Deepa Bhasthi interview: ‘There’s nothing black and white in Banu Mushtaq’s stories’

The fiery Hassan-based lawyer, journalist and activist, who had arrived on the literary scene of Karnataka on the wave of a short-lived Dalit literary movement in the late 1970s, was warned never to write again. Her short story provocatively titled, ‘Be a Woman Once, O Lord,’ mocked the double standards of men oppressing women under the garb of religion.

She was not blaming any one God but hitting out against an unfair system that gave men agency to be violent and unfair to women. However, Mushtaq dismissed the fatwa, the threats against her and her children and courageously continued to create vivid “portraits of family and community tensions”, critiquing patriarchy with unflinching honesty along the way.

‘A big moment for Kannada literature’

What stands out in Mushtaq’s storytelling, which captures the daily lives of women and girls in Muslim communities in southern India, is that this Kannada writer cloaks her hard-hitting tales with subtle, wry humour. Deepa Bhasthi, her translator, says: “She can be talking about a really heart-breaking situation or a violent scene but she tells it in the most subtle way. There is nothing black and white in her stories. Her stories are infused with a great sense of humour, they are really witty.”

In fact, one of Mushtaq's stories was made into a film called 'Haseena' by none other than acclaimed filmmaker Girish Kasaravalli.

In a chat with The Federal, Bhasthi, who describes Mushtaq’s writing as “fabulous,” points out that there is no object too trivial to be a protagonist in her short stories. In one story, a Pepsi bottle turns up as the main character, while a pair of high-heels and the ubiquitous Indian Chinese dish Gobi Manchurian form the heart of other two stories, reveals Bhasthi.

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Bhasthi, who was only too willing to translate Mushtaq’s stories when the Kannada writer first approached her in 2022, recounts, “She was one of the popular writers like Siddalingaiah (1954-2021) and others who had emerged in the Dalit Bandaya movement in the late 1970s in Karnataka. The movement lost momentum but Mushtaq kept writing and Heart Lamp is a collection of 12 stories she has written over a period from 1990 to 2023.”

Making it to the longlist of the International Booker Prize is a “big moment” for Kannada literature, adds the Coorg-based translator, who has earlier translated Kota Shivarama Karanth’s novel (Ade Ooru, Ade Mara as The Same Village, The Same Tree, 2022) and a collection of short stories by Kodagina Gouramma (Fate’s Game and Other Stories, 2023). She is also a contributor to literary magazine The Paris Review.

It is “absolutely tragic” that Kannada is the least translated regional language as compared to Tamil and Malayalam books in the South, laments Bhasthi. “And, the translated works of Kannada women writers are even less,” she points out, agreeing that this can be one of the reasons why readers outside South India may not be as familiar with Mushtaq as with Vivek Shanbhag or Girish Karnad.

Anthe and abbabbaa

On the challenges of translating Mushtaq’s selection of short stories, Bhasthi explains, “It takes time and energy to get into another language like Kannada and under the skin of the characters. In the case of Banu’s stories, she imbues her stories with different cultural contexts and borrows freely from different languages like Arabic, Urdu and her mother tongue Dakhni. Also, she speaks a Kannada dialect that is very specific to Hassan which is not familiar to me.”

So, to immerse herself in the world that Mushtaq crafts, Bhasthi interestingly admits to consuming Pakistani serials, listening to qawwali by Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan and even taking Urdu script writing classes. “I wanted to soak myself in the culture she lives in and writes. Though her stories are not restricted to the Muslim community, it has a certain culture around it. For me, translation is very instinctive and so watching cultural TV productions from the same milieu helped me to get into the skin of the characters,” she elaborates.

Bhasthi, a staunch believer of the need for translators to ‘cultivate a practice of translating with an accent’, spent a lot of time debating what Kannada words to retain while translating Mushtaq’s stories. A good example being the commonly used Kannada word,'Anthe'. Depending on the ‘context and speaker’s tone’ it can convey different meanings, says Bhasthi, like it can mean expressing surprise or it could mean ‘apparently’ and it has other meanings as well. But, a translation closest to its meaning can be ‘it seems’.

‘It seems’ sounds pedestrian in English, which means in the end there is no other word to replace the meaning and musicality of the word ‘anthe’.

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In an article in online magazine ‘PEN Transmissions’, Bhasthi writes, “Instead of trying to contort the source language to fit the English idiom, look for ways to stretch English so that it too can speak somewhat with the accent of the original language… Language is meant to stretch this way and that; when an elastic band snaps back in place, it often no longer retains its perfect round shape.” The stories in 'Heart Lamp' are, therefore, sprinkled with colloquial words such as anthe, abbabbaa (tired exclamation) and even the sound of the mother whacking the children — ‘patapatapata’.

Retaining the regional language’s flavour

“I was tempted to use a lot of Kannada words but I had to strike a fine balance so I don’t sound too exotic or Kannada-ish for someone reading from somewhere across the world. As a translator that is the tough choice I face all the time, I have to carefully decide what I retain and what I don’t,” she says.

However, Bhasthi had made a decision that she was never going to translate as a native English speaker would. “That’s not the point of translation at all, the reader understands that the story comes from another culture and the translator has to retain this accent. This balance is critical,” she points out. These Kannada words enrich the translation and make the English language richer as well, asserts Bhasthi.

In her view, there is always fear that an imperial language or culture will consume local languages as is happening now in the South states. “People fear that English or Hindi may take over but for that reason translations are important as they spark a certain pride in people for their language. Translations of regional writing play a huge role in taking you back to whichever language you speak at home. A big part of why I continue to translate is that I am getting closer to my language Kannada and to English,” she shares.

Bhasthi believes that the International Booker Prize nomination will help stoke interest in native languages. Many young people have written to her saying they are so proud that a Kannada writer got nominated, and that it has motivated them to learn the language and to read the works of Kannada writers in the original language.

Bhasthi, describes the International Booker Prize nomination for Heart Lamp, — after UR Ananthamurthy’s Samskara made it to the longlist of the prize in 2013 — “extremely humbling” and she is “beyond thrilled”.