Daisy Rockwell – “Do whatever you need to do, but do not remain silent”
On Our City That Year, her translation of Geetanjali Shree’s novel, Hamara Shahar Us Baras, based on the rioting that followed the demolition of the Babri Masjid, on why writers must speak up, on her current project, and on mentoring young translators
The last time you translated a book by Geetanjali Shree, it led to a Booker Prize. While working on Our City That Year, did the memory of that achievement fuel your creativity or did it feel like an unnecessary burden to carry on your shoulders?
The burden lies in the knowledge that Our City That Year will be read widely and subjected to much scrutiny. I think this is something experienced by both Geetanjali and me. Also, given the political weight of the material in this book, we needed to make sure that everything was perfect in the translation. That, of course, is never possible!
You have spent a lot of time with Geetanjali, talking about Tomb of Sand and translation at literary events in the last few years. How have these interactions, on and off stage, informed the way you translate her writerly voice?
I think that Geetanjali’s authorial voice is something I was able to translate from the very start, long before I met her. That is the first thing a translator needs to ask themselves when they are considering taking on a project — Can I reproduce this voice in another language? An authorial voice is also not the same thing as the actual voice of an author. Obviously Geetanjali’s authorial voice contains elements of her actual personality, but it is still something different. What’s interesting about Our City That Year is that there is a first-person narrator who is in some ways similar to Geetanjali Shree but, on the other hand, claims complete ignorance of the craft of writing and describes herself as a person who merely ‘copies down’ what’s going on around her. It is Shruti who is the creative writer in the group, and she suffers from writer’s block throughout. Even though one might think that she is the Geetanjali character, she is quite naïve and does not feel autobiographical to me. So no, I do not think that knowing an author changes the way one translates their writing.
What made you feel that Hamara Shahar Us Baras was a book you must translate? Did Geetanjali approach you with the idea, or was it the other way round?
We had discussed the possibility in London in 2022 when we first met for the Booker Prize ceremony, and it was then that she brought me the book. It was her only untranslated book and she was very keen that I do it. For a while I was unsure how it would work in translation, and it was not until I was working on a sample that I found the voice and tone that were needed. It is a tricky book to translate in terms of voice and tenses because it jumps around so frequently, and some passages must be purely in the narrator’s voice and others are more from an omniscient perspective. Once I understood the voice and tone, that gave me confidence that it was something I could undertake, and we went ahead from there.
This novel is based on the rioting that followed the demolition of the Babri Masjid. When it was published in Hindi in 1998, the issue was fresh in people’s minds. The English translation has appeared in 2024, when a mandir has been built in the masjid’s place. What meaning do you make of this timing, and its socio-political relevance?
Geetanjali says that she started writing the novel even before 1992, as such things were already happening, and then she was galvanized by what occurred that year. Since then, things have continued perilously along the same trajectory, which makes this 2024 translation sadly all too relevant. The building of the mandir and the subsequent election results in Ayodhya illustrate the truthfulness and prescience of this book, which for the record takes place in an alternate universe where the destroyers of the mosque are Devi worshippers. Our City That Year is a fictional snapshot of a watershed moment that led to the socio-political state of India today.
This sentence from your translation shook me: “The poison that spreads throughout society blends into everyday life and begins to look ordinary, like the natural order of things, so much so that it no longer seems like poison.” How did you experience the process of working on this translation at an emotional level, since the book is set in a country you’ve visited multiple times, have friends living in, and care about deeply?
The book is very powerful in the way that it shows the process of this poisoning. A translator has to travel with each train of thought very slowly, so it can be painful. I first spent time in India in 1989, just three years before the demolition of the Babri Masjid. I followed closely all of the events that are reflected in the fictional world of the book and visited India throughout that time period. In 1995, I was on a Fulbright fellowship to do my dissertation research on Upendranath Ashk in Allahabad, so I was in the country when the Bharatiya Janata Party (JP) began its rise to power and I saw major figures from the party riding trains and campaigning throughout Uttar Pradesh. I told Geetanjali that I felt certain that Beverly was a Fulbright scholar like me. She is called ‘Angrez’ in the book, and we discussed whether she was literally English or if Geetanjali had simply meant that she was a white person. We decided on the latter because she felt American to me. This is all to say that none of what is described in the book is ‘foreign’ to me, and that I have witnessed it happening myself when I was the same age as the main characters. I was something of a Beverly myself.
