bookmarked 5. — Amulya Hiremath

Women in Translation Month: I Will Meet You Yet Again by Amrita Pritam translated by Nirupama Dutt and Autopsy Day Twenty Four by Kim Heysoon translated by Don Mee Choi

Deeksha Bhandarkar chose Autopsy Day Twenty Four by Kim Heysoon translated by Don Mee Choi (Autobiography of Death, W. W. Norton & Company, 2018), and Amulya Hiremath chose I Will Meet You Yet Again by Amrita Pritam translated by Nirupama Dutt (The Little Magazine)

Amulya: So, August is Women in Translation Month!

Deeksha: How did you find out about this?

Amulya: I came across it online somewhere and I was like, we should definitely highlight this in one of our weeks in this month, and luckily, we could squeeze it in this week itself.

Deeksha: Do you want to talk about the history behind this initiative?

Amulya: Yeah, so this was started in 2014 by a book blogger named Meytal Radzinski. She saw there was an imbalance in the number of books being translated that were written by women. She spoke about how the relative lack of English translated literature by women was deeply rooted in the bias of translators and publishers, both predominantly were populated by men. In 2016, a study conducted by the University of Rochester’s Three Percent Blog showed that only 30% of new books that were being translated to English were written by women, confirming the imbalance Radzinski noticed. So, this initiative has slowly gained traction and August is celebrated as Women in Translation Month, with the hashtag #WITMonth online.

Deeksha: Right. We wanted to talk about translation when we started this series. I am so glad we are starting out with this great cause!

Amulya: Do you want to tell us a little bit about your history with translation?

Deeksha: Yeah, so I grew up in a multilingual house where we spoke Konkani, which was my mother tongue, and Kannada. I picked them up easily as a kid — I could translate easily and think in both the languages — but my younger sister got confused with the two languages and had trouble speaking, this was resolved when my ajja made a pact with her promising chocolates if she spoke in Konkani. So, my mom, who also grew up in a multilingual household, picked up this love for all the languages. My great-grandfather is the founder of the World Konkani Centre in Mangaluru where people from all over the world get together, and conduct workshops etc. So, Konkani is given so much importance in our family. My mom is now starting out in the field, translating Konkani works into Kannada.

Amulya: Amazing and your mom writes so beautifully.

Deeksha: So, let’s talk about why we chose the works this week.

Amulya: Okay so when you look up women in translation online, it’s predominantly novels and larger works that are being spoken about and there is very little space for poetry. While choosing I wanted something by an Indian writer because India in itself is a country with so many languages. I wanted to choose a poem that could be read and understood in its original and also in translation. Amrita Pritam is a huge name and this is such a celebrated poem of hers so I picked this for you.

Deeksha: My main criteria while searching was to look for the translator first and then the poet. I also didn’t want to do another Indian poem so I looked for international voices. I came across this I really liked the subject and how it’s written.

I Will Meet You Yet Again

Deeksha: I had heard about Amrita Pritam before and my mom has translated a few of her works as well. I really liked that she is so unconventional and didn’t heed to any of the social terms. She basically lived her life the way she wanted till the very last day. She moved to India during the partition and was married to Pritam Singh. Her poem “To Waris Shah” gave her recognition. She started writing early and was a way for her to deal with the loss of her mother. After her marriage ended, she hoped but failed to find companionship with lyricist Sahir Ludhianvi. Later, she lived with Imroz, a painter, for forty years and they were each other’s muses. He was with her till her last breath. This poem is goodbye to him in a way. It has been translated into several languages and there is even a clip of Gulzar reciting it.

Amulya: Such an amazing history and story behind this poem.

Deeksha: Yeah. So, basically, she is saying I will meet you yet again, I don’t know how or where but I am going to meet you for sure. She says she might come as a figment of your imagination or a mysterious line on your canvas and I will be looking at you from there.

Amulya: The imagery here is so breathtaking.

Deeksha: It is a beautiful description they shared through art. Like, her idea became his painting and his painting became the cover of her book. The way they inspired each other is captured really well here. And she is also saying she will continue to inspire even when she is dead. She goes on to give very very sensual imagery but at the same time, the narrative is all-encompassing. This is one of the reasons why people like to think this isn’t dedicated just to Imroz like she will continue to inspire all of us.

Amulya: Right. It’s so beautiful.

Deeksha: At the last, she says, “But the threads of memory are woven of enduring atoms.” I see this in so many ways – where once something ends, we tend to hate but in relationships, the moments we have spent together when we felt actual joy will never go away.

Amulya: Yeah, memories count and have weightage too. The ending is so beautiful here — it’s so subtle but has so many layers.

Deeksha: So, this work is translated by Nirupama Dutt, who is a senior journalist, writer and poet writing in Punjabi. She has written a biography of Bant Singh, a Dalit writer, and is a critically acclaimed work. She has contributed a lot to Dalit literature. A lot of her poetry has also been translated. I feel like when we look at a translated work, we should also look at the translator.

Amulya: It’s also nice that Nirupama Dutt and Amrita Pritam were pretty close friends.

Deeksha: And she has also written about terrorism in Punjab and a lot of other topics that should be spoken about more. I think because she writes in Punjabi herself, I think she got that essence into the English translation. You can see the culture is being carried. It’s not Eurocentric and I think that saves it from being murdered.

Amulya: Haha yeah. The actual essence of her expression carries through and you can feel it to its full extent.

