Poetry at Sangam
Poetry at Sangam showcases poetry in English and translations as well as essays on poetics and news of new releases.
Sowvendra Shekhar Hansda writes prose in English and has translated poetry and prose from Santali, Hindi and Bengali into English.
Some five years ago, when I began translating from Santali – my mother tongue – and Hindi into English, I was aware that translation was more than just juxtaposing words from one language into another. Translation was getting the spirit of the original text right – or approximately right – in a different tongue. However, it was only when I was translating poems from Santali for this project with Poetry at Sangam that I realised that translation also meant getting into the mind of the original author and actually understanding why that author wrote what they wrote.
I was translating Parimal Hansda’s poem, Miru Baha, from Santali to English. The title of the poem was enticing enough: miru is the Santali word for parrot, while baha is the Santali word for flower. There is a flower which is named, in Santali, after the parrot! Even though I wasn’t aware till then what flower the miru baha was, I imagined – with images of parrots fluttering in my mind – that particular flower to be something extremely scenic. I asked Mr. Hansda, ‘What is miru baha?’ He said, ‘It is a sasang baha.’ Sasang is the Santali word for the colour yellow. The first stanza of this poem mentions the “petite stalk and leaves” of the miru baha; hence, immediately, a field full of yellow rain lilies flashed in my mind. And why not? Rain lily has been one of my favourite flowers from my childhood. I remember plucking clumps of yellow rain lilies from my mother’s garden and tying it all in a bouquet.
I whatsapped a photograph of yellow rain lilies from Google Images to Mr. Hansda and asked him, ‘Brother, is this the miru baha?’ I was utterly disappointed when he replied in the negative. What could be the miru baha then?
Mr. Hansda whatsapped back me a photo of the actual miru baha. It is the Indian Mallow (Abutilon indicum). A pretty flower, indeed, but I was not quite impressed. It looked like the konhda baha – pumpkin flower – to me. Pumpkin flower: which, perhaps, tastes better – especially when cooked with a paste of poppy seeds – than it looks. I wondered what made Mr. Hansda write a poem on the Indian Mallow. I asked him. And he enumerated the various utilities of the Indian Mallow.
It is a common flower, found anywhere. It has medicinal properties. It also has a utility related to faith: its fruits are ground and smeared on the walls of Santal houses during the Dasain festival. In his poem, Miru Baha, Mr. Hansda writes about his desire to return to the past, when the world was a happier place. He writes about his desire to dance in the akhra which is the communal space in Santal villages, he rues how the traditional dances are getting lost. No wonder, the miru baha, with its connection to health and faith of Santals, was the apt flower to lend its name to the title of a poem sprinkled with nostalgia.
For this project, I have translated, apart from poems by Parimal Hansda, poems by Chinmayee Hansdah-Marandi and Suchitra Hansda. One huge challenge I faced (and this is a common challenge, I suppose, in translation) was finding rhyming words in English for rhyming words in Santali. However, that challenge was still easier than the challenge of getting the right words in English for terms or images that are so common in Santali. Plus, how to get those right – or almost right – words in a given space, because the length of words in the target language may differ from that in the original language.
For example, in Ms. Hansdah-Marandi’s poem, Kasi Baha, is the phrase: saaru sakam daag. Saaru is colocasia, sakam is leaf, daag is water or drops of water.
Get the picture? Fabulous, right? Drops of water, like tiny beads of glass, rolling, sliding on broad, green leaves of the colocasia.
As easy it is to be captivated by the refreshing, almost ethereal, sight – or even the thought – of a drop of water rolling on a colocasia leaf, the difficulty was to fit saaru sakam daag, a short yet evocative Santali phrase, in English in a fraction of a sentence. I am quite sure my “like a water drop on a leaf” does not equal the beauty of the original, saaru sakam daag. I just hope it works. I just hope it gets the context across.
While Mr. Hansda’s and Ms. Hansdah-Marandi’s poems have nature as their theme and are introspective, Ms. Hansda’s poems are rooted in contemporary realities. Ms. Hansda’s words contain sadness, regret, caution, power, and emancipation.
There are also recordings of the poems read by the poets themselves. Hearing these poems in the poets’ own voices was another revelation. I marveled at the recitations, at the modulations in the voices. Hearing these poems being read in the original language by the poets themselves was an enriching and uplifting experience. It was a world of beauty and challenges unfolding before me—a world that I too am a part of; yet, I needed these poems to view it in its entirety. Somehow, it seemed, my translations paled in comparison to the original poems.
