Writer Sathya Saran speaks to Mayank Chhaya on his book 'Caged Memories Have Names', an English translation of poet-lyricist Gulzar’s writings in Hindi | SAM Conversation
Category
🗞
NewsTranscript
00:00He was trying to catch a butterfly. I was trying to catch a poet. He in this case happens
00:25to be Gulzar, one of India's most celebrated filmmakers, poets, writers and lyricists,
00:32a renaissance man. I happen to be the well-known writer and pioneering editor, Satya Saran,
00:39whose latest book, Caged Memories Have Names, is an English translation of Gulzar's writings
00:46and musings in Hindi. Given his inimitable style of poetic constructs that deploy and
00:53employ words that otherwise would have been writhing out of disuse in the Shabdakosh
00:59or Hindustani dictionary, Satya Saran had an exacting task. Sample this original in
01:06Hindustani by Gulzar about the neighbourhood in Old Delhi where the great Urdu poet Mirza
01:13Ghalib lived.
01:44to have acquitted herself impressively. Read the book just released by Penguin India. She
01:49spoke to Mayank Shah reports from Mumbai.
01:52Welcome to Mayank Shah reports, Satya. It's always a great pleasure to have you.
01:56Thank you, Mayank. You're always kind enough to call me.
02:01And congratulations on yet another book, Caged Memories Have Names. It's based on...
02:07Yes.
02:08Oh, wonderful. It looks terrific. For my viewers and listeners, this is an English
02:15translation by Satya of the slim volume but rather evocative volume by the great poet,
02:22filmmaker and renaissance man, Gulzar. Tell me how you came to it because it's not very
02:30often that film poets and film lyricists get translated into a whole book. Of course,
02:38Gulzar is much, much more than that.
02:41Okay, I did a book on Gulzar's Angoor some time ago. And he liked it a lot and he said,
02:49let's do something else together. And I said, I'm game. I mean, he asked me twice. And then
02:58he sent me a couple of poems out of the blue saying, can you try translating this, which
03:05I did. And then he said, okay, and that's how slowly the book happened.
03:12You know, translating poetry from any language to any other language is always exacting.
03:17But translating from Hindustani Urdu to English is even more so. While the former, like I
03:23was saying, is effortlessly evocative and whimsical, the latter is direct, no-nonsense
03:29and business-like. How did you manage to bridge the two?
03:34I think I tried to get under the meaning of the words and understand his mood, his emotion
03:42and where he came from. And the simpler part was that it was about people one knew or knew
03:48of. So, that made it easier. You could catch the fact that he was drawing a portrait in
03:55a few lines. And if you know Saral Chowdhury's music, you know exactly where the poem is
04:02coming from. Or if you knew Van Gogh's paintings, you knew where that poem was coming from.
04:07So, I think that helped a lot. And I did not attempt too much to make it sound exactly
04:16the same. I tried to use the cadences of English rather than of Hindi.
04:24You know, interesting you should mention cadence because that was my next question. Cadence
04:30is a crucial element in Hindustani poetry or for that matter, any poetry. What were
04:36your challenges finding a matching cadence in English?
04:43As I said, I didn't try to match it. I just tried to get the same feel, you know. And
04:50I think where it worked was, as Gulzar Sahib said, it worked with you because you are a
04:56poet. I didn't think of myself as a poet, but he did. So, he saw the fact that some
05:03of my writing does have poetic qualities. So, he says you think like a poet. So, it
05:08was easier to catch that rhythm without even realizing you were catching it.
05:13Yeah. You know, the often charmingly overwrought and hyper imaginative nature of Gulzar's poetry
05:20is evident in Gur Ki Bheli, for instance, where he talks about a chunk of gourd or jaggery
05:26melting under the sun and trickling down the face of the villager, villager being himself
05:31carrying it. And he's obviously referring to the great Rabindranath Tagore's poetry.
05:37I was quite struck by the whole imagery of that.
05:43I think he adores, I mean, he says his career started with a book by Rabindranath Tagore,
05:51which was handed to him when he used to sleep in a godown. And he read it and it changed his
05:55life, his view of life, his view of understanding words. So, he adores Rabindranath Tagore.
06:02And I think he sees himself as someone who has imbibed some of his language, some of his
06:12conceits in writing. And that is the wood that is trickling on, which is licking up quickly and
06:20ardently. I think it also holds a mirror to Gulzar's own humility, because he himself has
06:27reached a stature today that is respected the world over, but he still calls himself
06:33a rustic villager. I think that's amazing. You know, for a Punjabi and a Sikh to boot,
06:40it's quite a distance to traverse from the rusticity, as it were, of Punjab,
06:46although Punjab literature is as great as anywhere else, to Rabindranath Tagore.
