The first Tulu novel Sati Kamale written about a century ago by S.U. Paniyady has now been translated into English by two former professors of Mangalore University. It was written in 1921 and published in 1936.
It is the fifth Tulu work translated into English by B. Surendra Rao, a former professor of History and a critic, and K. Chinnappa Gowda, a former professor of Kannada and former Vice-Chancellor of Karnataka Folklore University, in the last one year.
“We thought that the first Tulu novel, which captured a particular nationalist mood intensely, if somewhat naively, should be made available to English readers to understand the novel and the context, which produced it,” the translators told The Hindu .
A leading publisher has come forward to publish it, they said.
The nationalist mood which the late Paniyady seeks to capture is the one which prevailed during the tumultuous days of the Partition of Bengal and Swadeshi Movement in the early decade of the 20th century. That was also the period when revolutionary movement took deeper roots in the country, drawing many young men and women to selective violence and heroic self-sacrifice, they said.
Referring to the novel, they said that Kamale’s husband, Umesha Rao, was a fierce nationalist, a revolutionary, operating in the very heart of revolutionary activities in Bengal, when the British provoked the nationalist indignation by partitioning it in 1905. Rao was drawn into revolutionary projects, and as a young girl and a niece of his father who loved him, Kamale too was attracted to it. At that point, she was attracted to Rao’s nationalist ideas and programmes only because she was completely in love with him and was determined to marry him. His resolve to defy death and Kamale’s promise to remain a virtuous widow were taken in a mood of intense patriotic fervour. However, once when the news came that Rao was martyred, Kamale continued to pursue her education, first in Mangalore and later in Madras, sticking to her ideal of virtuous widowhood, although she had some well-founded doubts about the death of her husband.
The reformist agenda of widow re-marriage also prominently figures in the novel, they said adding that the novel belonged to the first phase of modern literary cultivation in Tulu, which includes novels and novelettes. The novel is written as a tribute to the timeless virtue of wifely devotion to her husband, dead or alive.
The former professors have also translated 53 Tulu folk songs into English for the first time. The book ‘When even moonlight is very hot’ has Tulu work songs or Kabitas, dance songs and some lullabies. They have translated modern Tulu poems into English and published them as Ladle in a Golden Bowl. They have also translated Tulu folk tales in an anthology, The Rain Boy, and Tulu novel Mittabail Yamunakka: A Tale of a Landlord’s House by D.K. Chowta.