Here are the twelve poems – three by Chinmayee Hansdah-Marandi, four by Suchitra Hansda, and five by Parimal Hansda – which I have had the privilege and good fortune of translating from Santali to English for Poetry at Sangam. I received ample help from the three poets and also from my co-workers at Community Health Centre, Chandil – staff nurse Gurubari Kisku and male multipurpose worker Mangal Hembrom – with the meanings of certain words and phrases and elucidation of certain nuances. However, all errors are my own, for I have so much to know, so much to see, and so much to learn.
YOUNG LADY WHO IS GOING PLACES
Audio recording of YOUNG LADY WHO IS GOING PLACES
Audio recording of THE MISTRESS OF THE HOUSE
Audio recording of I WILL FOLLOW YOU
Audio recording of THE NEW MOON NIGHT
Thank you, Dear Readers, for going through the poems. I hope you enjoyed reading them as much as I enjoyed translating them. And I hope “like a water drop on a leaf” had the effect that I had intended it to have.
I played around a bit with the layouts of the lines. For example, I laid out Edel Baha (by Chinmayee Hansdah-Marandi) in the form of a tree; while in Young Lady Who Is Going Places, Flute, The Mistress of the House (all three poems by Suchitra Hansda), and Identity (by Parimal Hansda), I aligned the powerful last stanzas to the right. Similarly, in Lugu Buru (by Parimal Hansda), I have centred the conclusive final stanza. In I Will Follow You (by Parimal Hansda), I have arranged the lines as steps to present a sight of motion; while in Miru Baha (by Parimal Hansda), I have aligned the single, standalone lines to the left and indented the paired, continuation lines. In Mother (by Suchitra Hansda), I have condensed the four lines of the opening stanza into one to make a statement. I was helped by my editor, Priya Sarukkai Chabria, with the layouts, but the effort was mine. I hope my experiment was not jarring.
In the Translator’s Note at the beginning, I have enumerated the difficulties I faced in translating the poems. Those difficulties were directly related to the poems; for example, suitable words, rhyming words, lengths of words and sentences in the target language, etc. There was also an indirect difficulty I faced, and this was more deeply related to the content and the context of the poem. I faced this difficulty in Suchitra Hansda’s poem, Flute. There is a term in this poem: “the Creator”. In the original Santali text, the word is “Sirjoniya”. Sirjoniya is the one who does sirjon. Sirjon is creation; hence, sirjoniya is the one who creates or the creator. In the Santal creation myth, the Sirjoniya – the Creator – is Thakur Jiu.[1] [2] Is Thakur Jiu a woman or a man? I have not been able to know this.
Santali, our languge, does not have gendered pronouns. There is no he and she or mera and meri in Santali. So it was hard to tell from the poem, Flute, if the Sirjoniya is a woman or a man. I felt that in the English translation of this poem, it was necessary to indicate genders. In the poem, the poet was sitting forlorn on the pinda when they heard someone playing a melancholic tune on a flute. I have observed that, among us Santals, flute is played usually by men. Hence, I concluded that the flautist the poet heard was a man, so I used the pronoun “he” for that flautist:
The musician is a master
Able to create tunes on you any way he prefers.
If he plays a happy tune on you,
I am sure my gloomy mind too would be delighted.
That was Part One of the gender conundrum solved. For Part Two: Which gender to ascribe to the Creator?
I asked Ms. Hansda, ‘Sister, is the Sirjoniya a woman or a man?’ Ms. Hansda replied, ‘Sirjoniya is Chando Bonga or God. Creation is the prerogative of women. So you may ascribe whichever gender you feel best.’
I brainstormed with Ms. Sarukkai Chabria and decided that we should imagine Sirjoniya – the Creator – to be a woman. Because doesn’t creation start with women? A Mother Figure. Our earth is seen as mother. Nature is called Mother Nature. So that was it. The Sirjoniya – the Creator – in Flute is a Mother Figure, a woman.
The Creator’s doing too is such.
If She makes you cry, you cry.
If She makes you laugh, you laugh.
This is how human life is.
There is nothing to human life.
It’s all the doing of the Creator’s fingers.
This is all. This was my journey in translating from Santali to English for Poetry at Sangam. I am not very confident, but I think I have done reasonably okayish. However, I am sure that the readings by the poets were stirring, to say the least. I express my gratitude, once again, for Chinmayee Hansdah-Marandi, Suchitra Hansda, Parimal Hansda, Poetry at Sangam, and all of you, Dear Readers.
Sowvendra Shekhar Hansda
Chandil, Saraikela-Kharsawan district, Jharkhand
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[1] Ruby Hembrom and Boski Jain, We Come From The Geese, adivaani (Kolkata), 2013.
[2] Japanese Mythology: Creation of mankind by Thakur Jiu – Santal creation myth may be prototype creation myths for Japanese and Korean creation myths: https://tinyurl.com/2bfesnwz
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