“A poem can be translated only by another poem. There is no such thing as a literal translation,” said A.K. Ramanujan. This insight can be extended to novels as well. A translated story has to stand up on its feet and be its own, gloriously independent self, resplendent in the unique voice with which it renders an already living story. There is only so much literalness it can contain. Too much, and all it is is a poor, second-hand shadow of a strong original that has all the advantages of a native tongue and a lived experience behind it. Because, ultimately, the new book has to translate the spirit of the original as much as it does the words.
Too many English translations in India falter in this aspect. Is it a self-conscious effort to efface the translated voice in favour of the original? Is it too little confidence in the language of translation? Whatever it is, the absence of a humming, breathing cadence that delights in the English it uses as much as in the language it translates is a great pity. Telugu writer Volga’s The Liberation of Sita is just one among many that suffer from this shortcoming. I have no idea what musicality the original Telugu has, but in translation, the book’s prose is choppy, with a too-rudimentary and staccato rhythm.
The book, winner of the Sahitya Akademi Award 2015, isn’t a radical proposition either. It does what many others have done before: recreates the Ramayana through the eyes of Sita and from a feminist standpoint. Sita teams up with four other women — Surpanakha, Renuka, Urmila and Ahalya — and discovers in this sisterhood self-awareness and harmony in solitude and a life lived away from men.
Unfortunately, the book comes a bit late in the day. In Ambai’s ‘ Forest ’, we have already met a Sita who encounters Ravana again and is learning the veena from him. In Telugu writer Chalam’s hands, the test by fire is actually Sita jumping into the pyre with Ravana, who she thought loved her more. And, beyond this, it is 2016, and women’s writing in India has broken much new ground. Sita’s struggles with Arya Dharma might seem remote to a woman hanging from the straps of a suburban train.
Having said that, however, given the extraordinary sway our epics continue to exert upon us — with the literary, performing and visual arts continuing to draw heavily from them — there is a good case for any number of feminist and subaltern reinterpretations. Revisionist myth-making, as Adrienne Rich reminds us, is as much an act of survival for women as one of culture.
Volga is entirely sincere in this, and in her envisioning of the peace and quietude that Sita finally attains; attributes she learns from the four other women. Surpanakha has found beauty in a perfect garden in the forest; Renuka is a wonderful sculptor; Ahalya is a free ascetic; and Urmila has gone into self-imposed penance by withdrawing into a locked room. Each of the women is shown conquering mortal love and finding fulfilment instead in a perfect mastery over the self and in an austere withdrawal from life. This is no mean feat and one can easily see its desirability — ‘Quiet, monkey mind!’
But why should women’s victory come only from withdrawal? A renunciation not just from the hubble-bubble of all life but from physicality itself? Except for Surpanakha, who briefly exhibits a partner (is she allowed one because she is a rakshasa ?), the other women are all turned into quasi-spiritual, asexual beings. They are benign, defanged, aloof — saints who need only be worshipped from afar without being engaged with. Is this the only construct in which women cease to be a threat to men? Clearly, a strong, vibrant, sexual woman is a persona that the world is not ready to cope with even in artistic retellings.
This is not to dismiss the peace that Sita finally achieves. Indian philosophy extols the freeing of the base self from the maya of worldly attachments, and Sita’s final war, says Volga, was against herself. And she sees Sita’s ultimate liberation coming from conquering her inner demons. But what about the real demons outside?
From a feminist rendering of a text, it is not unreasonable to demand a victory within the parameters of the world and on tangible terms; one that celebrates the body, womanhood, and feminine power. To grant the woman victory only when she conveniently leaves the world and buries her problematic female selfhood in a forest seems a bit of a cop-out.
The Liberation of Sita ; Volga, trs T. Vijay Kumar & C. Vijayasree, HarperPerennial, Rs. 199.
vaishna.r@thehindu.co.in
