These Telugu stories of Mohammed Khadeer Babu translated into English by DV Subhashri will win any reader’s attention for their wonderful mixture of memoir and short story. The child narrator tells the tales of his childhood, his village, neighbourhood, food and schooling. As we read through these stories, we find the boy’s humorous reflections on the surroundings, the harmonious living of Muslims and Hindus, caring for one another and celebrating festivals together. What I find interesting as a non-Telugu speaking Tamil reader is the child narrator’s rendering of these tales, which invites reading aloud. The translator has captured this orality so well that children in my home read these translated stories aloud to enjoy the Telugu idioms and the onomatopoeic expressions that resemble Tamil. One can draw parallels among these expressions in south Indian languages from a folk perspective beyond linguistics.
The stories are divided into two sections: the Dargamitta stories of Nellore district and Polerammabanda stories of Kadappa district. Section one is dedicated to his father, who as the narrator says, ‘eez a current man who repairs moters, fans and istree dabbas’. Section two is dedicated to his friend Sridharu (along with his other soulmates) and covers events after he is moved from Idayaniketan to Ishvodaya school in Kavali town. The translator says: ‘Let me warn you, it’s not just mispronunciations, but a few misspellings too that have crept in on purpose, such as Idyaniketan for Vidyaniketan, Ishvodaya for Vishvodaya, Enkateswara for Venkateswara, haeroplanes for aeroplanes, rishckaw for rickshaw, otel for hotel, iskool for school, kilas for class, etc. In addition to aiding the tone and humour, my intention was to represent how words are sometimes regurgitated solely by their sound, and how pronunciation tends to morph as it travels across class, region, age or education…. This is just to remind the reader that these stories come from hinterland, where the colloquial idiom is typically a mixture of languages and cultures.’ We see here how culture is embedded in sound and accent, and how transliteration functions at par with translation. The translator has worked against the clichéd accusation of ‘lost in translation’ to make up for ‘the gains’ by mixing linguistic idioms. Because she says, ‘sound-words are like the extra spice in Andhra cuisine.’
These ‘coming-of-age stories’ begin with an account of how the author was named Mohammed Khadeer Babu by one Subbaraju aivoru (teacher) when he is admitted in Idyaniketan convent. ‘Let’s do one thing, Karimbai. Let’s remove the “Ahmadu” at the end of the name and add “Babu”. Even if they can’t say Khadeeru, they can still call him “Babu”, he said.’ The next story, ‘Alif Bete, Bury my Granny, I say’, talks about the struggle of non-Urdu speaking Telugu Muslims. ‘Rey, Abbaya! Neither you nor this person (pointing to my mother) can read or write a paisa worth of Urdu!’ The statement, ‘I never regretted even once that I didn’t learn Urdu or that I don’t know Arabic, or that I have never even touched the Quran in these languages, only in Telugu’ draws parallels with non-Urdu speaking Tamil, Malayalam and Kannada Muslims found in good number in south India. The boy does not boast this but regrets: ‘I really feel like burying my granny for not forcing this honey-like language down my throat back then by trick or treat.’
‘Semiya Rangolis in Kasaabgalli’, and ‘True-blue Palavenkareddy’ talk of the intimacy among women and men of the two religious communities in that village. They jointly celebrate Eid and Dasara along with ‘Sunti (circumcision) story’. The translator becomes an ethnographer when we hear: ‘We shouldn’t eat shark fish, son. It’s haram, forbidden for us, said my grandmother.’ ‘Hey, The “Black animal” touched me, worried the boy.’ The narration of ‘Fish all the Way’ and ‘The Bustle of Sweet Potatoes in Our Neighbourhood’ gives a mouth-watering experience. The stories ‘In Tenth Class, We Wear Pants’, ‘Nick-names for Teachers’, ‘Buying Second-hand Books’ and his happy evenings in tuition centres, and ‘Combined Study in Sridhar’s Terrace’ take us back to our own school life in many south Indian towns.
The first-person account of these tales reminds us of the farewell speech to the nation, given by the former President of India, KR Narayanan, who, referring to Swami Vivekananda’s praise of India as a land of religious tolerance, said: ‘I had the opportunity to fight in general elections from a constituency called Ottapalam well known for important upper caste Hindu families. I recall how they all came out to canvass for me in the elections with great enthusiasm. From this constituency where there were considerable number of Muslims and Christians also, it was my good fortune to get elected to Lok Sabha for three consecutive terms with a sizeable majority. At Ottapalam, I experienced the essential goodness of our people, their capacity to forget all communal, religious and social divisions of our society, when an occasion was presented to them.’ The child narrator offers such a testimony of religious harmony in rural India. The Kumaraswami teacher in Ishvodaya school aptly records this brilliance of Khadeer: ‘Listen, Karimbai! Don’t be fooled by his harmless looks. That’s a fire ant right there (it becomes the title of this book). He sees with one eye and grasps with the other.’ In addition, we find a harmony between this Telugu tale teller and the rendering of his stories for reading aloud in English. The academics may find in Subhashri’s translation implications for translation theory, which so far has been ‘used’ merely to foreground the region, ignoring the ambiguities in the regional language and culture.
R Azhagarasan is former Professor of English, Madras University, Tamil Nadu.