The Scar

Growing up as a boy from the Parayar caste, in the milieu of Christian, Hindu and Muslim communities, K A Gunasekaran narrates the familiar tale of caste oppression and prejudice prevalent in the village of Tamil Nadu. As the narrative unfolds, the reader is shown how the low caste negotiates differently with the three religious communities. The deep pain of the Paraya surfaces through the risible anecdotes that ridicule the grievously unjust practices of the upper castes.

The book empasises the fact that Indian villages are doubly caste-conscious and cruel, and that Dalit emancipation rests in better education for the community. Gunasekaran writes in an earthy and colloquial style to capture the innocence, cruelty and drama of a South Indian village.

Considered the first modern Dalit autobiography in Tamil, The Scar is an important book calling for Dalit assertion and emancipation.

Umrao Jan Ada

Umrao Jan Ada was first published in 1899. Based on the life of a courtesan of Lucknow—a woman of great charm with a reputation as a very fine poet and singer—the novel recreates the gracious ambience of old Lucknow and takes the reader on a fascinating journey through the palaces of wealthy nawabs, the hideouts of vagabonds, to the luxurious abodes of the city’s courtesans. It captures the culture and decadence of a lifestyle that has now vanished for ever. It was adapted into a hit Bollywood film in the year 1981.

This translation preserves the full flavour of the original narrative. The poetry, as well as the prose, retains the finesse of the original Urdu, and the translation is therefore as affective as it is comprehensible.

The author, Mirza Mohammed Hadi Ruswa, was born in Lucknow in 1857. One of the best Urdu prose writers, he wrote on several subjects, including philosophy and religion. His first published work appeared in 1887. This was followed by both prose and poetry.

The translator, Khushwant Singh, was born in 1915 in Hadali (now in Pakistan). He has written several books on Sikh history and religion, apart from being a prolific writer of fiction. His novels include Train to Pakistan (1956), I Shall Not Hear the Nightingale (1961) and Delhi: A Novel (1993). He has published several volumes of stories, and for many years he has been writing a widely read English newspaper column in India: `With Malice Towards One and All’. He has been the editor of several journals and newspapers, including The Illustrated Weekly of India and Hindustan Times and has served as a member of the Rajya Sabha from 1980-1986. He lives in Delhi.

Samidha

A fairy tale romance and a blueprint for anyone who wants to venture into social service, this autobiography of Sadhanatai Amte – a woman who chose to marry a frenzied man and a dreamer, Baba Amte – is also a tale of her willing surrender in love without the slightest loss of her identity.

It is a document of the dreams they dreamt for humankind and their struggle to put life into them. These memoirs present the portrait of a woman beside a man; a perfect consort who has the ability to tame the living storm, Baba Amte.

Written without a stance, the distinctive simplicity of this transparent narrative, as compared to other similar writings by women, it has the power to stir its readers with its salty sea-air tang, and the warmth of a fruitful mad pursuit of a goal—at once personal and impersonal.

A book like this – a saga of suffering, hopes, tensions and success, as well as the thrill of pleasure of work the two experienced while pursuing their goal – will serve as the beacon of light for posterity, and as a model in human relationships.

Shobha Pawar is a Student and Teacher of English literature, and currently a lecturer at S. P. College, Pune.

The Prisons We Broke

Writing on the lives of the Mahars of Maharashtra, Baby Kamble reclaims memory to locate the Mahar society before it was impacted by Babasaheb Ambedkar, and tells a consequent tale of redemption wrought by a fiery brand of social and self-awareness. The Prisons We Broke provides a graphic insight into the oppressive caste and patriarchal tenets of the Indian society, but nowhere does the writing descend to self-pity. With verve and colour the narrative brings to life, among other things, the festivals, rituals, marriages, snot-nosed children, hard lives and hardy women of the Mahar community.

The original Marathi work, Jina Amucha, re-defined autobiographical writing in Marathi in terms of form and narrative strategies adopted, and the selfhood and subjectivities that were articulated. It is the first autobiography by a Dalit woman in Marathi, probably even the first of its kind in any Indian language.