06:51Gulzar, what is your perception as an outsider of Gulzar's fascination with things Bengali? In
07:00fact, I think he considers himself sort of an honorary Bengali.
07:05Well, I think anybody who has been influenced, I consider myself a little bit Bengali,
07:10a little bit Assamese. So, you know, that part of the world does have that charm,
07:16maybe because of the culture or the way people behave. It's a completely different kind of
07:21behavior. And that kind of gets into you and you can never, never be free of it. You don't
07:28want to be free of it. It's beautiful. It transforms you in a different way. And he
07:33learnt Bengali so that he could read Tagore in the original and he's translated Tagore. So,
07:41his, I think it's the cultural aspect which appealed to him. And as he says in the book,
07:47in the biography, critical biography written by Mishra, Yatinder Mishra,
07:54that I got so fascinated with Bengal, I married Bengal.
08:01You know, the original book that he wrote has some fascinating vantage points and a remarkable
08:10eclectic set of people from Van Gogh to someone like Shalil Chaudhary from Rabindranath Tagore to
08:17Javed Akhtar, Harsha Bhosle to Rahul Dev Berman. It's quite a range of people. And he's talking
08:24poetically about these figures. That itself is a pretty arresting idea. What kind of insights did
08:33you gain from his perceptions about these remarkable figures?
08:39No, I found that, you know, I write biographies, as you know, and I need to write 50,000 words to
08:44say a story, which he tells in seven lines or two pages. I think it gave me a perception that you
08:55can do with brushstrokes, what you can also do with a full detail landscape. But if you have the
09:03talent, if you have the vocabulary, and if you have the vision to do it and the understanding of
09:09the person, I mean, he's got under the skin of all these people, whether it's his father,
09:13you know, telling him there's this lovely poem about his father, where he says, Baba, I am the
09:19age you were when you used to tell me, leave all this nonsense of writing poetry and get a good job.
09:27Right.
09:28You know, it's so touching. And it immediately brings the father-son relationship into focus.
09:36And then when he ends, he says, maybe you would have been proud of me. I am still writing poetry
09:41and I'm still managing to survive.
09:43Right. One of the famous things about him is that he has always kept up with the times, even in his
09:51Hindi movie songs. He does not shy away from using often what might be considered somewhat
09:58unvarnished expressions. And yet he manages to pull them off with remarkable ease.
10:07Did you get that sense while reading that this is a different kind of a book where he's actually
10:11completely blossoming, given his fantastic vocabulary and command of the language?
10:17Yes, because he's different when he writes poetry and when he writes lyrics. When he writes lyrics,
10:23he's writing for an audience. So, he says, when you write for an audience which speaks primarily
10:29in English or walks in English, putting in an English word doesn't matter. But here he's writing
10:37poetry and he's writing from the soul. And I think that makes a difference. You know, every line he's
10:45written is heartfelt. And there are some very poignant poems here where he's actually saying
10:52goodbye to a friend whom he knows will die that night. Or he writes, yeah, and there is one where
10:59he's... and then there are some really beautiful ones about his grandson, where he says, when you
11:05go to the village, you become a rustic. You wear a baniyan and a chaddi and you roam around and
11:09throw stones on the pond. Nobody'd believe you live in the city. Right. About his dog,
11:19who he says, I never called the dog. I called him Millie and death just came and snatched him away.
11:29It's amazing what he managed for life.
11:32You know, he has broadly operated under two gigantic literary figures. One is, of course,
11:39Rabindranath Tagore and the other is the great Mirza Ghalib, with whom he has also great passion.
11:45And there is a bit about streets of Ballyrama in Delhi where Ghalib was. And I was again,
11:55I was again the Ghalib Qasim that you talk about. You know, there were words like
12:02Chilamji or Lotta or Sini. These are interesting words within that milieu. But
12:09for you to translate them, what was your... how did you come about that?
12:15That poem, along with one more was my Waterloo. I had to go to him and say, please explain it,
12:21because I didn't know. I didn't know Ghalib that closely. And I didn't know what Ghalib Qasim was,
12:27which is very sad. And I didn't know about, you know, I understood the poem where he talks about
12:35his house, where he says, you know, they put up a statue about you and all that. But this I didn't
12:41understand. And it gave me a lot of grief. So I finally gave up and said, I'll come to you and
12:46sit down, you explain the poem to me, and then I will try translating it. I patiently did that.
