Sourav Roy: “There are deep problems despite the ‘Gitanjali Shree Effect’”

What inspired you to translate Hoshang Merchant’s The Man Who Would Be Queen into Bangla as your first book length published work?

Hoshang Merchant was a complete stranger to me, in person that is, until the second wave of COVID-19 in India. I, of course, knew of his fame and achievements but hadn’t really read his writings – maybe a few poems and some essays, video interviews, here and there.

We got acquainted via Facebook Messenger and started having long discussions about all things under the sun. This is what really happened; I’m not making it up. Then, I read open access copies of his book, Yaarana – Gay Writing from South Asia (2010) and both of us were really interested in getting The Man Who Would be Queen (2011, 2018) translated into Bangla. Now it is also being translated into other major Indian languages).

I had translated a lot before that (both Bangla to English and English to Bangla) but had not done an entire book of literary non-fiction. A personal incident (it now stands healed) required extended periods of distraction and concentration on a new, exciting writing project. The second impending lockdown afforded a head start to all that. The economics, legalities and most importantly, the aesthetics of translation worked out. It took a little less than a year to do. But it took more than a year and hundreds of emails, messages and cold calls to finally find a willing publisher (Thank you, Tritiyo Parisar!) and, here we are. This is despite Hoshang Merchant being who he is and the original book having very attractive sales figures, and the translation rights resting with the author!

Sorry, I should have given a more romantic answer about my destiny as a queer person and this book. Yes, it is an extremely important personal joyride and is not just another writing gig.

What was your biggest challenge in translating a piece of literature like this one, which has poetry, prose and, of course, the profound essence of queerness?

I like translating poetry as well as prose. So this was like a two-in-one delight! As I mention in my translator’s preface in the book, initially, Hoshang Merchant was worried about whether the poetry was being properly translated (He is a poet, above all, and a translator of poetry himself) and surprisingly chilled out about the prose. But when Professor Brinda Bose, who was the “peer reviewer”, so to say, assured him that it is being properly done, he relaxed.

The “profound essence of queerness” is embedded in the text. That doesn’t need any supplementary chemistry training other than trying to translate the text, as well as one can.

But calibrating the sexual terms in translation was so very difficult. I didn’t want to sanitise or romanticise just as the author didn’t. Modern standardised Bangla vocabulary is ill-equipped for this. The ancient and medieval Indian erotic poetry, in Sanskrit, proto-Bangla and other Prakrit languages, doesn’t hesitate to talk about crescent shaped nail marks on the fleshy breast of the lover and, in the very next line, about a cosmic, disembodied love by taking that crescent mark on a lunar mission. We shouldn’t hesitate either.

The author had used “fuck” or “blowed” or “bugger” where he wanted to use that. And used “made love” or “consummated” or “fellatio”-ed where it was needed. Not one for the other. In Bengali, where hardbound published books are still a bhadrolok affair, this is still taboo. Thankfully, I didn’t receive even an iota of censorship from my publisher. But a few “wise” people had advised earlier that we have to use one set and not the other - either slumming or sanitising, Swachh Bharat!

Such binaries in life, sex, literature and translation are simply absurd.

What role do you think translation can play in the queer movement in India?

I think “the Queer Movement in India”, if there’s a monolith like that, has a profound inadequacy of the literary, especially in Indian languages.

Queer autobiographical narratives are legitimised when they are confessional or self-actualising / self-victimising / uplifting. The textual corpus and the discourse is medico-legal, rights and knowledge-based. And now, increasingly consumption, theory and identity-based (Today, for the first time I encountered, in a major Indian online publication, the use of LGBTP (P for Pansexual) - after LGBTQA+, LBT, GBT, and Queer) I don’t have to go on a long tangent here about how the above are essential for the “Queer Movement in India”. They are! You know, I know, everybody knows. Well, may be everybody doesn’t know.

But beyond Pride, Hindu queerness, badges, Grindr, HIV, ART centres, double suicides, sex reassignment surgeries, conversion therapy, same-sex marriage laws, alphabets, pronouns, expensive cock rings, imported jockstraps, RuPaul and Judith Butler – queer lives are lived in languages and language-cultures. They are not vernacular lives – a reduced version of their Angrez or Amriki ideals, they are language-lives. We are not just research topics, glitches, NGO budgets or special cases (to be pitied or bullied) or square nuts in round bolts.

I know that Hoshang Merchant’s life in Indian English, when translated in Bangla, Hindi or Malayalam does not automatically become a life lived in those languages. Neither it is just attractively alien or an exemplary ideal. Languages are cultures and life codes too. As Indians, we are naturally polylingual, yet we don’t become Esperanto Universal Khichdi people. Indian queer lives and literature don’t have to be only of and about outstanding achievers and only thus legitimised. It should be read and understood and enjoyed, ruminated on and lived by the most unremarkable queers in their own language. Like Mohanaswamy in Vashudhendra’s short story (Mohanaswamy, 2016). I, and many others read and were moved by a Kannada queer life translated in English by Rashmi Terdal.

