Up,close… & then some

The cash attached to the prize is pretty darned decent. A book of excerpts, from each ofthe 10 books nominated for awards, was gifted to guests. Nice touch, Sriram and Anita! Of course, I would love to see loads of other awards in categories like non-fiction, etc. Sriram is reported to have retorted, "What, so now I have to give an award to Tarla Dalal for her cook book?" He denies saying it! But this is not to belittle the efforts of Crossword. A positive move, it is a shame that so little has been done in this area. Just think, if there was no Booker, Pulitzer, or Commonwealth prize, we would have had little opportunity to be so proud of our Indian writing talent.

No `world recognised’ Vikram Seth, Arundhati Roy, Vikram Chandra, V S Naipaul, Rushdie etc. Does the West have to endorse our talent, before we will do so? Have we no judgement of our own? Later, I had a thoroughly engaging encounter with T M Meeran, nominated author of The Story of a Seaside Village, translated from Tamil by M Vijayalakshmi. I asked him a question about his writing, and prompt came the reply, "dry chilly." At myconfused countenance, he explained, patiently, "Red chilly? Dry in sun."

Though his grammar and accent suggest a reasonable command over English, it is not so. The rest of the evening was spent either buttonholing various kind souls to translate, or facing verbal challenges. Turns out, he earns his bread trading chilly, writing is his `hobby’ (read passion). He is a winner of the National Award and the Sahitya Akademi award. The story is prescribed reading at Kerala and Tamil Nadu universities. It is really about class domination in Tamil Nadu. But the novel reads hilariously.

Meeran is 65 and doesn’t look it. Lives in a village that has the last polling booth of India, 15 minutes from Kanya Kumari. Writes in the wee hours, midnight to 5.00 am. He tells of when he wrote his first-hand experiences of a communal riot. It was 1968. A friend read his account and said Meeran had a book on his hands. Meeran states proudly, it was the first book ever on such a subject, even before Bhisham Sahni’s Tamas (1973).Thus a writer was born. He says the Muslims of his village are divided. And that he belongs to a section that is poor, oppressed and treated contemptuously by other Urdu-speaking Muslims. The man is disarmingly candid, simple and earthy. Asked about the writers he admired? M Mukundan, writer in Tamil, who won this year’s award. International authors or books? He knew none. Well, apart from one essay by Tolstoy, he had read nothing else. Sadly, few translations are available.

Which made me think about the `other’ way around, too. Vikram Chandra, one of the judges on the panel, is off on invitation to Israel for the launch of his book Love & Longing in Bombay, a Hebrew translation. The book has been translated into various languages, including Danish and Italian. As are several books by other Indian authors. You may be surprised at the numbers. Yet how many of them have been honoured with Indian language translations? Virtually none. Is there a logical explanation for this omission?

Indo-Anglican writingis steeped in the Indian ethos and experience. Pretty easy to translate, wot? And more people read in Indian languages than English. Ah, I can see the salvo being fired: If they are such good Indians, these writers, why don’t they write in the language of Indians?

So let’s end this year with writings of a different nature. I picked these up, travelling in `Wild West’ Texas, USA. For when you have butterflies in your tummy: "I’m as nervous as a broke tail cat in a room full of rocking chairs." For when it is freezing: "It’s colder than a well digger’s ass in January!" For when it’s sweltering: "It’s hotter than a sweat band in a fireman’s helmet!" For those wet days: "It’s rainin’ harder than a cow pissin’ on a flat rock!"

Anuradha Tandon is an ad film-maker.