Our City That Year is published by Penguin Random House in India, Tilted Axis in the United Kingdom and HarperVia in the United States. What was it like to work with three different editorial teams? What are the differences between these three editions?
Well, so far, I have only worked with the Indian publishers because they took the lead in editing. We all agreed that it should be edited in India first to ensure that there were no spelling or other errors from an Indian perspective.
Your translator’s note in the Indian edition is quite brief, presumably because Indians ought to know what happened in India in the 1990s. Do the other editions have a longer note for readers who may not be familiar with recent Indian history? In your opinion, should translators offer such intellectual scaffolding or does it seem like spoon-feeding?
We plan to write something longer for the US/UK editions. I often write much longer notes explaining context and history but, in this case, it felt so salient and contemporary for the Indian context that I did not see the need. For other editions, however, the history of the rise of Hindu nationalism will need an explanation, as will the term ‘communalism’ which outside of the subcontinent means the opposite thing: communal harmony, like hippies living on a commune!
In the novel, Shruti is a writer. Sharad and Hanif are academics. To what extent does it capture the turmoil of writers and academics in times of conflict, and the choices they feel compelled to make? What are the costs of bearing witness and speaking up? What are the consequences of being a bystander and staying quiet or looking away?
Nowadays there is tremendous fear about speaking up in India. The negative repercussions can be very real. In those days, it was not like that. All three of these characters wish to speak up, and try to in their own ways, but ultimately the magnitude of the situation makes them feel impotent and they struggle to find a way to express themselves. This is the rationale for the ‘copying’ narrator. She is unburdened by knowledge or talent — as she says — and therefore she can act as a chronicler and simply include ‘everything’ that happens. To me, the novel is about the failure of writing in the face of disaster. And yet, the narrator persists in her chronicling and I think that is also the message. Do whatever you need to do, but do not remain silent.
Sharad’s father Daddu says, “None among us is real, nothing here is real, you may fill all this emptiness with cruelty or with love, both are illusions, mere wind.” How does this idea speak to you as someone who has been vocal on solidarity with Palestinians amidst the genocide, and is mobilizing authors, translators and cultural institutions?
It is an interesting proposition: everything is maya but we still have a responsibility towards society and we all play a role in fashioning the narrative of history. I do not know if I ascribe to the maya part, but I do think that we all play a role in the narrative arc of history. Sometimes it is difficult or dangerous to speak out, but we must do whatever we can. Everywhere we look, we see the particular evils unleashed by majority communities and communities in power claiming victim status at the hands of minoritized communities with very little power. Palestine is the most egregious example of this, but the same dynamic is in play in the United States, in India, in Europe, and in the United Kingdom. This shows us the power of narrative, and reminds us that those with any capability to narrate must do so just as the narrator does in Our City That Year.
PEN America has been called out by many writers and translators for acting like a mouthpiece for the Israeli government, and failing in its duty to advocate for the human rights of Palestinians. What are your thoughts on this?
PEN America has consistently been on the wrong side of the Palestine issue, unlike many of its counterparts such as English PEN and PEN International. As protests against PEN America have grown, more damning information has come out about the organization and the way that it has failed its community of authors and translators, such as the mismanagement of funds and the dastardly treatment of incarcerated writers. It seems that the organization has lost its focus and now serves the interests of wealthy donors instead of serving writers at risk, which is their original mandate.
How is the process of translating Nisar Aziz Butt’s book Nagari Nagari Phir Musafir coming along? When will it be out? Which other books are you translating now?
The process has been long and gruelling. Butt writes really long complicated sentences that are often philosophical in nature. I am almost done with the first draft, but I have no idea how long the subsequent drafts will take me! I am not working on any other translations at the moment, as I am trying to maintain my focus to get this one finished.
You have been mentoring two young translators based in India – Vaibhav Sharma and Aditya Vikram. What book projects are they working on at the moment?
There are so many talented emerging translators of South Asian literature these days! Vaibhav and Aditya are my official mentees, but I also have many unofficial ones. I have taught a number of translation workshops over the past year, so I can tell you that there are many exciting new translators entering the scene. Vaibhav’s first book was Manav Kaul’s Under the Night Jasmine. He has just completed his second manuscript — Anil Yadav’s Courtesans Don’t Read Newspapers. You will see it coming out from Penguin next year. He has many other interesting projects in the pipeline. Aditya is working on two wonderful projects. He is translating short stories by Asghar Wajahat, and a novel by Mridula Garg.
Chintan Girish Modi is a freelance writer, journalist and book reviewer.