How else does one know a writer, but from his or her writings. And if it was not for translations, many an English-speaking Indian would never have met Munshi Premchand, U R Ananthamurthy, Temsula Ao, Javed Akhtar, M T Vasudevan Nair, Ashok Vajpeyi and many others who chose not to write in English.

One cold, lazy afternoon, I met the celebrated Kannada writer and poet Ananthamurthy. He took me through his childhood memories made mostly by listening to forbidden secrets in the backyard of his house.

Where he made poetry with the leaf from the kalli plant when it’s white gooey nourishing liquid escaped on his palm and reflected the seven colours of the rainbow. “You have to slowly, very slowly push the edges so that the liquid becomes a lens like surface. This is a very delicate task, for it can always break. If you are lucky and it does not break, then you have to wait for luck — carry it where the thin translucent spread catches a few rays of the sun. It is a miracle of colours then on your palm...Isn’t this the way one works with words too in the making of poems.”

Where, the only time he saw his father cry was when he read the poem Govina Haadu (The song of the cow). 

He shared his five decades of writing; his novels and stories from Samskara to Suryana Kudure (Stallion of the Sun) — all the while revelling in the “gift of making a play of words, a leela of shabd,” as he says.

The newly-released U R Ananthamurthy Omnibus, edited by N Manu Chakravarthy and published by Arvind Kumar, is one of the better ways of meeting this firebrand author for many who may never be able to lay their hands on the original Kannada version. Possible only because it is a work of translation.

Working precisely on this premise, a two-day conference, ‘Translating Bharat: Language, Globalisation and the Right to be Read,’ is being organised in Jaipur from January 20 to 22, that will kick off the annual Jaipur Literature festival (Jan 23 to27). With a mission to bring literature in all Indian languages to the forefront by ensuring cross-language translations globally, Siyahi, a literary consultancy based in Jaipur, in association with Bharatiya Anuvad Parishad, a voluntary society formed in 1964, is organising this literary meet that will be a meeting ground for authors, publishers, translators and readers.

Says Mita Kapoor, CEO of Siyahi, “Translations, as an act of literary preservation, are significant and are becoming increasingly important in a globalised world. Literature in the myriad Indian languages is being rapidly adapted and modified in contemporary India. We want to cross-fertilise ideas, exchanges and translations between all language groups, national and international. The oral, pictorial and scripted traditions, which constitute the rich history of Indian literature, need to be conserved and perpetuated with passion and professionalism.”

The conference is an effort to provide an interactive space for creating synergies to help writers and translators with publishers to understand core publishing issues and work towards creating bonds which will help them benefit from each other’s experiences and understanding.

The key focus will be on the following issues: The importance of translations from a publisher’s perspective; writer, translator in conversation; archiving, transcribing and transmitting oral traditions; and understanding copyright laws, among a host of other literary activities.

The literary luminaries (just to name a few) who will be steering the conference to a meaningful path are U R Ananthamurthy, Javed Akhtar, Amiya Bagchi, Madhukar Sinha, M T Vasudevan Nair, Dr Satchitanandan, Anupam Mishra, Pavan Varma, Sampurna Chattarji, Gillian Wright, Minja Yang, Ashok Vajpeyi, Anupam Mishra, Mark Tully, Mahmood Farooqui, Dominique Vitalyos, Urvashi Butalia, Suman Sahai, Dipankar Gupta, Rashna Imhasly Gandhy, Ira Pande, Marc Parent, Geeta Dharmrajan, Temsula Ao, Desmond L Kharmawphlang, Kynpham Singh Nongkynrih, Namita Gokhale, Cherrie Chhangte, Dr Malashri Lal, Gopichand Narang, Udaya Narayan, Mal Chand Tiwari, Dr Arjun Dev Charan, Dr Chandra Prakash Deol, Ganesh Devy, Geeta Krishnakutty and French, German, British, Italian, and Norwegian publishers of great repute.

Says Kapoor, “From Udaya ji to Ganesh Devy to Ira Pande to M T Vasudevan Nair and so many of our delegates coming from the Northeast, they are all very enthused. We have got tremendous responses from everyone connected to this field. This gives us the courage to plunge right into it. Our founder director, Namita Gokhale, is also entirely devoted to this search for excellence in the field of India’s literature, as she says.”

Some of the other highlights of the conference are the showcasing of oral and mythical traditions within our country. An array of Naga, Mizo, Arunachali narrations, enactments and chanting would be presented. There are also two films being shown on the mythical practices of the Northeast and the Totos in Bengal. Tipaniya ji from the Jhabua-Banswara belt on the border of Rajasthan and Gujarat will be giving a rendition of Kabir’s dohe.

“We are also discussing the nexus, the ideas of originality, creativity while translating, the relationship shared between an author and a translator. Writers and literature from the margins, the Dalit and tribal literature will be a focus of one of the sessions,” adds Kapoor.

An effort that most importantly will also address and bridge the divide between the Indian English writing and regional writing, especially in the backdrop of the backlash that grew in the form of the Desivad movement.

“Translations are the next big thing in this era of globalisation. We will be doing great disservice to the wealth of our literature in all languages if we don’t wake up now and move forward on this front,” feels Kapoor.

Marketing, thus, is a challenge. “What we need to work on is building up a whole infrastructure where in translators, writers and publishers work in tandem...the circle of improving quality of translations, paying writers and translators well and also working on a more economically viable marketing and distribution system which will serve to benefit all streams, has to be given serious attention.This is not to say that tremendous amount of work is not being done, it is and it’s most admirable — with Katha, Yatra books, D C Kannan, Penguin and Harper Collins, Zubaan building up their translation lists. We just need to get together and unite our strengths. Siyahi wants to be the bridge.”