Bhava

Author's Note

Bhava, like many of my other narratives, is a tale, although in its overall intention it is unlike any previous work of mine. Translating a tale in which an author aspires to the organic coherence and denseness of a poem in the language of its genesis makes one nervous and uncertain, for it doesn't possess the easily shared exterior of conventional realistic fiction. I feel fortunate that a poet translated the work with me, for I found her sensitive to the intended nuances in the original text.

We went about our work in this fashion. I would do a literal translation of the original into English, often word for word, keeping intact even the sentence structures peculiar to my Kannada. Then I would talk about the form and meaning and subtleties of the passage. Judith Kroll would record my free renderings and then prepare from her notes and tapes an English version for my perusal.

As a teacher of English, for many years I used English for discursive purposes. But my creative efforts were always in Kannada. This switching between two languages constantly had been a stressful experience. It was only when I collaborated on this translation that to some extent I ventured to use English for creative purposes. In the process, I learnt a great deal about what it is for the author of an original work in one language to collaborate with another writer and to see that work reborn in another language.

The process of translating Bhava was also a chastening experience. I had taken for granted that my Kannada had adequately mediated what I wanted to convey. When I worked to convey the same experience in another language I became aware of the imprecisions, adjectival excesses, and so on, in the original. Therefore, while trying to put my original work into English, I have made some changes in it.

The writing of Bhava was a new experience, for I found myself probing into regions hitherto unexplored by me. I had to do this tentatively, giving up a privileged point of view.

I hope what I did in the Kannada will be conveyed to my English readers as well, through the efforts of a writer in English who showed remarkable patience and attention to detail in this undertaking.

New Delhi

1997