by Milind Bokil
Shala is the story of adolescence. I was curious whether he had a particular view which he wanted to portray. ‘One doesn’t write fiction to impress any particular point of view upon the readers. The view emanates from the work,’ he says. ‘So in this case, the point of view is the search for love. Not just the protagonist but most of the characters in the novel are searching for love. I believe it is a primary human need but not always satisfied. During adolescence, this need assumes an altogether different dimension. Children are in search of love and affection, but when they become adolescents they realize that they also can give love. And this feeling comes naturally with biological changes in the body. Unfortunately our society doesn’t respect this change, which is the natural scheme of things.Moreover, school has become a severe and competitive institution and the morals of our caste-based society are still very constricting. We do not raise our children in a liberal atmosphere. The situation might be changing in metropolitan areas, but in villages and smaller towns it is still suffocating. And this causes considerable psychological and social stress,’ the author says.
While translating Shala, I found that the writer has left the end open to interpretation. Does the protagonist meet his love later? Do they unite? I asked whether a slightly melancholic style was a trademark of his. I had observed the same in Gawatya. Despite a strain of melancholy, the author leaves the reader with a subtle hope in the end.
Bokil thinks, it is a part of human nature. ‘I believe, a writer is basically a melancholy person and although he or she may have moments of exhilaration, good literature often ends on a melancholic note. This is because you realize that life is not perfect. As a human being, you try to make it perfect, try to find harmony in your existence, but you cannot control life. The imperfection stays. The fact that you cannot do anything about it and you have to be just a spectator brings on the sadness. However, in literature, the melancholic feeling is also triggered by realization—the happy awareness of having understood something. It is true that this realization is tinged with sadness, but it is knowledge nonetheless. Literature, therefore, has this soothing or cathartic effect. And when the subject matter is ‘love’, then the effect is multiplied. Love is one element which is intrinsically loaded with joy and sadness. Love and literature make a great mix because they understand each other well. Understanding the meaning of terms like love, truth, knowledge and endearment is an all-time literary endeavour. In Gawatya, it is done more explicitly and from a more philosophical angle, but that striving is there in other works too.’
On Translating Shala
Vikrant Pande
Shala is a deceptively simple novel. In the first reading, it appears to be a straightforward love story of a school boy who pines for his classmate despite the social milieu he occupies, which does not allow him to express his feelings openly. I realized that I needed to get under the skin of Mukund to get the voice of the teenager right, and, more importantly, maintain the consistency of the tone and tenor throughout the book. I had to avoid the temptation of using a language which would sound alien when spoken by a school boy. I say ‘temptation’, because a translator is often tempted to enrich the script with his own style, which can possibly enhance the beauty of the text but take it away from the original. Another challenge was to convert the local idiom and slang into acceptable English and yet convey the originally intended meaning. One of the characters, Surya, is a rustic fellow who speaks in the local dialect. There is no English equivalent of the local Marathi dialect and it proved to be a difficult task. I had many conversations with Milind Bokil in order to understand the social context, the physical descriptions of the town and the background against which he had set the book. I saw the film adaptation to understand how its director had transferred Bokil’s characters into the movie. Bokil mentioned that the director had made a sincere effort to understand and assimilate the book because he was very passionate about making the film. For me as the translator, the film gave faces to names and helped me construct the characters in a new language.
Milind Bokil’s writing is realistic and, even though it is tinged with melancholy at times, he always leaves the reader with hope in the end. The entire story is appealing for its simplicity, its uncluttered, aesthetic nature, and dialogues which are natural and heartfelt. Having been in school in the mid-1970’s, I was able to connect with and understand the protagonist’s feelings and reactions. I enjoyed the challenging but enjoyable process of translating this charming novel.
Lastly, my editor Minakshi Thakur’s inputs were extremely valuable. They helped make the text eminently readable.
Author Bio
Milind Bokil is a Marathi writer and sociologist. He was part of the Sampoorna Kranti movement led by Jayaprakash Narayan in the 1970s. Since then, he has been associated with various civil society organizations and worked closely with many tribal communities in the areas of environment, governance, gender issues and livelihood. A quest for meaning and direction in life is a consistent underlying theme in his writing. He explores the nuances of social relationships and human emotions with a natural flair in his books. He writes both fiction and non-fiction and has more than a dozen books (short stories, novels, travelogues and sociological studies) to his credit, some of which are Zen Garden, Ekam, Rann/Durg, Samudra and Samudraparche Samaj. He has received several awards, the Best Literature Award from the Maharashtra Foundation among them. A Marathi movie based on his novel Shala bagged the National Award in 2012 apart from forty other national and international prizes.
Vikrant Pande began his career in translation with the English edition of Ranjit Desai’s biographical fiction, Raja Ravi Varma, published by Harper Perennial. Shala is his second work of translation. An avid reader, Vikrant is passionately pursuing his hobby to translate Marathi classics into English so that they may be available to a wider audience. Currently he is working on the English translations of V.P. Kale’s Karamchari, Ranjit Desai’s Shriman Yogi, N.S. Inamdar’s Shehenshah and V.S. Khandekar’s Kraunch Vadh. He is a graduate of the Indian Institute of Management, Bengaluru, and has worked with several corporate giants in the country.
First published in India in 2014 by Harper Perennial
An imprint of HarperCollins Publishers India
Original copyright © Milind Bokil 2004
Translation copyright © Vikrant Pande 2014
ISBN: 978-93-5136-338-5
Epub Edition © September 2014 ISBN: 978-93-5136-339-2
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Milind Bokil asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.
This is a work of fiction and all characters and incidents described in this
book are the product of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to
actual persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
All rights reserved under The Copyright Act, 1957. By Payment of the
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Table of Contents
Title
Contents
Shala
Post Script
Author Bio
Copyright
