The Artist of Disappearance (8 page)

She had never seen a photograph of Suvarna Devi, had been told she was reclusive, that she rarely left her home town and environs, and that was all. So Prema searched the outer edges of the crowd which was made up of the more social and animated delegates of whom there were many. In fact, the roar of voices was rising rapidly into the great pink sandstone cupola above them till it was interrupted by an announcement: the conference would now continue.

If anyone was interested in the spectrum of languages in India, this was certainly the place to be—the place, the day and the time. One after the other the delegates stepped up to the podium to be met by the applause of their particular, and separate, readers, editors and publishers. Bengalis in the audience applauded the Bengali author, Gujaratis the Gujarati, Punjabis the Punjabi and so on. To begin with, the simultaneous translators tried valiantly to keep up with the babel, then faltered, then fell aside.

Providentially a lunch break was announced, when everyone could assemble in the foyer once again, to lift the lids off great serving dishes of stainless steel and dip into bubbling and aromatic concoctions, then go on to little glass dishes of syrupy sweets.

It was very late in the long day when finally Suvarna Devi's name was announced as the next speaker. By then many delegates had visibly succumbed to the soporific effects of the large meal and the warm afternoon.

Suvarna Devi too seemed tired by the proceedings that had gone before. That was Prema's first impression—how tired she seemed, how apart from the rest of the pleased, satisfied crowd. Wrapped about in her grey cotton sari and wearing a shawl that was clearly a sample of her region's weaving, incongruously bright, and steel-rimmed spectacles perched on her nose, in a small, hurried voice she spoke a few lines in the language she wrote in but which only a segment of the audience understood.

Of course Prema did. And Prema, after an initial disappointment at how unimpressive, how unprepossessing a figure her writer cut on the stage during her five minutes of public fame—she would have liked her to be more assured, more flamboyant, more like Tara, she admitted—began to feel an unaccustomed urge to take this elderly, unassuming woman under her wing, protect her and support her as she might a sister or an elder. She hardly paid attention to the speech, so involved was she in taking in Suvarna Devi's presence, trying to connect it to her writing, out of which she had constructed an image that was not quite corroborated by the reality.

Then the proceedings for the day were over and everyone poured out of the auditorium into the foyer. Prema went scurrying around agitatedly like a beetle ahead of a broom, trying to find her author and have at least one private moment, or two, with her. When she finally found her, she was in conversation with Tara who had managed to locate her and welcome her before Prema could do so. This was upsetting; Prema was upset. Was she not the one to have a word with the author she had discovered and come to know so well during the arduous labour of going over, line by line and word by word, the author's work in a way no one else could claim to have done?

And there was the shy grey person she had hurried to protect and chaperone, conversing with Tara who did not know a word of the language she wrote in and would never have heard of it if it had not been for Prema who now broke in with a cry: 'Suvarna Devi! Oh, at last we meet!'

Suvarna Devi, a little startled, looked from her to Tara. It was Tara who introduced them, formally, instead of the other way round as Prema had imagined the introduction.

'Prema Joshi, your translator, and we hope you are pleased with her—'

Hope? That was all Tara felt,
hope
? Prema found she could barely speak for outrage. She hardly knew how to place herself, how to draw away Suvarna Devi's attention and make Tara leave them alone to discuss what they had in common, author and translator, sisters in spirit.

It looked as if the moment would elude her and the author vanish with barely a word of recognition of who and what her translator represented. She had already folded her hands and bowed, turning away to leave, when Prema flew after her, confronted her and insisted they have a few moments together, to discuss—didn't she know there were matters to discuss?

Suvarna Devi seemed taken aback. Perhaps she had not realised how large a role Prema had played in getting her book accepted by Tara's firm, in making her book available to a larger audience by translating it into English. She seemed like a creature who had been startled out of her forest hiding, one of those well-camouflaged speckled birds that will dart under the bushes on being surprised, and now she was flustered, at a loss as to how to respond. But once Prema had made clear the need to meet again, in private, and talk, she asked Prema to come and see her—if she wished, if she could, if it was not too much trouble, in which case she would quite understand and write a letter instead—at her nephew's house where she was staying. And now she had to go ... There he was, come to collect her in his car.