Government Brahmana

Government Brahmana is the English translation of the Kannada autobiography of Aravind Malagatti. The autobiographical narrative is in the form of a series of episodes from the author’s childhood and youth. These episodes function as what G.N. Devy calls “epiphanic moments” in a caste society. The author reflects on specific instances from his childhood and student days that illustrate the normative cruelty practiced by caste Hindu society on dalits.

We encounter all the tropes of (male) dalit life: is isolation in school where even drinking water is an ordeal; life in the village where dalits perform the filthiest tasks but are denied access to common wells, lakes, where they cannot step into shops and therefore have their purchases thrown at them, where they have to cut their own hair because no barber would touch it; consuming dead-animal meat and innards; doomed love affairs with `upper’ caste women.

A painful, disturbing, thought-provoking memoir, this text is conversely full of vitality, even tenderness. In its structure and purpose – as a series of notes towards a dalit autobiography – Government Brahmana appears to be anticipated by Ambedkar’s own autobiographical sketches. The book received the Karnataka Sahitya Academy Award.

Aravind Malagatti has written and published prose, poetry and criticism. He is also a folklore scholar. He has founded Dalit organizations and has been an activist in the Dalit movement. He is now Professor of Kannada, Kuvempu Institute of Kannada Studies, Mysore University.

Dharani Devi Malagatti is a writer and critic. She received the Karnataka Sahitya Academy Award for her poetry in the year 2004.

Janet Vucinich is a social scientist. She now works in a community college in Santa Fe, New Mexico.

N Subrahmanya translates from Kannada to English and from English to Kannada. He lives in Mysore.

Mirage

Set in the tea plantations of Sri Lanka, Mirage traces the lives of Valli and her family, migrants from a village in Tamil Nadu in search of a better livelihood. The novel depicts the lives of indentured labourers working in these plantations and explores the social structure and the norms of plantation life—an arena defined by economic and sexual exploitation.

Through Valli’s world, we gain insight into the complex social relationships – between husband and wife, parent and child, worker and supervisor, friend and neighbour – in these remote plantations.

Mirage, translated from the Tamil Thoorathu Pachai, records human dignity in the face of human brutality. The novel chronicles a hitherto ignored piece of human history.

Moon Mountain

Set in India and Africa in the early twentieth century, Moon Mountain is a classic of the Bengali ‘kumar-sahitya’ genre or young-adult literature that smoothly blends narrative elements of the thriller, the fantasy and the travelogue into an action-packed adventure story. The language of Pradeep Sinha’s translation is fast-paced and contemporary without compromising in the least either the charm of the old world it narrates or the flavour of the Bangla original.

Bibhutibhushan Bandopadhyay (born 1894) was a renowned Bengali novelist and writer. His literary career began in 1921 with the publication of his first short story Upekshita in Probashi, a prominent Bengali literary magazine of the day. In 1928, the epic Pather Panchali was published and Bibhutibhushan instantly became a household name in the world of Bengali culture and letters. Pather Panchali and its sequel Aparajito were later immortalised in Satyajit Ray’s cinematic rendition of the ‘Apu’ trilogy. His other major works, including Aranyak, Icchamoti, Adarsha Hindu Hotel, Heera Manik Jwale, Maraner Danka Baje, Debjan, Jatrabadol and Dristi Pradeep, encompass an impressive range of genres and themes.

Pradeep Sinha was born on 28 August, 1942. He graduated with honours in Economics from St. Xavier’s College, Calcutta, and worked in several firms as a marketing executive before joining Orient Blackswan in 1987. Moon Mountain, his translation of Bibhutibhushan Bandopadhyay’s Chander Pahar, was his first literary project. He died on 2 February, 2001.

The Grip of Change

The Grip of Change is the English translation of Pazhaiyana Kazhithalum, the first full-length novel by P. Sivakami, an important Tamil writer. This translation also features Asiriyar Kurippu, the sequel in which Sivakami revisits her work.

The protagonist of Book 1, Kathamuthu, is a charismatic Parayar leader. He intervenes on behalf of a Parayar woman, Thangam, beaten up by the relatives of her upper caste lover. Kathamuthu works the state machinery and the village caste hierarchy to achieve some sort of justice for Thangam.

