God’s Own Language
Viswanadha Satyanarayana (1895-1976) was the first Telugu writer to be given the Jnanpith award. Now, in scholar Velcheru Narayana Rao’s translation, we have two of his novellas available in English. Rao describes these as ‘oral novels’—Satyanarayana was given to dictating his books to scribes—and says a challenge of the translation process was to reconcile the rhythms of stories told with the stories written.
In Ha Ha Hu Hu, a gandharva—8 feet tall with a horse’s head—is found lying unconscious in London’s Trafalgar Square. As he recovers, someone realises that “the animal could talk; its language was Sanskrit; it did not eat unless it had bathed; it meditated before meals. There was excitement all over Europe. A trainload of Sanskrit scholars arrived in London”. The gandharva—detached, noble, unimpressed by the material advances of Europe—comes across as a kind of elite Hindu superhero, dropped into London to fight the humiliation of colonisation. As the gandharva tells a linguist: “All languages come from Sanskrit. What is there to investigate?” In Vishnu Sharma Learns English, the author of the Panchatantra and the 13th century Telugu poet Tikanna enter the dream of a college lecturer with the intention of learning English. They are bemused by the irregularities of the language and a number of pot-shots are taken: “Any English letter sounds as it wishes in any place.” The novella is rich in incidental detail. It was a time when traditional pandits found themselves considerably diminished in status compared to the college-educated lecturers. We learn that the category of pandits were being paid Rs 30-40 a month, whereas a lecturer with a degree was paid Rs 150 provided: “I will take every word written by the Englishman as the final standard.” Then, there are sections about the infighting between Telugu writers and critics. Satyanarayana is often sardonic and funny. At one point, Vishnu Sharma points out a number of failures in the make-up of the English language and asks, “Tell me, is this is a well-thought-out language? Is it a language blessed by God?” The narrator replies, “Ayya, if you ask me this is the only language blessed by God.” Both novellas are richly imagined and finely translated. They have thoughtprovoking things to say about epistemologies, about the hegemony of language and culture. But too often they feel motivated by a sense of Brahmin victimhood, which is only so interesting. Writers and books will be what they are, but one wonders how much richer these novellas might have been had their ambit been wider.