 

It was not what Prema would have planned—in place of a meeting with the author alone so they might have an intellectual discussion about books, translation and language. Suvarna Devi's family—the nephew, a young married man and a dentist, his wife, his little daughter and baby son, his wife's parents, all seated on the veranda of their small house in one of Delhi's outer colonies, having tea together, did everything they could to make Prema feel welcome. Suvarna Devi herself seemed entirely relaxed and happy in their midst, quite unlike her shy, apprehensive public persona the day before.

The nephew, a rotund and affable young man, seemed the most at ease, conversing with Prema in English, asking her about the college where she taught, in between popping a biscuit in the baby's rubbery mouth, then turning to some family gossip with Suvarna Devi in their own language. 'She has never been to visit us before,' he told Prema. 'This is a rare occasion for us. I used to live in her house when I was a schoolboy—there was no school in my village, you see—but since coming to Delhi I have only been back a few times. So now she has to give me all the news from there.' This made Prema feel uneasy and an intruder, in spite of being plied with cups of tea and plates of fried snacks by his wife and her parents. She wondered how long she could behave politely in the circumstances. (It was a long time since she had lived with a family, after all; not since her father had remarried.)

It was only when Suvarna Devi rose to her feet and accompanied Prema down the short drive to the gate where her autorickshaw stood waiting (its driver, asleep on the back seat, having to be woken) that she was able to put some of the questions she had come to ask, at least the most urgent ones.

'Now that the short stories have been published—I hope you liked the translation?' she felt compelled to say, rather desperately.

'Yes, yes, very much, very much,' cooed the woodland bird, soothingly.

That was disappointingly vague, but Prema pursued. 'What do you suggest we do next? Are you working on anything new?'

Suvarna Devi did not seem to have given that any thought. Just as clearly, she had had no discussion with Tara on the future of her writing. She seemed genuinely confused and only on lifting the latch of the gate to let Prema out, she admitted, 'Maybe I will write a novel next, I am thinking about it,' and gave an uncertain laugh at her own temerity.

'You are?' Prema cried with enthusiasm, partly sincere and partly affected to encourage the reluctant author. 'Please send it to me, as soon as you have anything to show. That way I could start work on it immediately. Tara will be so happy to hear of it. Just send me a chapter, or even a few pages at a time, it doesn't have to be the complete work.'

But the shy bird had withdrawn again. She looked almost afraid as she folded her hands to say goodbye, murmuring, 'I will, I will try,' before she hurried back up the drive to the family on the broad, sheltered and hospitable veranda again.

 

Prema has barely got home—discarding her satchel, pouring herself a glass of water—when the telephone rings. It is Tara, to inform her that the Association of Publishers has called for a press conference as a coda to the writers' conference.

In a panic, Prema: 'A press conference? What is that?'

She will find out, Tara suggests tersely. 'Be there.'

It is too much, coming so hard on the heels of the conference and the meeting with Suvarna Devi, too much at once. She would like to have a little time to sort it all out before she goes on. She can barely eat or sleep that night, fretting till it is time to leave for the venue.

With almost no transition, it seems, there she is, tired from the sleepless night, on a podium with Tara and people she assumes are publishers and translators too, inquisitorial lights shining into her eyes, making her flinch and blink. For a while she is so discomfited that she can barely pay attention to what is being said or by whom. She is still fidgeting with her papers, her books, adjusting to what she finds is literally a spotlight when, far too soon, the dread moment of interrogation arrives.

A pudgy man in a sweat-stained shirt is standing up somewhere in the hall, holding a microphone and saying, 'I would like to address my question to Prema Joshi, translator of Suvarna Devi's stories.'