The first Tamil novel by a Dalit woman, Pazhaiyana Kazhithalum, went beyond condemning caste fanatics. Sivakami is critical of the Dalit movement and Dalit patriarchy, and yet does not become a ‘caste traitor’ because of her participation in the search for solutions. The novel became an expression of Dalit youth—eager and working for change.

In Book 2, Author’s Note, Kathamuthu’s daughter Gowri, the author of Book 1, traces the circumstances and events of her novel. The result is a fascinating exploration of the disjunctures between what happens in the author’s family and community, and her fictional interpretations of those happenings.

P. Sivakami is a member of the Indian Administrative Service. She has published four novels and four short-story collections, and is a regular contributor to the literary magazine Pudiya Kodangi.

Mole!

The fictional events narrated in Mole! – an English translation of Otran, a novel by Ashokamitran – take place within a period of seven months, nearly all of them in the American Midwest. The narrator, a culturally rooted writer from Chennai, is transplanted amidst a motley group of fellow-writers from distant parts of the world, all of them as dangerously dislocated as him. Deprived of the language that has brought them fulfillment and distinction, these writers struggle to retain their place of precarious honour in a strange, unfamiliar and sometimes hostile environment. And in the background looms the endearing, if exasperating, landscape of twentieth-century America.

Ashokamitran is one of the most distinguished of contemporary Tamil writers. His work has been extensively translated into many Indian and European languages. He has won many honours and awards, including the Sahitya Akademi award in 1996. The English translation of his major Tamil novel Padinettavadu Atchakodu has been published by Orient Blackswan as The Eighteenth Parallel.

Kalyan Raman’s English translation illumines the subtle, spare strength of Ashokamitran’s prose. N. Kalyan Raman is a senior telecom professional, whose translations of Tamil short fiction has been published in several collections of Indian language fiction in translation, including the KATHA Prize Stories. He has translated a collection of Ashokamitran’s short stories The Colours of Evil.

The First Promise

Set in the late and early nineteenth centuries, Ashapurna Debi’s widely acclaimed Pratham Pratisruti, translated as The First Promise, attempts to commemorate the struggles and efforts of women, of the mute domestic space, starkly neglected by history. This book, about one of the many unknown women from the ignored interiors of Bengal, also captures the larger social and cultural transformation of the colonial era.

Ashapurna Debi, Translated by Indira Chowdhury.

Kuttiedathi and Other Stories

Kuttiedathi and Other Stories is a careful collection of ten short stories. This collection brings together some of the most well known stories of M T Vasudevan Nair, fairly representative of his literary works. Written over a broad span of time from 1962 to 2000, the stories collected here reflect the built-in variety of his fictional concerns and the changing tones of his narration.

M T Vasudevan Nair is a renowned Malayalam author and winner of the Jnanpith award for literature (1995). He is also among Kerala's most popular scriptwriters and directors of mainstream cinema. Nair scripted, produced and directed his debut film Nirmalayam, which won the President's Gold Medal in 1973.

Pratidwandi

Pratidwandi, meaning 'adversary', is the English translation of the Bengali original by Sunil Gangopadhyay. The story is about a family living in Calcutta during the 1960s-- the mother, two sons, the daughter, and an uncle, who moves in at the death of the father. Having lost their tea estates, they are undergoing a severe financial crisis. Siddhartha, the central character, was able to complete his graduation, because his sister ,Sutapa, was persuaded to take up a job but at the cost of her own education. Siddhartha wishes to become a doctor, but there is not enough money to fund his studies at medical college. Attempts at getting a job prove futile and his sense of frustration and obligation deepen. The apparent immutability of the situation leads to constant bickering and fights in the family. Sutapa, forced into the role of selfless breadwinner, is fed up and in trying to find an escape route brings dishonour to the family-- the final blow to their dignity. The bleakness of the narrative is relieved by a streak of romanticism and an idealistic vision of a world once inhabited by Siddhartha. Satyajit Ray made this story into a film, drawn by the compelling characterisation of Siddhartha.

