Bhava

Translator's Note

‘Bhava,’ derived from the Sanskrit root bhu, ‘to be,’ means both ‘being’ and ‘becoming,’ each containing the seed of the other. These two interwoven meanings frame Anantha Murthy's tale. Additional meanings—‘turning into,’ ‘life,’ ‘worldly existence,’ ‘the worl,’ ‘continuity of becoming (with Buddhists)’ (i.e., rebirth) — also inform the story.

The Afterword could as well be read as an Introduction, particularly by those who do not mind, or may enjoy, a substantial preview of the plot (in this case, it involves what appears to be a murder). I have made a number of comparisons with Anantha Murthy's best-known work, Samskara, because of intriguing thematic overlapping, and because it offers an excellent example of the social consciousness and iconoclasm which has marked his earlier novels, from which Bhava is a departure. The Afterword may also be of interest in suggesting resonances of the new direction taken by Bhava.

A note about notes. My intention was to make Bhava accessible without weighting it like a textbook. So the ‘Selected Glossary’ is fairly selective. I have not given definitions for a number of words (‘guru,’ ‘mantra,’ ‘darshan’) that may be familiar to many non-Indian readers, or whose general sense can readily be inferred; or for some words (such as those designating foods, holidays, festivals, deities) whose category is clear, and which in their particulars have only an incidental bearing on the story. A gloss is provided when knowing more about a word (‘kuttavalakki,’ ‘Shri Chakra’) amplifies an area of meaning in the story; or when omitting a gloss (as for ‘Emden Boat’) might leave a puzzling gap. In saying all this, I reveal a preference for leaving certain words in the Indian languages, at least some of the time, rather than translating every occurrence into English — particularly when a limited translation might impart a noticeable cultural charge or connotation (‘rosary’ for mala; ‘renunciation’ for vairagya).

Several remarks Anantha Murthy made in the course of translating this work have been interpolated into the Afterword. (‘Anantha Murthy has commented …,’ for example, indicates such usage.)

My own knowledge of Kannada is slight, though three years of formal Sanskrit study have been a considerable help, since many of the significant words in Bhava are Sanskrit. But this translation could not, obviously, have been done by me alone. That my collaborator was the author is my punya.

In part, I took courage and encouragement from the collaboration between Edward C. Dimock, Jr. and the poet Denise Levertov (In Praise of Krishna: Songs from the Bengali), and that between Shri Purohit Swami and W.B. Yeats (Ten Principal Upanishads).

I am grateful to several of my friends in Shimla: I had useful discussions with Prof. T.N. Dhar, who also read a draft of the Afterword and made small suggestions that yielded big results; my neighbours Shyama Sharma and Anita Chauhan gave me food and affectionate friendship.

M.S. Satinyu, who has encouraged me in all my Kannada-English translation projects, read an early draft of Bhava and made helpful remarks.

The India International Centre in New Delhi provided a hospitable atmosphere in which some of this work was done.

Grateful thanks are due to the Center for Asian Studies at The University of Texas at Austin for funds that enabled Anantha Murthy to come to Austin and work for a time on this project; additional funding was provided by the university's Texas Center for Writers.

Shimla

July 1997