How a Poem is Born and Reborn

A reader not pestered by questions that trouble a scholar comes to a translation with a bracing innocence. The translation falls or flies, first and lastingly, there. Anamika’s translations of her selection of K Satchidanandan’s poems under the title Khoyi Hui Cheezen are rich seamless performances, brought to a charming new life in Hindi. She has translated them from Satchidanandan’s own translations into English from Malayalam. So, they stand at the second remove, doubly set free—or violated (it depends on how you see translations). Anamika doesn’t like the liberties Tagore took with his own translations, but she doesn’t also mention if Satchidanandan took any.