Gulzar: Rabindranath Tagore should be part of school syllabi

Sunlight enters the room gently lighting up parts and leaving out cool darker spaces of the Pali Hill home On one side there is a huge table with thick wood legs and books spread out on the glass slab on it one left near the chair slightly folded with the air of being in currency being read A little away the owner of the books the table and the room settles down on the chair with a cup of tea The tea without milk and sugar glistens in the light entering from the window and his dress mdash loose fitting bright white kurtapyjama looks brighter In a pleasantly deep and poised voice he discusses Rabindranath TagoreGulzar in his study with a collection of books His collection has for many years included the complete works of Tagore PicNimesh DaveThough fulfilling almost all the ingredients of a stereotypical or imagined Bengali adda the discussion though begins in Hindi as the owner of the voice and the rest is one of the foremost poets of Hindustani mdash Gulzar As it proceeds he asserts Tagore should be a part of school syllabus Every child in India should grow up reading Tagore His poetry should become a part of their lifeThe poet presents both titles to Pranab Mukherjee the President of IndiaTranslating TagoreA little surprised that he could be unaware it becomes imperative then to point out that poems like lsquoWhere the mind is without fearrsquo have been a part of the English syllabus for long He smiles and says But that is not Tagore The clipped response has a much larger thought behind it which has resulted in the translation of two volumes of Tagorersquos poetry into Hindi by him One collection titled Nindiya Chor with poems for children and the other titled Bagban that comprises denser more romantic and at times darker poemsGulzar says that there is hardly any good translation of Tagore in Hindi or Urdu and that is because these translations are not directly from Bengali but from the English translations done by Tagore himself Reading the English translations it is clear that Gurudev has been unfair to his poetry he says and adds that the richness of the poems in Bengali is lost to a great extent in Tagorersquos English translations as he often edits and changes them mercilesslyThe multilingual poetrsquos journey with Tagore started over six decades in Kolkata when a local libraryrsquos librarian tried to dissuade a teenaged Gulzar devouring one thriller after the other with an Urdu copy of Tagorersquos poetry collection Gardener The impact of the poetry was such that Gulzar admits to have never returned that copy to the library It also possibly marked a long tryst of the poet with the Bengali language and authors and poets of the language In the years to come he would translate the legendary poets Jibananda Das Subhash Mukhopadhyay and Sunil GangopadhyayNindiya Chor and Baaghban Rabindranath Tagore translated by Gulzar HarperCollins India Rs 999 Available at bookstores and estoresSunil Gangopadhyay and Samaresh Basu were dear friends he says And recollects his association with Basu while working on the Hindi script of the film Amrit Kumbh Ki Khoj Me based on Samaresh Basus novel Amrita Kumbher Sandhaney a novel that explores the Kumbh Mela In the six decades in between he did attempt snitches of translation of Tagore I was a little nervous One can only translate Gurudev with trepidation he smiles and informs that he has been reading out Tagorersquos poems and stories for the public for longHis voice our voiceBut does Gulzar the poet come into his translations He asserts that a person who translates poetry has to be a poetIt is not just about words It is about the feel the rhythm and the meter that makes a translation work I have translated the poems in the same rhythm which was a very challenging task and I hope I have been able to do justice with the feel of the poems he says He also lauds the publishers to be brave enough to take up the challenge to publish an expensive book with poems in three languages in a world where allegedly people are reading less in general and very little poetry in particular With critics though the book has had a good startA big pat came from Pritish Nandy which was very encouraging He is a man who does not mince words he points outNindiya Chor and BaaghbanTranslating poetry is perhaps the tallest of literary challenges So much so that even arguably the greatest modern poet of the subcontinent Rabindranath Tagore has not been praised much for translating his own poetry into EnglishThe task at hand thus was of immeasurable proportions for Gulzar when he sat down to translate two collections of poems by this less praised translator but giant of world literature into Hindi But with the magic wand that Gulzar commands language and words the master eased into the work of Tagore and returned with the rhythm and the sensitivity intact in HindiThe two collections are titled Nindiya Chor Crescent Moon in English and Baaghban The Gardener in English In the poem titled Defamation in English Tagore playfully engages with a child who has attained disrepute for his disdain for order which Gulzar titles Nukhtachini In it he ceaselessly moves from the voice of command of an older person to the voice of a friend with the use of the Bengali word ndash tui which Gulzar finds an immediate translation in the Hindi ndash tu The English version however lacks that swing of voice How much can you do with just lsquoyoursquo after all But things were not so simple with the denser title Poetrsquos AgeThe Hindi word Kavi has been rejected for the Urdu Shayar here Both exist in Hindustani but the choice does tell us about his understanding of Bengali and its phoneticsndash Dipanjan Sinha