Sitting up, tight as tight with fright, out comes a croak: 'Ye-es?'

'What made you decide to translate these stories into a colonial language that was responsible for destroying the original langauge?'

Blank, blank, blank.

Then, blinking, and under an expectant stare from Tara, she stammers out the words, 'But the stories—the stories prove—don't they?—it is not destroyed. It exists.'

A flash from Tara's dark glasses, approving, encouraging. So Prema goes on: 'And isn't the translation—the publication of the translation—a way of preventing it from—ah, loss? And proving it exists to, to—the public?'

'What public are you addressing?' The pudgy man adopts a more belligerent tone now that he has found the person at whom he can direct it. 'The English-speaking world?' he asks rhetorically. 'The international public? Why? Doesn't it already have a readership here?'

'Isn't it—isn't it important,' Prema flusters on as if she were one of her own students being interrogated, 'to make it more widely known?'

'To whom is it important? To the writer? To the reader? To what readers? Here in Hindustan? Or in the West? Employing a Western language indicates your wish to win a Western audience, does it not?'

Tara, sitting forward, tapping impatiently on the tabletop: 'I would like to inform you that a press such as mine—'

Prema sits back in relief, letting Tara take over.

'—aims to reveal the writer to a wider public here in India too. Writing that so far has not been accessible to them. Because I, and my colleagues, believe it is our mission—'

'Ha!' the pudgy man explodes with sarcasm. Now that he is on his feet, with a captive microphone, nothing will make him give it up or sit down. 'Who needs to have this revealed to them? The
English
speakers in this country? Why? Why are you catering to
them?
Why not to the speakers of the many native languages of our country?'

Laughter and applause, both approving.

Tara, very upright and fierce: 'If there are publishers in those languages willing to commission translations, as I have done into English, where are they and why are they not coming forward? They are needed, certainly.' Looking around with raised eyebrows, arousing approving murmurs, she repeats, 'Where are they?'

Prema, in gratitude, turning to convey her appreciation to Tara. Argument has erupted. Terms proliferate that indicate the large number of academics in the audience: Subaltern. Discourse. Reify. Validate.

Prema crouches low, fearing some of them will be flung at her. Wasn't 'subaltern' a military term? She feels like the lowliest of students in her class instead of its leader and hopes none of them is present to observe her shame. Where has she been all this time, reading Jane Austen with them, and George Eliot? What has she been doing, talking of Victorian England and its mores? What has stalled her and kept her from joining the current that is now surging past, leaving her helplessly clinging to the raft of
The Mill on the Floss,
the rock of
Pride and Prejudice?

 

The chapters of the promised novel began to come in during the course of that summer, in large Manila envelopes that were always torn around the edges and had to be held together with string. They looked as if they had travelled a long and dusty road and suffered many misadventures along the way—and they probably had. At first I fell upon them as soon as I returned from work and found them lying upon the doormat, then immediately settled down to read them. But quite soon I found myself disappointed and dismayed by what I read.

Instead of the artless charm and the liveliness of the short stories, the novel seemed by contrast slow, almost sluggish, as it followed the fortunes of one family from grandparents to parents to children in a not very interesting town—in fact, very like the dusty, ramshackle one where I had first come across Suvarna Devi's work. I found myself growing increasingly impatient with the noble, suffering grandparents, the quarrelling parents, the drifting children, all of whom seemed to follow predictable paths under the effects of changing circumstances: an increase in wealth followed by a dispersal of property, higher education foundering in lost opportunities—and
too
many births, marriages and deaths. Stories recounted, time and time again, in different ways, all over the world.

Perhaps Suvarna Devi did not read very much herself, and was unaware of that? Or had her work actually deteriorated? Where was the passion and the drama of those early stories? Where was that keen observation that had given them their authenticity?

Instead of the ardent admiration I had felt once for the author, the excited joy with which I had set to work rendering my childhood language as faithfully as possible into English, I now looked on Suvarna Devi's work with a much colder eye. More professional perhaps.