One short story, thirty-six world languages and such critical motifs as epidemics and women’s education at its backdrop: Call it a publishing phenomenon or one which defies formulaic attributes of an anthology.
“Rebati: Speaking in Tongues” has been a sensation of sorts and commendation must go to the publisher Dhauli Books for first conceiving the idea and then putting the thought into practice.
Fakir Mohan Senapati, acclaimed as the father of modern Odia literature and the one who was a trendsetter of several genres of Odia writing in the late nineteenth century, wrote this iconic short story more than 120 years ago. Written against the background of the cholera epidemic that devastated the family of the protagonist Shyam Bandhu Mohanty, the human drama depicted in the story far outweighs the epidemiological reason. The cuss of modern education also comes to the fore, rather subtly, in the short story.
First published in 1898 in “Utkal Sahitya”, Rebati is still unspoiled in its treatment of the human tragedy that unfolds alongside the pestilent. Because the story provides a ‘radical and poignant view of gender, modernity and colonial Indian society’, it has genuinely a timeless existence.
Says the blurb: “It is a tragic tale m in which the dream of self-actualisation of a young girl through education comes crashing as much because of a rampaging epidemic as of a mindset deeply hostile to change. Rebati loses her parents and her suitor to cholera. In a strange and ironic quirk of fate that is as baffling as brutal, Rebati is seen by no other than her loving grandmother as having brought on this tragedy upon her family for having denied the undesirable”.
The genius of Senapati is to evoke the complex social reality of the late nineteenth-century colonial Odisha, an evocation that includes the inevitability of change, the resistance to it and the human cost of both.
If Rebati resonates today beyond the border of its creator’s home and world, it is because of its narrative wit and penetrating insights into a world in transition. The story belongs to every reader who touches it.
A massive book of almost seven hundred pages, “Rebati: Speaking in Tongues” features interpretations of the original story into three dozen languages of the world - 23 scheduled languages, two non-scheduled languages of India and twelve foreign languages such as Ahomiya, Balochi, Bangla, Bodo, Dogri, English, French, German, Gujarati, Hebrew, Hindi, Japanese, Kannada, Kashmiri, Khasi, Konkani, Maithili, Malayalam, Manipuri, Marathi, Nepali, Polish, Punjabi Gurmukhi, Punjabi Shahmukhi, Russian, Sambalpuri-Koshli, Sanskrit, Santhali, Sindhi, Sinhalese, Spanish, Tamil, Telugu, Turkish, Urdu and Uzbek.
A respectable part of the endeavour is that most of the Indian as well as the foreign translators are acclaimed authors in their respective languages and, evidently, have given their best to render Rebati.
Says Manu Dash, editor of the anthology (who is also a translator, curator of the annual Odisha Art & Literature Festival), “This is the first such attempt in the publishing history and has been prepared, keeping research scholars, professors of literary studies and students of comparative and world literature around the globe in mind. This makes the compendium a veritable collector’s item.”
Two things stand out conspicuously in the book: One, showcasing the rich legacy of Odia literature to the national and international audience and, two, pooling up translators from across continents.
Coming closer to the concept of ‘world literature’ first used by the German writer and statesman Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Rebati isn’t a small accomplishment because this piece of writing has now been circulated to an audience outside the country of origin.
If dissemination of literature from and to countries across the globe has been more forthcoming after the advent of social media, books like Rebati only adds to that kind of organic phenomenon. As new trends emerge in the world literature and the implications of translations on literature are felt more acutely besides the impact that literature has on culture manifesting itself, restating a story like this one is well-timed.
If the world literature can be an amazing tool to examine globalisation and can provide a marvellous example of how information is shared across languages and cultures, this translated anthology is a fitting tribute to the idea of globose literature in the present times.
With a foreword by Chandrahasa Choudhury and a scholarly introduction by Prof Himansu S Mohapatra and Debendra K Dash besides an exclusive cover portrait by internationally-renowned artist Jatin Das, “Rebati: Speaking in Many Tongues” is a milepost in the contemporary literary publishing.