Autopsy Day Twenty Four

[TRIGGER WARNING: Death and suicide ideation]

Amulya: Okay moving on to the next poem, the poem you assigned me is called ‘Autopsy Day Twenty-Four’. The poem is by Kim Heysoon, an acclaimed South Korean poet. She is one of their most important contemporary poets writing today. She currently lives and teaches and Seoul. Her focus is on feminist narratives and she consciously chooses to break form and structure. What I found the most interesting among the styles she practices is a particular one called ‘feminist surrealism’.

Deeksha: That sounds interesting.

Amulya: This is from a larger collection of poetry titled ‘An Autobiography of Death’. This is so intriguing as a concept for a book of poetry. She bases it on the South Korean tradition of how you mourn the dead. They believe once a person is dead, their spirit wanders around for forty-nine days before entering a cycle of reincarnation. In this work, she has 49 poems, each poem representing a day in that cycle. She has stated that this book was triggered when in 2014, a ferry carrying 250 high-school students capsized, killing them all. Later investigations revealed that the ferry was carrying iron way over the legal limit — 1228 tons when the limit was 410.

Deeksha: Wow.

Amulya: Yeah. So, this is translated by Don Mee Choi, who is also a South Korean, born in Seoul but she currently resides in the US. She has been Kim Heysoon’s long-time translator and I think it helps that they share South Korean history.
Even though this book stems from that horrifying ferry incident, it is largely about death and it explores so many facets, especially ones that have occurred due to Korea’s violent history. Kim herself has claimed it to be on “the structure of death, we continue to live in.” Also, these poems are not from a fixed perspective and it’s not autobiographical or confessional. This is basically death experiencing itself from a human perspective.

Deeksha: Right. Death is personified.

Amulya: Yeah, basically. It explored death in forty-nine ways — sometimes death is expected, sometimes it isn’t. The one we have here is Day Twenty-Four Autopsy. I want to believe that this was written from the perspective of someone who’s experienced war and are now having to deal with PTSD. It starts with a tone of grieving and mourning. The mention of “you” in the first stanza shows that it is addressed to the narrator and then the poet takes the “you” further in the second one to actually show the world from the view of the narrator. I think that was masterfully done.

Deeksha: Interesting

Amulya: It continues and we see sleeping pills and soju, which is a type of Korean alcoholic drink but the narrator is not able to sleep from any of these. There is also a mention of alcoholic abuse and a lot of dark imagery. There is a repetition of “hurt hurt hurt” and “revenge revenge revenge” which I believe means to say this person’s hurt is fuelled by a need for revenge. This is a very ambiguous poem with a lot of room for interpretations like there is no definite reason stated for the mental distress.

Deeksha: I think it’s a lot of things happening in your head.

Amulya: Yeah, there is a lot of chaos. Then the line reads, “then my eyes rolled back in my sleep” which is a phrase used to denote death, it’s one of the signs of death approaching — and is also a symptom for other medical conditions, not just death — but it’s one of the last moments. After this, the poem takes an interesting turn, it’s made to transition into a dream sequence and I think it can be looked at like that, but I think the narrator has now passed on and the spirit continues the narration. They are seeing their entire life in retrospect and the pictures are not pleasant. This is what led me to believe this has PTSD caused by war undertone, there is a lot of violent imagery and specific mention of soldiers and Korea has had a lot of war in its contemporary history.

Deeksha: Right.

Amulya: Then it shifts into what can be seen as an abusive household and the ones grieving for you are the very ones who hurt you. And an abusive household can come very close to how being at war feels. The poem ends with the picture of the narrator waking up to see his/her family wailing in the living room and the last line reads, “they say you are dead.” Definitely one of the most powerful endings I have ever come across. But looking at the whole poem, you are left with a lot of questions — did the death occur or is it a dream? Was it an overdose of sleeping pills or was it natural? Who is causing the pain? But the only definitive thing here is death. To me, it shows how quintessential death is like no one is above it and we all have to deal with it.

Deeksha: Yeah. Death is the most certain thing, once you are born, for sure you will die.

Amulya: Exactly. And it’s interesting how there are as many experiences as death, like each of them is so unique, no one dies the same death twice. Each person’s story is different.

Deeksha: Right? I really like that parallel.

Amulya: And each person around someone who has died also experience it differently and I find that beautiful in a way. And this poem is talking about death personally and I think it’s such a powerful poem — to be constructed that way, from the point of view of something you have not experienced.

Deeksha: Yeah, I think death is always an experience for the alive.

Amulya: Yeah. To see it that way, this is an incredible project and such a painful one. This is one of those poems that the more in-depth you go, it makes less and less sense.

Amulya: Do you think there are any similarities or dissimilarities between the two?

Deeksha: I think the similarity is they both talk about death.

Amulya: Yeah, one is anticipatory and the other one feels quite unexpected.

Deeksha: In Amrita’s, she has accepted it, while in Heysoon’s the narrator does not know.

Amulya: Yeah. Also, we can see the experience Amrita has had to write that way is positive and in the other one death arrives into chaos and violence. But other than that, I think they’re both distinct poems in their own right.

We would love to hear from you! Let us know your thoughts, interpretations and anything in between in the comments below!

ABOUT:

Deeksha Bhandarkar and I met in our MA English class. Both of us sharing Mysuru as our hometown, and Mysuru being the smallest place in the world, we grew up in the same literary backyard — attended the same story-telling sessions on Saturdays, watched the same plays, visited the same bookstores and had a bunch of mutual friends. But it was only in 2021 that our paths finally converged.

Sharing a passion for literature and a curiosity to explore more facets of it outside our postgraduate classrooms, we decided to pick a piece of literature each and swap our choices, having the other person interpret and discuss our pick, with a hope to gain new perspectives on writing we have loved individually.

Bookmarked is an ongoing, weekly series, we hope you enjoy it! Happy reading!