This monumental anthology, THE PENGUIN BOOK OF POEMS ON THE INDIAN CITY, edited by Bilal Moin, arrived at my door some days ago ... and I was elated ... to say the least ...
On 13th August last year, I received a mail that surprised me. It was a mail from Mr Bilal Moin. He introduced himself and told me that he is editing an anthology of poems on the Indian city to be published by Penguin Random House. He told me that he found my English translations of one of Kannada’s foremost modernist poets, K. V. Tirumalesh’s Hyderabad Poems on my blog and enjoyed reading them. He then sought my permission to reprint two of my translations in this anthology.
For some odd reason I got hooked to Tirumalesh Sir’s Hyderabad poems that I found in his collections Mukhamukhi (1978) and Avadha (1986) and proceeded to translate them into English. This started around eight years ago. I took this up as my personal project. After mining these two collections, I started searching his other collections and found that there are a number of Hyderabad ‘fragments’ in his two epic style narratives – Akshaya Kavya (2010) and Avyaya Kavya (2019). I translated all of them, and enjoyed doing it. Tirumalesh Sir became a Hyderabadi long time ago, and I became one subsequently. I enjoyed revisiting a lot of spaces that he alludes to in his poems.
And then, I created a blog and posted my translations online. I tried to create some ‘publicity’ too. My Hyderabad-Kannadiga friends, Nikhila and Tharakeshwar Tharakeshwar Vb, helped me in disseminating these translations. It was at an annual literary-cultural event in December 2018 that Nikhila had organized in memory of her father that I did a reading of some of these poems for the first time. Then, Tharakeshwar got twelve of these translations published in ‘Caesurae’ and ‘Maidaanam.’ ‘Muse India’ published three more translations. Then last year, one poem found its way into an English textbook of Kuvempu University, through the good offices of another friend, Prof Siraj Ahmed.
And then, out of the blue, I get Bilal Moin’s mail, and I was so happy. These poem-translations have been in the public domain for so many years now, and to have them discovered like this gave me a lot of satisfaction. I don’t know how Tirumalesh Sir would have felt about all this. He was a forthright person, and probably would have shrugged his shoulders and smiled. That’s what I would like to fondly believe. I received a lot of support from Tirumalesh Sir’s family and their permission to translate and publish his poems.
Two Hyderabad poems by Tirumalesh, ‘On the Arts College Road’ (Arts Collegina Haadiyalli ಅರ್ಟ್ಸ್ ಕಾಲೇಜಿನಹಾದಿಯಲ್ಲಿ) from ‘Mukhamukhi’ and ‘Pesticide Sabi,’ (Keetanashaka Sabi ಕೀಟನಾಶಕ ಸಾಬಿ) a Hyderabad fragment from ‘Avyaya Kavya,’ are included in this collection.
And, significantly, ‘Pesticide Sabi’ also features in the ‘introduction’ and the editor notes the use of the word ‘Sabi’ reflecting the rich complexities of the Kannada language and the translator having to navigate these layers of meanings to create the same cultural weight and depth in English as in the original.
I would like to wholeheartedly thank Mr Bilal Moin for discovering these poems and for reaching out to me. I know him only through the mails we exchanged, and he came across as a warm and earnest person. This anthology is a massive door-stopper of a book counting a stupendous 1072 pages and containing 375 poems. This anthology contains a whole range of voices, from the classical to the contemporary, and it is certain to give its readers hours of enchantment as the poems take them through the thoroughfares and lanes and bylanes and sights and sounds and smells of the Indian city ... and thoughts and feelings ...
Take a bow, Bilal Moin ... on undertaking this epic task and bringing out a beautiful work of art 😀👌🌺 ...
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