January 1, 2002

READERS of Sindhi literature are fortunate to have in Wali Ram Vallabh, a dedicated and painstaking translator, who has an irrepressible urge for sharing some fine literary pieces with his readers. It is this craving which has led Vallabh, who holds a Masters degree in Urdu literature, to translate not just from Urdu and English but also from Hindi and Gujarati.

Among his first works is the translation of Krishen Chandar’s novelette Ghaddar, which is among the most moving and yet most balanced pieces of fiction on the theme of rioting in the Punjab of 1947. Currently, he is working on the translation of the English version of Tolstoy’s Anna Karenina. In the last 25 years, Vallabh has not merely translated fiction, he has also written stories, biographies and poetry, along with literary criticism, with equal zest.

The book under review, Zindagi se kata huwa tukra is a collection of some of his short stories and poems. Dedicated to translators, “who have bridged the gap between languages”, strangely enough, the Urdu translations of Vallabh’s own short stories and poems appearing in this slim publication have not been done by him but by Basheer Unwan. The translator deserves full marks for not making one feel that what one is reading was not originally penned in Urdu. However, one does wonder why the author, whose reputation rests equally on his abilities as a translator, didn’t choose to translate his own writing.

Vallabh employs simple language in both his prose and poetry. His poems have strong images but they are expressed in simple language, a quality which is reflected in equal measure in his fiction as well.

“Pushp”, perhaps his most effective short story, is about the craving for a male child by the father of two daughters. Before his first daughter Pushp was born, her mother longed for a son. “He’ll look like his father, but his arms will not be rough like his father’s, his fingers will be beautiful like mine and lips like my brother’s,” she daydreams. But when after two daughters, Pushp’s father tries to make his wife feel guilty, she blurts out, “The gender of the child is determined by the seed that his father plants.” The husband has no answer to that.

In the title story — “Zindagi se kata huwa tukra”, the characters are familiar — a difficult to handle mother-in-law, a helpless daughter-in-law and her grieving father and siblings. Yet the story is told in quite a different manner. The two stories are set in Vallabh’s native region, the Thar desert, but the conflict in these and other stories are true of any other part of the subcontinent.

Thanks to his teacher, a man called Ziaul Haq, who inculcated love for Urdu literature in Vallabh while he was still in school, he read Ismat Chughtai, Krishen Chander, Khawaja Ahmed Abbas, Rajendra Singh Bedi and Saadat Hasan Manto quite early in life. One can see influences of progressive writings in his fiction.

Thar is the locale of his prose and poetry though the themes are universal. He writes of draught, poverty and prejudice and in an interview, which is included in the book, he declares “I may not be in Thar, but Thar has always been with me.” He currently lives in Hyderabad and works for the Department of Sindhology in the University of Sindh.

One wishes Wali Ram Vallabh could spend more time in writing original pieces, a mere collection of 12 stories, not all of which are in the volume under review, doesn’t do justice to his talent. And as for his career as a translator, he could also translate Sindhi classics into Urdu. That would be in line with his desire to share what he reads and what he enjoys with others. This way he will be able to oblige a larger number of people.

After all, the role of translators has more often than not been underrated. If it would not have been for them we would have never had the pleasure of reading such invaluable classics as War and peace and the Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam. Besides, their role as an intermediary between a writer and the reader is a largely thankless one. If a translator does his work well, his reader gets so absorbed in the book that he forgets he is reading a translated piece. But if the translator is unable to convey the spirit of the original, then he is blamed for a work poorly done.

 

Zindagi se kata huwa tukra (Short stories, poems and interviews)

By Wali Ram Vallabh & Translated by Basheer Unwan

Published by Scheherzade, B-155, Block-5 Gulshan-i-Iqbal, Karachi.

Email: scheherzade@altavista.com

88pp. Rs60

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