It is a dream to have queer book publications in Indian languages and a consistent publishing of queer related books – literary, translations, originals, experimental texts, poems, drawings, photographs – not just academic essays, NGO leaflets, study guides or confession collections. There are, like Swikriti, Dumdum or Sappho for Equality, Kasba. But not enough.

Do you have a checklist to pick up a book for you to translate?

It has to profoundly move me and create this urgency of breaking the barrier of language to get it read by a completely different readership than its original language intended. Beyond that, as you know, as a translator and writer yourself – publishers, translation grant bodies, translation studies departments and translation prize juries have their own checklists. So, one has to increasingly tick all the boxes and yet promise a wide readership for wide enough sales. The intersectional oppression Olympics and mass market moolah are both to be won. It’s a paralysing paradox. Yet, many more translations are being done.

Earlier, translated literature in English wasn’t taken seriously by publishers or the readers, so much so that they wouldn’t even print the translator’s name on the cover. Has that been the case in Bangla literature as well and if yes, do you see it changing?

Hoshang Merchant was very particular from the beginning to insist and keep my name on the cover. That was not the problem in this case.

As you know, publishing house genres are artificial marketing segmentations, often quite off-the-mark from what the reader actually wants to read. Although there are quite a bit of translations being churned out in both West Bengal and Bangladesh, the scopes are different (There is a much bigger readership in Bangladesh) and there are definitely genres and manuscripts that don’t fit and keep falling through the cracks. Here, I am not talking about source languages other than English. Just English to Bengali.

Then, there are deep systemic problems despite the ongoing “Gitanjali Shree Effect”. The extremely labour and time-intensive work of translation is not paid for except by the translator’s personal wealth, generosity and urgency of the author, or meagre royalties by the publisher. It just doesn’t pay. If one has to make a living out of it, one has to relentlessly and breathlessly keep translating. That, at best, makes barely competent and just about adequately readable translations. Or they have to translate anything and everything that sells well; or has to reach the critical mass of fame to get an unbroken stream of grants.

Some of the most celebrated and prolific translators in India today produce texts which read like their own brand and style of writing irrespective of the vastly different styles and flavours of their source authors.

Any other translations you’re currently working on?

Yes, I’m currently translating, Manindra Gupta’s Rangkankar Ramkinkar into English. It is an excellent illustrated biography of the artist Ramkinkar Baij originally written in Bangla.

I am greatly devoted to the author’s prose as he was an eminent poet and prose writer, whose books include novels, personal essays and a memoir. He won the Sahitya Academy Award in 2011.

This book with 101 chapters started on a summer afternoon in 1948, when the author met Ramkinkar Baij at Santiniketan; the same Ramkinkar Baij who brought Modernism to Indian sculpture almost single-handedly, starting as the youngest child in a very poor family. When he finished, his painted and sculpted works made him not only a part of the great Santiniketan trio with Nandalal Bose and Benode Behari Mukherjee – but also a part of great global trios with Picasso and Matisse, Giacometti and Brancusi. The biography starts with 42-year-old Ramkinkar and ends 32 years after his death. But currently, I am struggling with the funding and with finding a suitable publisher. Fingers crossed. Translating it is a joy though.

I am also translating Mohanaswamy (Harper Perennial, 2016, Vasudhendra, Rashmi Terdal) and Stars in My Pocket Like Grains of Sand (HarperVoyager, 2019, Samuel R Delany) into Bangla.

Were there certain cultural contexts in Hoshang’s text that seemed quite impossible for you to translate into Bangla and how did you manage to overcome that obstacle?

Not really. Except sexual terms. And there is a lot of sex in this book!

I would like to quote from the translator’s preface: “Normal, uninhibited and specific on sex, love and its entanglements – the book exposes the poverty of contemporary Bangla vocabulary and tests its Victorian limits about the same. The only way of translating the many tones of fuck-love-prey in its pages is by switching between Sanskritised and argot Bangla. That too, urban sexual argot. Because the rural sexual argot still remains outside “the commons” of “bhadrolok” Bangla.”

Are you also planning to publish this book in Bangladesh? Do you think it’ll be perceived positively even though homosexuality is still criminalized in the country?

Let me give the short answer first. Yes, the publisher has spoken to Rokomari and Baatighar. It will also soon be up for sale on the publisher’s website and be available in various prominent outlets in College Street, Kolkata, and should be there latest by early March 2024.

Now the long answer. We, as in the author and me, always wanted it to be co-published in Bangladesh and India, and if possible, in Bangladesh first. We spoke to several publishers there and some – after showing long-time sustained interest despite the topic and the local anti-queer politics – backed out. But there are prospective readers. And this is a great book and a great read and not just for queer readers. Readers have a great interest in these kinds of titles, especially well-read, well-heeled urban readers, students and members of academia.

The current timing is unfortunate because an anti-trans movement is brewing and getting larger in Bangladesh. Hopefully, by the time their national book fair wraps up (February 29), this would have subsided a bit.

Chittajit Mitra (he/him) is a queer writer, translator and editor from Allahabad. He is co-founder of RAQS, an organization working on gender, sexuality and mental health.