Sunil Gangopadhyay is a highly successful writer of fiction, His latest forays also include the two-volume historical novel Purba Paschim. He is also a poet and in the 1970s edited a poetry magazine, Krittibas.

Enakshi Chatterji is a bilingual writer and has translated a wide spectrum of literature including Sat Patro, the Bengali translation of A Suitable Boy by Vikram Seth.

Sand and Other Stories

This book is a translated collection of 3 novellas, spanning three decades of Ashokamitran’s work. The stories are about women trapped by an almost absolute lack of resources (financial, intellectual and emotional). The narrative in all three novellas moves in a series of short scenes, building tension with a relentless layering of detail. The exploitation of these women and their daily struggle against it is exposed in all its terrifying ordinariness. The stories have all the identifiable characteristics of Ashokamitran’s writing—irony, interiority, sensitivity.

Ashokamitran one of the most distinguished of contemporary Tamil writers. He received the Sahitya Akademi award in 1996. Translated by Kalyan Raman & Gomathi Narayanan.

Son of the Moment

In the charged atmosphere of the Mutiny (1857), an English officer, Noble Sahib, and a Muslim gentleman, Ibn-ul-Vaqt, are brought together under remarkable circumstances. Noble Sahib persuades Ibn-ul-Vaqt to remove the estrangement between the English and his community by adopting the English lifestyle and thus, draw his tradition-bound compatriots to a more progressive way of life. The consequences that follow are not what they had envisioned.

Nazir Ahmad is regarded as the pioneer of modern fiction in Urdu. This novel was written by Maulvi Nazir Ahmed in 1888. Translated by Mohammed Zakir.

Roots

Increasingly possessed by a yearning to escape the ennui of an indifferent marriage and the empty but comfortable lifestyle of a bureaucrat, Raghu decides to visit the small patch of ancestral property in his native village. The novel moves between the two worlds – the past and the present – with pungent, earthy humour and sharp insights.

Malayatoor Krishna Translated by V. Abdulla

The Enemy Within

This translation from the Bangla Antarghat is the story of a group of young friends who had committed themselves idealistically and politically to the Naxalite movement that rocked Bengal in the 1960s. Moving seamlessly from the past to the present, Basu’s narrative is compelling and breathless, as the novel’s edgy, nervous rhythms reconstruct and call up the turbulent history of a difficult period.

Bani Basu is a prolific writer her novels have been regularly published by Desh, the premier literary journal of Bengal. She was awarded the Tarashankar Award for Antarghaat. Translated by Jayanti Datta.

When The Kurinji Blooms

Translated from the Tamil Kurinjithen, Rajam Krishnan’s lyrical and erudite novel is a family saga of three generations of Badagas in the Nilgiris. As the winds of social change and modernity invade their protected lives, the innocence and harmony is replaced by conflict and tragedy that precede a new beginning.

Rajam Krishnan Translated by Uma Narayanan and Prema Seetharam.

The Great Feast

A bold expose of the contemporary Indian political scene that has cast aside morality and ethics and unfailingly betrays public trust for vested interests and private ends. The novel opens with the death of Bisesar – an unknown village youth – in itself an insignificant event. But with an important by-election around the corner, the feasting begins as opposing political parties like vultures seize upon the unfortunate event to extract political capital out of it, thereby providing sharp insights into the exercise of power and patronage.

Shock Therapy

Subodh Ghose’s stories are marked by a strong, vigorous narrative style and a lively universe of people and places drawn from the writer’s formidable range of life experiences. This collection of translations into English presents a number of his better-known stories.

Subodh Ghose was a senior editorial staff of the Bengali newspaper Ananda Bazar Patrika.

The Primal Land

The Primal Land is the story of the Bonda tribe inhabiting a mountainous portion of Orissa. The novel includes faint glimmers of political awakening among the semi-literate Bondas about their exploitation, even though the only incorruptible outsider who works for the betterment of the Bondas, a women schoolteacher, is suspended, there is hope for the Bondas yet.

Pratibha Ray has won a number of awards, including the Orissa Sahitya Akademi award in 1995 and the Jnanpith award for her novel Yajnaseni. Translated from the Oriya by B. K. Das and L. Das.