The Kashmir Monitor
By Amir Suhail Wani
Martin Lings, an insightful scholar and a Shakespearian authority, who lately converted to Islam and became Abu Bakar Siraj Ud Din noted,
“Poetry is not written with ink but with the heart’s blood”.
Ahmad Nadeem Qasmi, in his literary essay, “Mera Nazariy-e-Funn” notes very pertinently that the primary concern of poetry is to translate man’s emotional landscape into words. Language comes with its own limitations and expresses lesser than it conceals. Because of the intrinsic uniqueness inherent to every language in terms of metaphors, structures, analogies and parables, the works of art pose insurmountable odds in any attempt that aims their translation. Pavan Verma, while translating Gulzar very candidly subscribes to the opinion that ‘translators are traitors’. Poetry thrives on emotional flashes and derives lifeblood from feelings that are exclusive to the poet. All this brings the very exercise of poetic translations under the interrogative scanner. One is repeatedly bound to ask questions like, what it is that is really being translated– the essence of poetry or the garb of words in which essence has been temporally captured. Well, even the translator who succeeds in translating words properly deserves all applause and appreciation, unlike Ranjeet Hoskote, who has done gross scholarly injustice while rendering classical Lal’e Ded into postmodern English idiom. The index of translators who have succeeded in translating poetry both in essence and in form is indeed too succinct. Thus, one recalls Fitzgerald, Coleman Barks, Nicholson, Ghulam Rasool Nazki (Translating Lal’s Vaakh into Urdu equivalents) and Ghulam Nabi Khalyal (His rendering of Khayyam remains archetypal) etc. To this list, the name of Ghulam Nabi Haleem can be added without exaggeration. His rendering of Amrita Preetam’s poetry into Kashmiri has projected him as one of the erudite translators.
The work of translation as it stands titled “Saffar” combines in it the translator’s deep understanding of Amrita Preetam, his command over Kashmiri diction, his craftsmanship of infusing life into seemingly dead words. The translation is, by most of the literary standards, not merely successful but very close to approximating the ‘ideal’.
Amrita Preetam and her poetry remain one of the assertive, multi-layered and impressive voices in recent Punjabi literature. Building upon the legacy that stretches from Baba Fareed right down to Khwaja Ghulam Fareed, where poetry was mainly a vehicle of mystical, vertical, and transcendental experiences, Amrita, combining these characteristics of Punjabi idiom and its dialects, with a sensible socio-cultural consciousness, succeeded in creating a poetic episteme genuinely described as “neo- mystical, trans-horizontal and semi- vertical”. All these epithets describe the fact that Amrita, while weaving herself and her experiences into her poetry, is not submerged by the tragedies she witnesses in her immediacy, but rather, she rises above in the spirit of the falcon to bring flashes of inspiration and optimism, that can deliver perpetual hope in times of utter despondency. Her canon “Aaj Aakha Waaris Shah Nu” means to Punjabi poetry what “Toba Tek Singh” means to Urdu prose. Rebuilding upon stabs of ‘independence’ that brought much suffering and slavery, she speaks in humanistic spirit, and her voice seems to be representative of each of that conscious soul who is pained by human sufferings. She is no rebellion, but a rebel to her own self. She does not speak of revolution and change, as does Faiz and others, but a sub-textual understanding of her poetry reveals that she is a revolution within, and seeking a change within the changeless self. She speaks of love, but not as manifestly as her contemporary Parveen Shakir. Her poetry does not open up at once, like an editorial message or a columnist’s commentary, but reveals itself, layer by layer. To find parallels to her poetry, one needs to turn to Gulzar’s Triveni and Nida Fazli’s Doha, for all these lifting the veil of appearance, has by and large succeeded in conceiving the underlying unity. Sufism, humanistic Bhakti or mystic tradition, (whatever nomenclature you love), is common to all of them.
Having said so much about Amrita and the legacy her poetry rests on, it should have posed additional challenge to Haleem while rendering Amrita into Kashmiri, but he has so wonderfully manoeuvred this trial, that one cannot but remain awestruck, full of praise and appreciation for Haleem’s literary skills that he has poured in while undertaking this translation. This book of translation spanning 160 pages, published by Sahitya Academy, is such an immense contribution to Kashmiri vernacular, that its worth will be well gauged by scholars, students and critics down the line. I cannot pick the samples from this book to demonstrate to readers the subtleties of translation, for each page, each poem and each line of the book is an exemplary demonstration of scholarship in itself. The translator, while rendering unfamiliar Punjabi structures into their Kashmiri equivalents has displayed ace learning skills. He has, not only refurbished the translation with easy, well understood and beautiful Kashmiri equivalents, but he has all the while stayed fully conscious so as to not mar Amrita’s originality, and has throughout maintained his loyalty to the essence of the text. Haleem is indeed Amrita’s Kashmiri mouthpiece. The grandeur of any work of translation is to be assessed on the premise that, had the author himself written in the language of translation, how closely the translation at hand would have approached it. Based on this premise, had Amrita lived to see Haleem’s translation, she would have wholeheartedly said that, Yes, this is how I would have written, had I written in Kashmiri. Even the title of the poems as adopted by Haleem can give a reader an idea of his translation aesthetics. Some of the titles are “Sawal-I- Khuda Chui”, “Tarak Chi Wanan”, “Myon Pattah” (This one is really outstanding when you evaluate it vis-a-vis the Punjabi original).
The translation also assumes importance for the fact that it seems to have been undertaken with due consideration to the poet’s subjective universe of experience. The translator has abstained from grafting himself onto the originality of the text, and in it lies the success of translation. I have always maintained a cynical attitude towards poetic translations, but to Haleem goes the credit of changing my perspective to the extent that I came to write down this piece, to sing with Haleem, Amrita’s song of devotion,
“Be chas, Chaen’I astaaneh tuj’i
T’e chaani dargahi paeth chum
Garri khanji dazun”
(Poem: Sai Baba)
(The author is a freelance columnist with bachelors in Electrical Engineering and a student of comparative studies with special interests in Iqbaliyat & mystic thought. He contributes a weekly column for this newspaper that appears every Monday. He can be reached at: [email protected]