12:54You know, there is a reference to one of Ghalib's most enduring verses Bazi Chai Atfal Hai Duniya
13:00Mere Aage, Hota Hai Shabu Roz Tamasha Mere Aage. Now, that's an epic conceit of a great poet to
13:08think that the world is basically like a children's playground and falling in front of him,
13:13mildly abusing his intellect in some ways. And for Gulzar to write about a figure like that,
13:21it's quite a coming together.
13:27I think he admired the man, he admires his poetry. He has a bust of Ghalib in his house,
13:34in his office. So he really looks up to him and I think he's quite obsessed.
13:44He is, he is. In terms of, now that the book is out,
13:50what do you, I mean, Gulzar, of course, has great currency across cultural strata.
13:57What kind of readership do you think would be drawn to your translation?
14:01I don't know. You see, I'm not, I'm not well known as a literary writer. I'm still typecast
14:08as an editor of women's magazines and definitely not as a translator. This is my first job. But
14:15because it is Gulzar's book, I may get some credibility because I cannot translate Gulzar's
14:22book without Gulzar's permission and involvement. And not to mention the fact that he would,
14:29he respects your talent to be able to translate his stuff. That itself is great
14:37vote of confidence. I would say that if the book is,
14:43if the book is leafed through, people will pick it up
14:48as much because of the people who have, who feature in it as much as, and definitely for
14:54Gulzar's version. Whether they resonate, whether my translation resonates with them or not is a
15:03matter of individual taste and opinion. But I'm glad I could do it.
15:10No, from what I have read, I think you've captured his essence quite effectively. So,
15:15my compliments to you.
15:17Thank you. I must tell you about the translator. I was suddenly told I have to write a translator's
15:26note. I was not prepared. So, I sat down and said, I want to see it. I said, of course,
15:31you will see it. So, I wrote it and it was all, you know, I'm in awe of Gulzar. He's this,
15:37he's that, he's that. So, he looked at it and he says, this is not you. You write. Tear this up.
15:46And then I didn't dare for a month and a half to even think of writing it. And then it came.
15:53And then he said, this is what I was waiting for. So, he can be, he can be critical. He can be
15:59tough on you. And sometimes for a single word, you know, we have sat, he is not happy with the
16:06word that he suggests. And he says, you suggest something that takes off from this mood. And I
16:12keep suggesting and suggesting and suggesting. And suddenly he said, yes, that's the one.
16:17You know, but people may not realize given a soft demeanor to the, to the public outside,
16:24they may not realize that he's a pretty exacting person in terms of the standards
16:28that he enforces, I suppose. Let me tell you another story. There was,
16:33there is this lovely poem on, for Hariprasad Chaurasia called Bansi. It's the Bansi talking,
16:40right? Or about the Bansi. And in that, when I translated it, I had said, but, you know,
16:48the Bansi never reveals. He said, why do you want that but? Remove the but. So, and he said,
16:55send it to me. So, I had sent him the earlier version, which he had seen. And then I removed
17:00the but and I sent it to his assistant for forwarding to the press because it was a last
17:06minute add-on. He calls me very late in the night and he says, you haven't removed the but,
17:12I told you to remove that but. I said, no, I have removed it. I haven't sent the original to you
17:20again after writing. I should have. This is what you have just seen, you know, and you're looking
17:25at it again. It's not, it's not a new mail from me. So, he can be very particular about every word.
17:34And it's remarkable given that he is getting in on years now and he's still attentive to
17:40these details that says a lot about him as a literary figure. I think it tells you why he is
17:46who he is. Have you formally released it? Has there been an event around it yet or not yet?
17:53We are planning one. It kind of fell through. We are hoping to have something somewhere.
17:59Oh, pretty soon in Bombay or elsewhere?
18:02Yes, Bombay was being planned. There is still now some conversation has been reinstated. So,
18:09let's see. There is something probably in April or May in Calcutta.
18:15I was about to say that. It might be a better idea to do it between Calcutta and Delhi.
18:21From Calcutta in the book, you know, there's Bimari, there's Salilda, there's so many of them.
18:28Perhaps you could do it at Zalib's Haveli in Ballimaran.
18:33Oh, that would be lovely.
18:36I suppose it's being preserved, right?
18:39Yes.
18:40And it's a lovely setting. I've been there but it was quite dilapidated when I went
18:45over 30 years ago. I think it's been restored, I was told.
18:49That's what the poem is all about, that they have put a statue.
18:54Indeed, indeed.
18:55I have no doubt that people, when they pick it up, will love this because he is so frank, so
19:01candid, you know, in his emotions when he talks about this one. And there's some which are very,
19:08very sad. The one on RD Burman is so sad that they're sitting by the rail track,
19:12waiting for the train, which never comes. And then he says,
19:15and walked into the mist and I'm still waiting.