nityotsava died just a few days later.
Pai remembered, “I was really gutted. I had never thought of him dying while I was doing the poems. They just sat on my computer for three years after that. Then in 2023, I said, ‘Enough is enough. If you really want to honour him, you have to see that it comes out.”
Every Day a Celebration will be officially released on June 27 at the Bookworm book store at Bengaluru’s Church Street.
A creator of words
Pai said every poem Ahmed wrote was “about some completely different topic”.
“Like a box of chocolates, you never know what flavour you get. He challenges you as a translator because there is nothing predictable about it. Sometimes it is literary Kannada, and sometimes he creates portmanteau words. One of the people I spoke to said he is Shabda Brahma, a creator of words.”
One of the verses translated by Pai could remind readers of his background in geology.
Diamond, topaz, onyx, jade, emerald, sapphire of every shade
Lustrous coral or pearl to me, they are all the same, you see – as sluggish stone or impassive peak.
For they’re all being fashioned, as we speak, by a river of boiling, burbling rock, hot and viscous, round the clock…..
Of this liquid fire, this destroyer, creator – I am authority, expert, educator.
Roopa Pai who has translated a collection of Kannada poems by K S Nissar Ahmed into English - 'Every Day a Celebration'. (Express: Sourced) 
Kannada poet K S Nissar Ahmed
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