‘This story could so easily have been written in tears’
Originally published in 1934, Lakshmibai Tilak’s book of memoirs, is considered a classic of Marathi literature, and has now been translated into English by Shanta Gokhale.
By Lakshmibai Tilak Translated by Shanta Gokhale Publisher: Speaking Tiger Pages: 520 Price: Rs 650
LTilak’s is one of those books that constantly beckons you to re-read it. If not to re-read it in its entirety, at least to dip into it occasionally to meet an old friend. When such a book beckons a translator, she does not stop at re-reading, or re-re-reading. She is keen to make it her own in the only way she knows. By translating it. The idea of translating
had been lodged in my brain from the second time I re-read it 35 years ago. One good reason that went beyond the personal, which I shall soon come to, was that it was one of the finest examples of literary storytelling that existed in my language, Marathi. My sense that this was enough reason to translate it was confirmed by Susan Sontag, who, in the St Jerome Lecture on Literary Translation has argued with perspicacity, panache akshmibai and passion that the purpose of translation was to enlarge the readership of a book that was not just worth reading b but worth re- reading. In the pyramidal structure of literary merit, she said, very few books occupied the top. The translator’s “evangelical incentive” was to translate these. Lakshmibai Tilak’s sits right at the top of the pyramid. Of this there is no doubt.
With translation, there are personal and practical factors also to be considered. It is, after all, not a mechanical process of fitting word to word. One needs to get into the skin of the writer, view the world through her eyes, find words and phrases that hypothetically she would have used had she been writing in English. The question I had to ask myself was whether I had the capacity to get into Lakshmibai’s skin and translate not so much her words as her world. It was all very well to be seduced by the easy flow of her crisp and colourful sentences and her vocabulary that smelt of kitchens and cowsheds rather than books and libraries. But was I equipped to find the right register to carry those lines, those phrases into English? I decided to translate the first chapter to find out. But once I had started, I could not stop. Besides the fact that
was a literary classic and therefore had to be translated, besides the fact that I was totally enamoured of Lakshmibai’s storytelling persona, there was something else too that was driving me. I had to bring before the world this woman’s extraordinary life. She had lived through events that would have destroyed a lesser person. They very nearly destroyed her too. She made two attempts at killing herself and failed. Looking back at them, she writes, “Many occasions had arisen in my life when I was near to committing suicide. But I never did. I do not think I was capable of taking such a step. That is how I am. Even in the darkest hour of despair, I grope and struggle to find a way out and live. I do not stumble and fall on the way and give up on life. In short, I am like a rubber ball.” The dark hours of despair that Lakshmibai lived through did not have the power to dent her spirit. Her father-in-law tortured her mentally; her husband, a poet and seeker, would up and leave whenever the desire came upon him, without ever leaving an address where he could be found. His conversion to Christianity separated Lakshmibai from him for five years, during which time her maternal family watched her like hawks, afraid she would run off to join him. She did join him in the end but in stages, first sharing a roof but not the kitchen with him and then, won over to Christianity herself, living with him as a wife.
This story could so easily have been written in tears. But Lakshmibai’s sense of humour was too irrepressible to allow that. She describes every notable event of her life from age seven to 56 and every oddball character that became part of it for a while and moved on, with her unfailing comic touch. It is true that in turning everything to laughter she does not give us a rounded view of her complex relationship with her husband, or of his character or hers. However, reading between the lines, we see that living with Lakshmibai must have been quite as difficult for Reverend Narayan Waman Tilak as it was for her to live with him. She was by no means the meek, docile doormat that women were expected to be in those days. She fought tooth and nail with her husband when she disagreed with his ideas or actions, and often won her argument. But she was ready to laugh at her van- ity when she lost. He, on the other hand, was a bad loser. He used physical violence to settle arguments, and when his rage subsided, became instantly contrite and remorseful.
Feminists have had a problem with Lakshmibai’s endurance of her husband’s ill-treatment of her. Viewed in the framework of women’s rights as we see them today, she should have filed for divorce on innumerable counts. But it is not just that such an act was unheard of in those times, the thought of permanent separation from her husband did not once enter her mind. Because, quite simply, Narayan Waman Tilak and Lakshmibai Tilak loved and respected each other. Although she does not say so in the forthright way we would, her poems and his express the single-minded commitment they felt towards one another. Even more movingly, their love expresses itself in Lakshmibai’s account of the few meetings they had during their separation. They were brief meetings during which she was strictly chaperoned and no more than a few words were exchanged. But those words, for the very reason that they were so few and almost formal in character, carry for us an extraordinary charge of love. The meetings and the letters he wrote to her make it clear that he pined for her as much as she did for him. John Donne speaks of such a love:
If they be two, they are two so
As stiff twin compasses are two;
Thy soul, the fixed foot, makes no show
To move, but doth, if the other do.
I had to bring before the world this woman’s extraordinary life. She had lived through events that would have destroyed a lesser person. They very nearly destroyed her too. She made two attempts at killing herself and failed.