The Road to a Classic

The translation was a personal affair for Chitre,who,other than being a leading voice of Marathi literature,is also known for his English renditions of Namdeo Dhasal and Tukaram’s works. Though the book is being released this year,the translations were completed over a decade ago. Chitre was an integral part of the process.

Deshpande has been an admirer of Chitre’s writings for over 20 years ago. After reading Chitre’s Chavvya on prolific Marathi writer Bhau Padhye,Deshpande felt an urge to translate. It turned out that Chitre lived in the same neighbourhood and that’s where the friendship started. Later,Deshpande and Chitre would work together at New Quest. “Chitre had translated Tukaram’s writing,who used simple language to express profound thoughts. Chitre was influenced by this style. In fiction,Chitre has a different kind of cadence but his poetic idioms are always at play. He has that traditional Marathi style of writing called rokthok prakruti. This can be loosely translated as ‘saying what you think and saying it clearly’. It is an essential part of Marathi literature. To translate — the poetic style and his narrative which is based in Marathi idioms — in English was more challenging than anything I have done before,” says Deshpande.

These stories were written from the ’60s through to the ’80s. Chaturang was published in 1995 and Deshpande took about three years to translate it into English. The Bombay Quartet unfortunately languished in the heap of books that were considered print-worthy but unpublishable. “We went to so many publishing houses across the world. A couple of them even agreed to publish it but wanted to make too many changes. They didn’t even know the language and thought that they knew how it would read better. Chitre had said that he’d rather leave it unpublished than give in to these demands,” he says. It’s ironic then that a German translation of the book was released a few years ago. “They used my English translation of the book to convert it into German,” laughs Deshpande.

Paperwall,an imprint of Paperwall Media & Publishing Pvt Ltd and its website,has taken up the challenge of publishing The Bombay Quartet. The blurb on the book says this is one of Chitre’s masterpieces that has been ignored by the Marathi intelligentsia,translating it into English might help the book find its rightful place among India’s contemporary classics. Deshpande hopes that the posthumous publishing curiosity might add to the buzz and make the blurb’s pronouncement a reality.